First of all, T-Racks is a good tool to let you see what is wrong in your mix so you can mix better for professional mastering..otherwise, it is a toy.

I have it, I have a super dooper version of it that is modifyed and is beta and it is a good tool. I will bring it out to fix certain tracks in mixing but not as an overall mastering tool. It is not accurate enough. The killer version I have hopefully will be out on the market one day but at this point, use it as a tool to hear the direction to take your mix (especially how much bottom you need for the loud parts and chouruses)

It is plenty useful for demonstration, validation purposes.

If you are not a serious mastering engineer, I would use it like I said above and use it for bands copies prior to mastering is fine. The mastering engineer needs uncompressed versions to do our thing best.

Recently i've done some comparison test between T-Racks and Waves LPhase Mastering bundel. T-Racks sounds pretty damm good, but is not as flexible as Waves. They really have 2 different sounds, one day you may prefere one over the other.

I disagree that T-Racks isn't a good tool for Mastering. You can get good results with it, but like anything else, trial and error, user skills come into play here.

T-Racks simply is not in the same league as a professional mastering service. For what it cost for T-Racks, you can have your project mastered using tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and a well experienced mastering engineer to boot!

For home recordings and project studios where less than 1000 CD's (demo quality) will be pressed, T-Racks can provide satisfactory results.

[ March 07, 2003, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Bill Roberts ]

Yes I realize the T-Racks type of software based mastering is a far cry ( to those who specialize in mastering, and do it for a living), to dedicated analog mastering gear, and rooms.

But, in a good room , with a good mix (one that does not need the type of correction done, do to
a mix done in a incorrect room) the results are very close if not as good.

I've compared mixes done by the Nationaly known mastering facilities to mixes done in programs like Waves and even T-Racks, and have prefered what I heard from these software based mastering programs.

What i've been hearing lately from these National known mastering facilities is distortion due to over kill on loudness. Third Eye Blind/SR71 is a typical example. The sound is actually distorted.
How they could have let that out the door is beyond me.

I agree!

Mastering on a well calibrated cassette deck would be preferable to what many of the top mastering facilities are doing today.

JPH - Nice reply. I agree with you on this one but know how does come into play.

You can be a musician and put out your own music, or you can hire a "Pro" to do it for you????

Yes, next to T-Racks, I prefere to master onto a cassette deck, but not calibrated. I make sure it has at least 1000 hours on it sinse it's last cleaning to give it that smooth analog muffelness.

I'm not knocking the dedicated mastering, just saying that you can get good results from these programs in a good room with good monitoring..

Paul Preamble-this is a verry wrong think, my friend. Try to do your mastering with a T-Racks little bit precislye and you'll get a verry good results. Just do it !

http://www.graffittistudio.com

I've been using T-racks in my home studio for the last year or so, with pretty good results. For most small projects, it works fine. Just play around with it until you get comfortable.

Sorry, you misunderstood what I meant. I use T-racks and love it.
What I meant is that if you play an instrument you can record yourself or hire a pro to play it for you. I'd rather do it myself, as would most bands.