Finally, I render one continuous track and insert it into the same audio montage. At that point I start doing captures in WaveLab (complete with the analog gear inline), on the lane right underneath the raw mixes.Īs I continue playing back the tracks, I’ll do any peak limiting or selective de-essing, and make fine tweaks digitally, including any equalization I might want to add after the analog gear. Then I go back and really concentrate on the individual tracks, roughing stuff in until I get each to a happy place. Once that’s done, I like to listen to the album passively all the way through, maybe while I am answering emails or doing something else, just to absorb it as a whole. Next, I will do rough spacing and rough fades as I listen, tweak and take notes of my analog gear settings. Here’s how the workflow will typically go on an album project: My assistant will load the tracks into WaveLab and I will then take the raw mixes and sequence them as the client requests in the Audio Montage window.

While most of my projects involve a significant amount of analog processors, the way I integrate that gear with Steinberg WaveLab 10 software is critical to my overall process. Each engineer’s mastering process is a bit different.