T Racks is pretty expensive as is Planet Waves. This Izone is $200. It must be better than what I'm doing, which is just normalizing.

Beakybird

T-Racks cost less then ONE professional Mastering session....And they have a $199 version which costs far less.

Thank you to everyone! I will do some research to see which software is better: T Racks Standard or Izotope Ozone 4.

Beakybird

Izotope Ozone is a great application, very professional...on the other side TRacks is
great too but everyone loves TRacks cuz it
sounds warmer, more analogish, vintage while
Ozone is more synthetic, like Waves.
To experience that difference a person needs
to monitor on a really good monitors, you
cant expect to hear a difference on computer monitors.

I used to use T-Racks before I moved on to the UAD Mastering Tools, or our Manley Massive Passive, Slam! and Hardware L2 at the studio...

I thought it was a very easy to use mastering program, hard to f*ck up if you kept with the 'gentle' presets and worked from there. For what you need to do, Beaky, I think it's a pretty easy to use tool. There might be a BIT cheaper, but I'm not sure there are many easier to use. I have mastered dozens of CD's for other people, studios, etc.. If you haven't got decent studio monitors, you are taking a chance doing this on lesser speakers, but if you use the 'gentle' presets in T-Racks, it's fairly easy to get a good result sort of 'blind'

It sure makes for an easy volume pump for demos to post here, etc..

OK. It sounds like T-Racks is a proven product. I saw some lackluster reviews for Ozone 3 at Musiciansfriend. Now they have Ozone 4 which they claim is more user friendly. Ozone 4 has more toys than T-Racks Standard that costs the same price: $199. It has Harmonic Exciter, Multiband Dynamics, Stereo Imaging.

It's going to be a tough decision.

I'm sure you guys who are lauding T-Racks had a more comprehensive version, probably one that costs $400-500.

I think I'm leading towards the Ozone, but I hate buying the wrong software as you can't return it. You often cannot even resell it on Ebay.

Beakybird

The Mixcraft looks like an amazing buy. It looks like its raison d'etre is multitrack recording, kind of like Sonar, which I already have (Sonar 7 Studio Edition) which cost me over $200 and doesn't look that much better than this Mixcraft.

However, neither Sonar nor Mixcraft seem to have tools for mastering a mix like some of the other products mentioned in this thread.

Beakybird

Beaky what are you actually trying to do & achieve.?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=mixcraft+4&aq=f


here is some Mixcraft demos

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 04-14-2009).]

if you're looking to just bring up the volumes of your mixes a little bit using some basic compression for website demos, just use something dirt cheap like goldwave. For quick and dirty I often just maximize volume, and then compress peaks at -6 Db, and re-maximize. You don't need to become a professional mastering engineer for what you're trying to do.