Use a Sonic Enhancer to Master Your Track

We've had sonic enhancer plugins around for quite some time. They can extract that certain magic from particular frequencies that are difficult to tune in with simple EQs and compressors. Sonic enhancers are particularly effective in the high and low frequencies, often lost in the mixing process. In the following tutorial, we will show you how to use one of them to master your track.

As usual, we'll listen to a short sequence created in our SoundBridge: DAW. It contains most of the whole mix's elements, with a few effects already added to the mastering chain.

Our track has some starting headroom, as we can hear from the audio example above, with loudness reaching around -15 LUFS. This will be a good starting point for us to add a sonic enhancer effect and work on the track's mastering. This time, we chose the Waves Infected Mushroom Pusher as our sonic enhancer. The Waves IMPusher offers a good deal of flexibility when it comes to boosting frequencies, enhancing sounds, and mastering entire tracks in any genre or style. Let's place it as the last plugin in our mastering chain and look at its interface.

IMPusher Sonic Enhancer's Parameters

The Waves IMPusher plugin includes several processors referred to as components. We can use all or some of them to achieve the best possible result for our material. The Input level sits in the upper left corner of the interface and is an excellent place to start. The big bottom processor is called LOW. It boosts low frequencies while also adding harmonics. You can set the frequency at which this process begins based on note or frequency. We already have plenty of low-frequency content so we won't use it.

Moving on, the Body component adds low-to-midrange dynamics and frequency processing. In general, this affects the weight of the middle frequencies. For our track, we'll set the knob to 12. Magic is the main component of the Waves IMPusher, and it's used to excite and boost the dynamics of all frequencies simultaneously. There are also controls for frequency Focus and Dynamic Punch. In our case, we set the frequency focus to 62, and the overall Magic value is set to 60.

The High component takes care of the high frequencies, and we have set the number to 5. The Stereo Image widens the stereo field of the high frequencies, and here, we will assess its amount to around 12. Finally, the Push component drives the overall audio level to the maximum loudness. It's possible to choose between two processes: Clipping or Limiting.

If you liked this article on mixing, here are some more on the same subject:

• Advanced Dynamic Processing
• 5 Essential Tips For Parallel Processing
• Maximize Loudness With These Processing Tips
• Discover Advanced Equalization and Dynamic Processing