Advanced Routing Shenanigans, Mute Toggles, and A/B/Cing things.

[Releaux]

Greetings and Happy New Year!

I'm working on my 2025 template and have run into where the sidewalk ends on my routing-fu. If what I want to do is possible (and I suspect it may not be), it may also involve some arcane track group, multiple master, or console knowledge.

What I Want to Do
I would like to get better at my mastering, as well as learn how to get even closer to reference tracks with just my unmastered mix. I am also interested in comparing my own mastering choices to what something like Ozone would do. I currently use MeterPlugs Perception AB to do gain matching and A/B comparisons - both bypassing the mastering effects chain and comparing to a reference track - and it does those things very well, but I haven't been able to figure out how to compare more than two tracks or disable the mastering.

In my dream world, this A/B/C comparison could be extended to even more mastering choices (e.g., A/B/C/D/E) as well as commercial reference tracks.

The Setup

• All tracks are routed to an appropriate submaster. All submasters output to the "Mix In" bus.
• The Mix In bus feeds three auxes: Raw Mix, Mastering A, and Mastering B. All three of those output to the "Mix Out" bus.
• The Mix Out bus is routed through another aux which outputs to the Main output / Master-1 fader. This aux isn't strictly needed, as I could route the Raw and Mastering auxes directly to main, but I added this additional one during my (unsuccessful) Perception AB configuration experiments.

Typically the Raw Mix is exactly that with no additional mastering processing going on. Master A is my "manual" attempt at mastering, and Master B would be the automated/AI output from Ozone.

Here's a mixing board with a typical setup:

ABC Mastering Mixer.png (321.9 KiB) Viewed 2187 times

I'd love to use a plugin that does gain matching in all of this, but even without that nicety, one thing I really need to be able to do is have a "solo" group (or, more accurately, a mute-exclusive group) so that I can unmute one aux and automatically mute the other(s).

Here are some specific questions:

• Does anyone know how this might be achieved with Perception AB? (I understand not many people are likely to have it).
• Does anyone know of any comparison plugin that can handle more than A/B? (Looking for A/B/C/D...)
• Is there a way to create a "radio button" type behavior for a specific group of track mutes? For example, only one of the three comparison auxes should ever be unmuted. If I have Master A unmuted and then unmute Master B, I want Master A to automatically mute on the same button press. (This is where I hope that there may be some advanced feature of consoles or track groups that I just haven't discovered yet).

That last question would also have application in some other template functionality I've been struggling with, specifically in my version of the Spitfire BBCSO template.

I'm certainly open to other plugin solutions or workflows, though I'd really prefer to keep everything in one project/chunk and that doesn't require me to do any bouncing prior to being able to compare effects chains.

[Chandrasekar]

I remember James made a video using two masters, then moving the one of the masters to the left.
The left most master gets active. You can compare two masters with different plugins.
Easier than making sub masters.

[Releaux]

Thanks, Chandrasekar, I'll look into multiple masters - that concept has never really made sense to me outside of routing them to different hardware outputs, but maybe there's a way I can use that here.

In the meantime, I've got two working solutions. The first is a workaround that Matt LaPoint showed me making use of solo exemptions (another feature I've underutilized). Essentially, you make all tracks except the target auxes solo exempt, then use option-solo on one aux in the mixer to force mute the others.

I also heard back from Meterplugs tech support and it turns out that the Perception A|B plugin can do exactly what I was looking for. For those of you who have this plug and want to be able to compare multiple things (mastering chains, reference tracks, etc), the configuration is:

Put "PRE" versions at the end of each target aux's inserts.
Put a "POST MASTER" version as the first insert on the Master fader and ensure that "Auto" is disabled.
Select the desired PRE channel in that Post Master instance. This can be done with either the arrow buttons or by double-clicking the field and typing in which PRE you want to listen to.

Here's what a working setup with Perception A|B looks like:

Screenshot 2025-01-04 at 1.49.17 PM.png (769.37 KiB) Viewed 1917 times

After discussing things with Matt, I will be sending in a feature suggestion to MOTU - I think this could be useful in multiple ways, either as a set of cascading solo priorities or a way to designate a group of tracks as "exclusive" to each other.