Well, my take on it (based on rather a lot of experience with a wide variety of genres and pressings) would be to remove the de-clipper and hard limiter from your processing. If you are getting genuinely clipped results and a load of spashing, then the first thing I'd be looking at is the one thing you haven't told us about - the cartridge that you are using, and how carefully it's set up. This is the thing that can make the most difference of the lot to the results you're getting.
The purpose of Mastering (which originated with vinyl) is to get the best, cleanest transfer of the original tape on to a somewhat inferior medium which has a lot of compromises. Actual clipping generally doesn't happen, because that would cause a groove crash, so careful limiting is always applied when this is likely to be an issue. Adding any more limiting is almost bound to make things significantly worse, and quite frankly the Hard Limiter is a bit of a blunt instrument, and not the one of choice - which ideally would be no limiting at all.
The rest of your processing looks reasonable. I'd de-click first, certainly. Then I'd listen carefully. NR I'd do in several stages, a bit at a time using different FFT sizes for each pass - no more than 3-4dB per pass. Quite often, using a high FFT setting means that you don't need to do any hiss reduction at all - it comes off with the rest of the noise. Stereo expansion is generally a good idea, and if you do it selectively (mainly on anything below about 3-400Hz) then you will compensate for the one thing that's generally applied at the mastering stage, which is reducing the bass width to about mono - stereo bass sends cartridges flying!
But as I said, the cartridge and its setup are crucial to getting a good result.
2
Replies
AdChoices
