Mastering Plugins don’t come cheap, let’s take a look at the best free options to help you attain a loud mix
It’s not easy being a producer on a budget. Sample packs, VSTs, and DAWs start to rack up the costs very quickly. To throw you a bone we’ve scoured high and low for 5 of the best free plugins for mastering, so you don’t have to! Let’s get started:
TDR Nova
Tokyo Dawn‘s free Dynamic EQ is a great tool for taming harsh areas in your mix. It achieves this with its EQ/compressor hybrid that allows you to isolate the area of the mix you would like to treat. The end result will smooth out pesky any pesky frequencies and balance the sound. It also works as a regular EQ too offering high shelf, low shelf, and bell shapes for bands control. There are also high-pass and low-pass filters to shave the side of the spectrum to your liking. You also have an A/B mode to check the original source with your edits and options to treat the stereo field! A must-have for producers on a budget.
Ozone Imager 2
Industry-standard setters Izotope released this powerful stereo imaging tool for free letting you visualize your stereo field with 3 different modes (Polar Level, Polar Sample, and Lissajous). You also have options to narrow or widen frequency bands along with Izotope’s Stereo feature. Stereoize delays the left and right signal giving the illusion of a wide sound making this one of the Best Free Plugins For Mastering.
Voxengo’s SPAN
Voxengo is giving away the perfect tool for analyzing your track to ensure the levels are balanced on the frequency spectrum. The mono and stereo field are both layered so you can balance them with visual representation to assist you. Whilst not packed in features it’s a good tool to use with reference tracks in the mixing and mastering stage. You will learn what a good mix looks like using this method helping train your ears and develop your skills in your DAW.
Voxengo’s MSED
Voxengo giveth one more with this handy mono and stereo leveling tool! Turn up your mono and stereo levels to balance the overall signal which works hand in hand with SPAN as a visual guide. You can also solo both signals, which is great for checking the master is clean in mono and stereo. Two must-have VSTs for any producer!
YouLean Loudness Meter 2
Finally one of the best free plugins for mastering is YouLean’s Loudness Meter 2! This tool measures your tracks LUFS which is an acronym for Loudness Unit Full Scale. This is handy to set the overall loudness of your final mix so it’s the right level for streaming services. Most sites set guidelines for LUFS so research before you upload your track.
In conclusion to Free Plugins For Mastering
That about covers it for our best free plugins for the mastering list! With these tools in hand, your skills are guaranteed to level up. If you found this article helps give it a share and a like! We hope to see you come back again!
Comments 6