I have used the Waves C4 on a project I'm mixing in Digital Performer at another studio. Most songs have 65 to 72 tracks and I have at least 1 C4 on everything. It works well and I am happy with it as a mix tool. I haven't tried mastering with it as I have a Weiss DS1-MK II at my place. I think the Waves stuff is pretty solid and worth looking at as a good stepping stone until you are ready to look at something more mastering specific…

the waves stuff is definately better than the master x stuff. Much smoother and more transparent.

Originally posted by Alécio Costa - Brazil:
Hi friends! I am really tired of the metallic sound provided by stuff like the TC MASTER X 5 band TDM plugin. It is really good for heavy sequenced music, but for acoustical stuff like Bossa, samba and so it does some damage to the job.

What about C4 and the Waves Linear phase bundle? Is that a big leap?
I know the ideal would be some stuff from CRane, Manley, Avalon, Weiss and so..192k/48bits

so what are your comments?
The plug-in forum rarely has someone there to "help", so I had to come here

Hugs
Nice 2003
Alécio Costa - Brazil

The Waves stuff is really fantastic! Their mastering effects LinMB, LinEQ and L2 have no contenders in the PC market. They have the most transparent sound of any bundle of plugin I´ve ever heard. The C4, though very good and versatile, is a little raspier than LinMB and "only" has 4 bands of compression. The same goes with L1 compared to L2, and Q10 compared to LinEQ. Very good, but not as good as the mastering bundle. Then again, they tax the cpu quite hard. My drummer friend uses C4 on every drum 2 ch mix he does, with great results.

Mats

so, is C4 betterthan the MAster X 5 band mode?
Master x had a dither ( that do not use, prefer Power dither TDM), look ahead delay ( I set to maximum 10ms), a 5 Band eq ( very metallic for acoustical stuff), brickwall limiter, expander, target curves.

So is C4 a big leap from it?
BTW.. I hate L1.

do you think that with C4 + Power dither + q10 would do the trick or is it worth to pay around $200 for the Mastering bundle?
Thanks
Alécio

Waves is predictable. Just remember for each render you do, the next will will damage the previous one so it is best to make an adjustment and render once.

can you go deeper on this suggestion Bill?
Thanks!
Man, you disappeared!
:p

so litle traffic on this place...
:(
:confused:

IMO, I think you should go with the waves stuff. The little I played with the Master X stuff, I found that I didn't like it at all for all the reasons you mentioned. All around it's a much better sounding package than the master X and if your running TDM then the rendering that Bill mentioned, won't be an issue to you because you'll be running it realtime. I believe you can download a trial version on some of the waves stuff and try it out. buy it if you like it.

Mike