Using Oeksound Soothe on a mastered track and dithering

[TheLegit]

I mixed a track and had it mastered and while it doesn't sound that great I noticed that if slapped Soothe on the master it does smoothe it out a bit and remove a bit of the harshness. If I were to render this new track would I have to re-apply any kind of dithering or can I just create a new WAV?

[Hugh Robjohns]

You only need to apply dithering if/when you reduce the word length.

[TheLegit]

You only need to apply dithering if/when you reduce the word length.

Thanks Hugh of course should have known that one

[Martin Walker]

Hi Legit!

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical about these 'clever' plug-ins, but in your situation I'd consider this the perfect chance to look at how Soothe altered your mastered track, and then think through how I could achieve the same results during the mix phase.

That way there's a good chance that your next mix might not need Soothe, and you'd be further on your way to mix perfection.

But that's probably just me

Martin

[RichardT]

Hi Legit!

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical about these 'clever' plug-ins, but in your situation I'd consider this the perfect chance to look at how Soothe altered your mastered track, and then think through how I could achieve the same results during the mix phase.

That way there's a good chance that your next mix might not need Soothe, and you'd be further on your way to mix perfection.

But that's probably just me

Martin

I agree with this! If you get a benefit from putting Soothe over a whole mix, you’d get a whole lot more benefit from fixing the problems at source.

[Martin Walker]

I agree with this! If you get a benefit from putting Soothe over a whole mix, you’d get a whole lot more benefit from fixing the problems at source.

Thanks for your support Rich (I'll wash it before I post it back to you )

Martin

[RichardT]

[TheLegit]

The 'Soothed' track was superior, really removed a level of harshness and sounded nicer and smoother to my ears. There's actually a preset called 'Before You Bounce' I just slapped that on.

What's weird though is that the frequency display shows resonant frequencies reduced down by -6db at varying times across the spectrum low to high. You'd then expect the Soothe track to lose a few final db but it maybe lost 0.1db on the master??

[TheLegit]

Hi Legit!

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical about these 'clever' plug-ins, but in your situation I'd consider this the perfect chance to look at how Soothe altered your mastered track, and then think through how I could achieve the same results during the mix phase.

That way there's a good chance that your next mix might not need Soothe, and you'd be further on your way to mix perfection.

But that's probably just me

Martin

I agree with this! If you get a benefit from putting Soothe over a whole mix, you’d get a whole lot more benefit from fixing the problems at source.

The issue was that a) it had been mastered professionally and b) it's a track I've been endlessly poring over and was sick of mixing.