Having a good processing chain is essential for audio mastering.
While purists and many mastering engineers would likely recommend hardware equipment first, it’s clear that this isn’t accessible for all home studios, nor for all studios, in fact.
Indeed, building a hardware mastering chain is expensive.
Moreover, this of course presupposes having perfect acoustics in your (home) studio.
Fortunately, thanks to modern signal processing technologies, many brands have developed excellent audio plugins for mastering that are much more accessible.
Plugin Alliance, iZotope, or Waves immediately come to mind, but they are not the only ones: many developers have indeed designed VSTs that allow for mastering a track under the best possible conditions.
Of course, it’s difficult to name them all — but here’s a selection of 12 of the best plugins for audio mastering (twelve plugins, in fact, that I mostly use regularly).
1. iZotope Ozone
Publisher: iZotope
Type: Multi-effect bundle
It’s hard to make a list of mastering plugins without mentioning the famous Ozone plugin from the American brand iZotope.
While it may seem a bit beginner-oriented, especially due to the all-in-one nature of the software, this is not the case.
Indeed, it can be used very easily by beginners thanks to a well-thought-out user experience (there’s even a simplified version called Ozone Elements), but it remains completely usable for professional use due to the robustness of the integrated audio processing algorithms.
In fact, Ozone integrates pretty much all the types of effects you might need for mastering:
- Equalizer (including ultra-musical Baxandall curves, named after the inventor);
- Compressor;
- Dynamic equalizer;
- Exciter (adding harmonics) with different modes;
- Maximizer to raise the level;
- Various tools, including one that allows referencing the track against other pieces;
- In the full version, modules for compression, EQ, saturation, and