Hey guys! My name is Wes, from Wes Keith Productions, www.thewesman.com I was wondering if anyone had any advice or experiences with new mastering software and what seems to be the favorite this day. I do it the old school way, and following behind on orders from my website. Anything anyone can suggest?

What do you mean by the old school way?

Traditionally pro mastering is done with high-end outboard gear, and the general consensus is that this produces the best results. If you already work in this fashion, you might not get huge gains from moving to plugins!

The best mastering plugins, though not too bad, can't compare with the sort of signal chain in a pro mastering studio. (This includes the room treatment and monitoring of course, which plugins can't really help with). Not only that, but the mastering guy should, ideally, be a different person to the mixing guy, because that generally promotes objectivity.

But if you need to use plugins for mastering, check out what is already bundled with your audio software. In my opinion, you need nothing more than a half-decent compressor and limiter (anything else can and should be fixed in the mixing). For example Protools limiter is Maxim, which I've found more or less as effective as, say, Waves L2. I think they come as stock in any of the major offerings these days, so why pay for extraneous stuff? I have heard that the UAD gear is great, but I've not used it.