Professional quality masters at the press of a button (but for real this time)
Another mastering processor (*siiiigghhhh*). Ok wait hear us out for a second. Yes there’s about a gajillion of these things out there nowadays, and yes, for the most part, with each new one it’s more of the same. But this one here really made us do a double take.
Master Plan by Musik Hack really is the newest musik hack when it comes to mastering. It features; some high and low boost/cut, an expand knob to widen up your track, ‘clean’ and ‘calm’ settings to tame muddiness and harshness respectively, ‘multi’ and ‘smooth’ buttons to dial in your compression flavours and manage unwanted frequencies with multiband compression, a thick setting for some saturation and a tape setting for some analog vibes.
Each of these buttons is paired with a slider for nailing the right mix or vibe that each of these settings gives you.
Each of these settings really felt like they were actually impacting the mix the way I expected them to without taking away any of the things I loved from my mix.
Now let’s talk about the loud knob. To preface this let’s turn to Musik Hacks own statement “We do not endorse the Loudness Wars. But if you do happen to get into a war, and it’s about Loudness… you will win.”
This loud knob uses a combined clipper limiter circuit to let you make your track as absurdly loud as you want, and it does it while really impressively preserving the dynamics of your track.
The plugin also features a super handy filter section that will emulate the sound of your master; in mono, through a phone speaker, or through the classic Yamaha NS-10s for some quick referencing.
Let’s all take a moment to applaud Musik Hacks inclusion of the unity button. It is staggering how many mastering plugins which by design boost the signal without an option to gain compensate your mastering moves. This is a must have for mastering plugins and they’ve got it right.
Master Plan landed in my lap rather at a rather fortuitous moment. In the last week I’ve just finished off a mix and sent it off to a (rather pricey) mastering engineer. This was a bit of an experiment because I usually do my own mastering but I wanted to know the kind of difference it would make.
When I got the professional master back I was amazed, the dynamic range and clarity it managed to preserve whilst getting some serious loudness blew me away.
I then spent the next two days trying to replicate the work and I’ll humbly admit, I think it got pretty close. But I’ve just run the same test using Master Plan and honestly – I’ve managed to get it seriously close again and this time I only needed the one plugin.
Time will tell whether Master Plan will become a permanent resident on my mastering chain but I’ll certainly be giving it the chance to continue to surprise me.
And without a doubt it’ll be a mainstay on my mix bus for sending some competitive mixes to clients for feedback.
Musik Hacks offer three payment plans; a rent to own for 35 USD for 5 months, a 1 year subscription for 75 USD or a perpetual licence for 175 USD.
Check out the Musik Hacks website to find out more and pick up Master Plan for yourself: https://www.musikhack.com/
