Of course, I don't want PSP to raise their prices. My point was that PSP's pricing does indicate that they are after my market, not just professional audio engineers.

Although I could not write such a doc, I envision a "best practices" white paper would be something that took an actual song through the various production processes using PSP plug-ins. It wouldn't answer all questions but it would show some basic things & teach some basic concepts. It would also clearly show how the "inventors" of these tools think about them and what their capabilities are.

What I hear you all saying is that I should go back and learn all about compressors, limiters, mastering, etc., etc., before I start using these plug-ins. I agree in an ideal world I should do that but this is not an ideal world. And if I needed to start from scratch, then the Ozone white paper would a waste but I found it very useful.

The thing is (again) that in the case of mastering tools there are no strict rules, there are even no rough rulse. What we could say about the MC in the contect of making a sing is that you can use it on buses or preferably during mastering.

Capabilities of this plug-in are described as features in the begining of the the manual, some other details are described in other parts of the manual.

This is no problem to visit a page with a link I put here few post ago and to learn some basics of compression and other process ann basically about mastering to know why there are no rules that could be described.

You can also visit Bob Katz page which provides some very informative papers about mastering and helps to understand this subject which is so wide and fuzzy that it is rather impossible to contain all those things within a single manual.

Finally we are always ready to answer exact practical question that happens to users with various level of processing understanding and expearience. Some of those questions then are put into the FAQ part of this forum.

I don't want to let you down in anyway, every of us has learn all the time to make their job better and probably you are more expearienced in processing then we where some years ago. I just want you to understand that the subject is so wide in this case and tutorials can be so missleading in the case of the MC that we don't want it to be done this way.
However if you had any questions refering to the PSP MC or our other plug-ins we are ready to make our best to help you.

Regards,

Regards

I think you've made my point - you expect users of your software to be experts. That's fine if that's your market.

My main point is that if we expected users of the software I build, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to be experts, then we'd go out of business, because our software is complicated & difficult to use. To use your example, we'd have to tell our clients to first learn to be Database Administrators, Cartographers, and Geographers. Then once they did that, they could begin to use our software. If we did that, we'd be out of business and our clients would go to our competitors. Instead, we provide extensive documentation and white papers.

So again, I'm going to respectively disagree with you on this one. IMO you could provide better documentation to help non-experts like myself use your software.

I am sorry but I think you missunderstood me. I menstioned several ways what you can do to understand better our mastering plug-ins, the knowledge is so wide that it is impossible to write tutorial containing even fraction of it hwoever moving your browser to find all those information or buy Bob's book isn't a big problem and would help you with a lot of things in your music expearience. I think that after reading few of those material you would start to understand our point.
I also mentioned that we help to solve various problems of our custers (on this forum or via email) and almost always our responses gain the plug-in's understanding.
All this means that our plug-ins are often used by not "perfect engineers" and we are glad that we can help to understand them better.
This is also good that you mentioned your GIS software because it shows how different it is. If I am not wrong GIS gives expected results and the difference between expert and non-expert user is that the other has to learn how to use it. In a case of mastering processors the non-expert don't understand that there are no rules, the plug-in is just a tool between others in a complex mastering process whcih is more to the art of hearing expearience than exact and predictable rules on paper.
What I mean please try to take a look at resources mentioned, this can help you a lot to understand how to choose a tool for a job and we are also open to any questions refering to our plug-ins and typically we solve missunderstanding and problems withing days.

Regards,

Mike I think their point is that there's so many different ways you can process the same type of sounds that it would be pointless. For instance, say you have an electric bass guitar track that you want to tame the dynamics on. Good attack, release and threshold settings are going to vary wildly based on what you're trying to do with that bass track, and what could work on that particular bass track, could suck for it on a different song or recording even if the program material is similar and recorded at a similar level. There's really no way to tell someone what's right in respect for this. You really just do have to learn how the plugs work, and then use your ears as to how they need to be applied on an individual basis. Look at drums, for another example, do you want to kill the transients, using a fast attack, or do you want to let them through and compress more of the body of the kit? Even then tempo and how much the drummer is playing will actually be a factor. Now we still haven't gotten to release settings or ratio controls which will dictate so much more. Then on top of it, you may want a super compressed drum sound, you may not. How can someone else tell you this?

Funkybot - I fully understand what Mateusz is saying & I agree to a certain extent. Have you read the Ozone mastering guide? There are a million ways you can master a song, yet that is a useful guide.

Mateusz - your characterization of GIS is not totally accurate. There are a million ways to make a map too & there are lots of questions you can ask using the software. Our documentation doesn't try to answer all the questions, or show all the possibilities.

The documentation I'm seeking would be similar to the Ozone guide, i.e., it wouldn't try to solve all problems but it would perhaps use a set of audio tracks & go through one process. It would specify the goals which would be very narrow & specific.

Following Mateusz's logic, I would argue that the Master Comp needs no documentation at all then. All users need to know is to find documentation on how a compressor works. In fact, my observation is that the documentaton on that plug-in is pretty sparse, which is why I started this discussion in the first place.

I have Katz's book & it's pretty complicated IMO.

I didn't mean for this thread to go on so long but I've felt it's been a good discussion.

Thanks.

Mike

Once again I disagree. Ozone is totally different - multieffect type - plug-in wth very complex, not common multi screen operation. It has completely different idea and is an all-in-all tool, it is also targeted to different customers then the PSP MC.
Which of course doesn't mean that the way Ozone's manual is prepared is wrong, it just shows that in the case of Ozone there is a different stress point than in the case of the PSP MC.
I also still cannot understand your point about the price which is very expensive compared to our other plug-ins. Do you mean that we should be sorry to sale it at 250$ instead of 1000$ for instance?

Regards,

By the way, did you take a look at the site I mentioned? It would help you a lot, you can also try the Craig Anderton book about mastering which is more basic comparet to Bob's one.

And once again, I don't get your point, I several times wrote that we are open to your questions and we can provide you some on-line content to help you understand the PSP MC and whatever we say you get back to the fact that we don't have a tutorial.

Regards,

Have you read the Ozone Mastering Guide? It's one of the "best" white papers on mastering that I've ever read. It achieves two goals: teaching you some basics about mastering & at the same time illustrating Ozone's tools. Brilliant marketing doc IMO.

I'm not trying to compare your plug-in's with Ozone's at all? However, if you are telling me that you doesn't understand how you could also write a white paper on EQ & mastering using your tools, then I say bull - of course, you could if you wanted to.

I think you missed my point with your price. I have no ideas what your market is, or the market for plug-ins in general - that would require a lot of research. My comment about price was in response to your claim that you build these tools for professionals. I was beeing alittle facetious. I don't think you are marketing your tools simply to professionals or you won't have created EasyVerb.

OK, so if you already read this tutorial you should have no problem at all getting most of the MasterComp :-)

I disagree that writing a tutorial for MasterQ and MasterComp is the same thing as doing it for Ozone, I also didn't say that it doesn't make sense, just have a different opinion about it.

I never read any guide that would really gain my knowledge about the process siriously. 99% of my education was my own investigation and hearing expearience and nothing written can exchange it.

I think that we are right by saying that our tools are created for proffesionals and real mastering engineers which of course doen't meen that they cannot be used by semi pros and hobbysts. We are actually proud that we have various user groups and that their job or hobby can benefit from our plug-ins. We are also glad to support them as good as we are able to and to help to understand our products and use them in a right way.

Regards,