Bx Mastering Studio - FREE!

[Larry Shelby]

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/bx_mastering_studio.html

[MusicMan]

I love a lot of PA stuff, but this has a very alpha / beta feel to it and like it's been rushed out the door as a MVP.

Hopefully there will be lots of free updates, but I suspect we'll get this and then eventually it might start being something for V2 which will probably then be paid.

It might just be because it's taken so long that I feel that way, as it was supposed to be included in the All 2022 bundle, that it seems a bit underwhelming. Free is probably the right price for it from an initial look, as it seems to be missing a lot of core functionality,.

It's certainly no Wavelab killer.. 

[locrian]

How do we actually download this one?

In the past after purchasing a plugin it's added to my account and shows up in the PA Installation Manager.  But this one does not show up there and it's not clear how to add it to my licenses.

EDIT: I went ahead and downloaded and installed the plugin, but nothing was actually installed.  I've never had an issue installing a PA plugin before.  Strange.

Edited Wednesday at 05:19 PM by locrian

[Chaps]

12 minutes ago, locrian said:

How do we actually download this one?

In the past after purchasing a plugin it's added to my account and shows up in the PA Installation Manager.  But this one does not show up there and it's not clear how to add it to my licenses.

I did it by selecting the My Products option in the Plugin Alliance Installation Manager. It has to be activated from your account page on the website after installation.

[TheSteven]

20 minutes ago, locrian said:

How do we actually download this one?

In the past after purchasing a plugin it's added to my account and shows up in the PA Installation Manager.  But this one does not show up there and it's not clear how to add it to my licenses.

You need to use the PA Installation Manager app, then run the standalone app to activate it - at that point it'll show up in your web account.

Edited Wednesday at 05:20 PM by TheSteven

[locrian]

Thanks @Chaps and @TheSteven.

My problem was that I thought this was a plugin, but it's actually just a standalone app.

It's now activated and running.

[Brian Walton]

9 hours ago, MusicMan said:

I love a lot of PA stuff, but this has a very alpha / beta feel to it and like it's been rushed out the door as a MVP.

Hopefully there will be lots of free updates, but I suspect we'll get this and then eventually it might start being something for V2 which will probably then be paid.

It might just be because it's taken so long that I feel that way, as it was supposed to be included in the All 2022 bundle, that it seems a bit underwhelming. Free is probably the right price for it from an initial look, as it seems to be missing a lot of core functionality,.

It's certainly no Wavelab killer.. 

Indeed.  The announcement of Mastering Studio years ago was a reason to sign up for the Forever 29 deal.  

I wonder if this was rushed to calm down some of the backlash over terminating F29 without a realistic runway to use or sell seats given so many lackluster releases since the takeover.

Glad it was free but feels especially alpha given the UI is a poormans version of the UI they use for all the recent Bx plugins.

Edited Thursday at 01:57 AM by Brian Walton

[MusicMan]

1 hour ago, Brian Walton said:

Indeed.  The announcement of Mastering Studio years ago was a reason to sign up for the Forever 29 deal.  

I wonder if this was rushed to calm down some of the backlash over terminating F29 without a realistic runway to use or sell seats given so many lackluster releases since the takeover.

Glad it was free but feels especially alpha given the UI is a poormans version of the UI they use for all the recent Bx plugins.

That wouldn't surprise me if it was related to F29 Brian. The way they talked it up and that it was going to be included in Mega and the All 2022 Bundle definitely didn't seem like they were aiming for a free version. I did think the same around the UI and their latest BX plugins, but even a single new plugin looks WAY more refined. This looks more like a simple wireframe, or mockup.

They also talked about "Pro controls" and settings.. To me, the settings look pretty limited and just what I'd expect on any basic compressor, or EQ.

I would've also really expected them to have slots to be able to load their own plugins into it as a minimum for some final tweaks. Ideally even third party, but I suspect they may have tried that and had challenges. Like NUGEN do. SigMod for example often crashes when scanning and they can't seem to fix it. I get the feeling they may have backpedaled features.

But that also means no room / headphone correction on the output, which for a "Mastering DAW" now called "Mastering Studio" seems like a pretty big omission.

I couldn't even see any controls around dithering, or automation, or much of anything that isn't already in their existing plugins.

Fingers crossed it evolves.

[Carl Ewing]

Tried it for 5 minutes. Really don't like the sound of it.

And I know it's free, but this is not a good plugin. From what I can tell there is only peak metering, no LUFS. Maybe I'm wrong and there's a setting I'm missing, but that's deal breaker for something called "mastering studio" that is a stand alone plugin that can't be put in a chain with a LUFS meter, phase meter, etc.

The dynamics / tone pages are on different tabs...for a standalone plugin that can be full-screened. When I fullscreen it there's like 8 buttons on one page, with 90% wasted space, and same on the other tab. Just put them on the same page ffs. If you're trying to coordinate between some macro tone and the compressor / limiter, you're going to have a bad time.

The limiter does NOT sound good. Neither does the saturation. Can't delta auditon on the de-esser. No loudness match on bypass. (!!) No dynamics reflected on meters. No mono switch, just 300hz mono maker.  No autogain. Can't tell what they're target audience is here since Ozone 11 Elements pops up for free once in a while - and would be a significant improvement over this in every way imaginable.

This feels like one of those freebie apps that would come with Windows along with Minesweeper.  Even for free, this feels like it would actually do more damage than good. Very disappointed in Brainworx / PA here.

Edited Thursday at 08:40 AM by Carl Ewing

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

Seems like a revamped version of MasterDesk!

[Brian Walton]

30 minutes ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

Seems like a revamped version of MasterDesk!

Basically it is AI machine learning to apply preset master adjustments then it has two tabs worth of modified MasterDesk controls.  

The fact it is standalone and you can't add other (even PA plugins) in the chain for mastering purposes makes it look a lot more limited than it could have been as it makes me wonder why not just add the AI/Preset part to MasterDesk pro and get the functionality there.

[MusicMan]

2 minutes ago, Brian Walton said:

Basically it is AI machine learning to apply preset master adjustments then it has two tabs worth of modified MasterDesk controls.  

The fact it is standalone and you can't add other (even PA plugins) in the chain for mastering purposes makes it look a lot more limited than it could have been as it makes me wonder why not just add the AI/Preset part to MasterDesk pro and get the functionality there.

I thought the same and I read in one of Dirk's comments somewhere that he justified making it standalone, as it needs to analyse the whole track/s instead of processing as it goes, or trying to analyse multiple tracks in DAW.

In theory, I would think that you could just do a file import to the plugin for calculation and then simply apply those resultant changes as it goes, but maybe that's not so easy.