Lacquer

A mastering assistant for Ableton Live, built as a VST3 audio effect. Version 0.1.1.

Pick a style, pick where the song is going, press LEARN and play the song. Lacquer sets the loudness so the master lands on the target without a peak going over, and one MASTER knob sets how much EQ, compression, saturation and stereo width goes on alongside. It goes last on the master channel.

It's also meant for learning. A strip along the middle shows what each stage is doing to the track while it plays, and clicking a stage switches it off so you can hear what it was adding.

The Lacquer panel: style buttons on the left, a large MASTER knob in the middle and target buttons on the right; below them the five stages with live readings, and the loudness meter with LEARN and COMPARE

What it does

Style: GENTLE, WARM, BRIGHT, PUNCH or DENSE. Each is a recipe for all five stages: how much low end and air, how hard and how fast the compressor works, how much saturation, how much width.
Master: How much of the recipe to use, on every stage at once. At 0 nothing is shaped and only the loudness is set.
Target: Streaming (-14 LUFS, -1 dBTP), download (-11 LUFS), CD (-10 LUFS, -0.3 dBTP) or vinyl (-13 LUFS, with the bass in mono below 150 Hz).
Learn: Press it and play the song. It measures the song and sets the gain into the stages and the drive into the limiter, so the output lands within about half a dB of the target. It stops by itself when the song ends, and what it learned is saved with the set.
Under the hood: TONE (a gentle EQ, with its curve drawn), GLUE (a compressor), COLOR (soft saturation), WIDTH (mid/side) and LIMIT (a true-peak limiter), each showing what it's doing right now. Click one to switch it off.
Loudness: Integrated, short-term and momentary loudness and true peak, measured to ITU-R BS.1770 / EBU R128 like the streaming services measure.
Compare: Plays the original mix at the same loudness as the master, so you're judging the sound and not the volume. MONO checks the mix on one speaker.

Style, target, master and the stage switches are host parameters. 14 factory presets, one for each kind of music, and you can save your own.

Video

Walkthrough video — not up yet.

Documentation

Mastering guide (PDF) — mastering from the start: what it is, what LUFS and true peak mean and why streaming changed everything, preparing a mix, a session in Live step by step, a tour of the panel, and exporting files for streaming, Bandcamp, CD and vinyl.

Every control is also described in the project README.

Download

Builds are on the releases page. Every archive includes the guide. VST3 only — there is no Audio Unit build, so Lacquer will not load in Logic.

Installation notes are on the front page.

Source

github.com/taddeimania/lacquer — C++ and JUCE, AGPLv3.