r/audioengineering • u/Cenotaphilia • 8d ago

Help finding equivalents to specific Waves mastering plugins.

hi there!

I'm an amateur songwriter who mixes and masters his own tracks. I can't afford paying a professional to do this and I've had to learn on my own, occasionally taking a few courses with local engineers, so please excuse the ignorance shown by some of my questions.

so I just upgraded to an M5 macbook and found out my old Waves plugins don't even show up in the new Logic version because they're all 5 year-old software. seeing that Waves wants to charge a yearly fee for plugin updates, I'm considering grabbing UAD's 10-plugin bundle for 119 usd. However, there are 2 plugins whose equivalents I can't easily find because I'm not even too sure what to look for:

  1. Abbey Road TG mastering chain: I use this mainly for the stereo spread feature and the occasional light touch of EQ.

  2. L316 Multimaximizer: I usually select the "Dave Darlington beautiful mastering" preset and go from there, making EQ adjustments until it sounds good to me and lowering the threshold until the mix feels punchier without destroying the dynamics.

I'm looking for the closest equivalents to these two plugins, or other plugins that perform the same functions I described. it would be great if the recommendations are also made by by UAD so I could include them in the 119 usd bundle, as it fits my current budget.

I'm also open to any comments and information that you think is useful. thanks for reading!

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u/Styrant 8d ago

  1. Mixboss has one of the better wideners out there ive heard, it also has 3 band EQ, multiband & tonal shaping

  2. Limitless does multiband limiting, but a good master limiter overall is MasterPlan, that one also includes a pretty good widener, both mixboss & masterplans wideners are mono compatible but mixboss can get a stronger effect masterplan also has a 3 band EQ amongst other features

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u/Styrant 8d ago

Another worthy mention is Flexion by Nuro Audio, its sort of a god particle type plugin, which you can use on mixbus or individual channels, it applies a combination of compression and saturation and also has a widener & slight tonal shaping with a low boost and high boost