Waves Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain Reviews

The mid-side is worth the price of admission alone. The presets are very good. Flexible plug-in that is creative and usable. Shhhhh, don't tell anyone that it's the secret sauce on some of our mixes.

How hard is it to write an unbiased review on a Waves plugin? well, impossible... if you don't have a performance machine at the centerpiece of your studio. It's kind of amazing how many reviewers on here don't understand that they can't skimp on their computer, nor can they continue to use old OS from 5-6 years ago w/o having constant problems. look, I know. nobody wants to spend extra money on expensive computers, and updating OS can cause issues with your DAW license/compatibility, but you have to find the right balance to properly supplement your recording/mixing workflow.

To give you some context, I have a very powerful computer (running with a not-so-powerful interface), and I put the Waves Abbey Road stuff on every mix. The TG Master is the perfect option for giving your master bus that analog "juice" that it needs when working mostly in-the-box. I have a very short signal chain and do all my mixing in the box, and I use mostly darker ribbon mics and dynamics in my heavily acoustically treated space, so my tracks often start off VERY flat and "perfect", with little to no character beyond that of the instrument or voice being recorded, but with infinite options when it comes to adding said character and chaos after the fact. Picture my studio as a giant vocal booth. It's not too big, very dry, and allows for a ton of flexibility when mixing.
So, When I'm doing my final mix/master, the TG mastering chain ALWAYS goes right before my master limiter, and after my basic EQ & saturator. I'm a man of habit when it comes to my master bus processing.
The TG tape EQ section is absolutely wonderful, it brings dark mixes to life, and adds a little necessary "umph" to already bright or shimmery mixes that need it. It is also AMAZING for making samples sound more natural and blend better with live instruments. hidden weapon right there!
I love the tone section on this thing, but rarely use the limiting section as i prefer the TG12345 limiter for most applications. I don't use much limiting on my master bus except for a sometimes heavy-handed MAXIM with the threshold at around 3-5db depending on genre and feel. If i'm going for more of an oldschool sound though, the TG mastering limiter can't be beat. Its not something you understand until you get really good at recording though, because vintage sounds come from the recording themselves, not the mix. The mix can only emphasize or de-emphasize what is already there. The TG Mastering Chain (as well as the entire Abbey Road Plugin pack) is absolutely perfect for getting that tone without breaking the bank. I am the last guy to praise a plugin this much, but I really think Waves nailed it on this series. EMI has a rich history and I can get my little slice of that sound for very cheap. I love that!!
The monitoring section is VERY handy for checking my mono mix, as well as the "mid" and "side" monitoring options. I stay away from the spreader, but I stay away from ALL spreaders. All they do is mess with phase, and I don't want that happening on any of my masters, however it can be helpful for spreading out room mics when working in stereo.


all of this being said, I owned the entire Abbey Road bundle for over a year before I understood how and when to use them. These plugins are heavily colored, require a bit of dialing-in, attention to your gain staging, mic placement, and overall the quality of sound on your front end (rooms, mics, & pre's). Once your front end sounds great, everything else becomes that much easier. The ugly truth is that you cannot escape that fact, even with plugins.

I have tried out lots of different mixbus and mastering chains using combinations of different plugins. What I like about the Abbey Road mastering chain is that the processing is all done within a single plugin. The compressor is amazing. I love that you can do mid/side processing too. The spreader is the most natural stereo widener that I have heard ( anything between 1 and 2 sounds lovely!). The only other thing I would do for the final polish/loudness is add a limiter afterwards. The quality of my mixes and my mix process has just gone up a level.

Purchased this from Waves and I am very pleased with its performance! If you go to the waves site and look at the reviews, you will see there are 797 reviews with a 4.9 out of 5 star average. Sweetwater has only a 3.5 star average out of 13 reviews and is by no way what this plug-in deserves.

I'm alarmed at the low review score for this. It's the finest plugin in the planet and it is just as great for a rank mixing newbie (with dozens of perfect presets) or a dedicated old school knob twirler. It's worth far more than it's price and it is a must have.

You will not regret buying this one...it really does what it says it does

I watched the youtube videos and even the most cynical and negative reviewers couldn't say anything bad about the sound quality and faithfulness of the reproduction of the effects. I had been testing several new mastering plugins and when I spent an hour on a new song with this product, I stopped testing the others. The analog feel is not overly hyped and it doesn't take a lot of modifications to the presets to get close to the sound you want. I do agree with reviewers that suggest showing the EQ curve would make settings faster and the EQ in general is not very intuitive, but I have gotten used to it. In my opinion, this product is worth every penny and it's unfortunate that some people gave it a bad review when they couldn't get it to work - undeserved.

Incredible mastering chain,the compressor with modern mode is realy bring life to the track,eq also sound great especially the high and low shelf,and my favorite thing is the side chain filter in the compressor,very good job waves done.

The Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain Plugin is an instant and amazing hit, and Waves has knocked this one completely out of the park! Off all the so called whiz-bang plugins I own... this one goes way beyond anything I could ask for in a mastering chain plugin. If you're a old style knob tweaker, you'll LOVE working with the TG... not only does it do every single thing you want in a mastering unit, every single knob can actually build upon and improve the next. You can actually change the order of the modules, but Waves has it about has perfect as you could want the way it is! Every control has a specific purpose and is incredibly easy to grasp that elusive "perfect mix"! Its amazing array of dead-simple controls gives you everything you want and need, with nothing you don't.
Everything from Phase correction to a Limiter that actually works! A beautiful mix section brings breathtaking results. The TG also comes with a pair of VU Meters to help set and monitor your levels. The TG Mastering Chain is one plugin you don't want to pass up! Again... totally taken aback by the absolutely pristine (or super grungy) but non-sterile masters you can easily produce with this plugin! This is one "must have" from Waves!

You need the VST addon for Studio One to run 3rd party stuff! This plugin is awesome. I've gone thru most of the presets and it totally breathes life into my mixes. The controls are similar to a channel strip, but they result in a very different sound. This is an all in one go to mastering plugin!

Obviously I"ve never worked on the original but... this plugin rocks. It sounds awesome. Easy to use. Tons of great sounding presets that work incredibly well as a starting point. The stereo spreader is one of my favourites that I"ve worked with. If this plugin is on sale, snatch it up.

I bought the plugin as it was on sale and decided to give it a go. Was stoked to A/B out on some masters comparing to my typical mastering chain.

Wasn"t impressed. Maybe I need more time with it on the mastering chain, but still not partial to it.

I gave it some time to dwell in the ranks of plugins and then came back to it a few months later. Still not getting the results compared to my normal mastering chain.

But:
I decided to try out the mono mastering plugin on individual mix tracks.
Was not expecting to be blown away. It"s really an excellent plugin for mixing. The eq adds great high and low clarity and the compression settings are wonderful.

It has really added depth and cleanliness to basically anything you put it on. Electric guitars, drums, bass. It"s been awesome.

I"ve yet to try it on vocals but am excited to see what it can do.

good plugin gives my tunes a nice sound

As with other 'old school hardware' plugins I've bought from Waves (Puigchild, EMI TG12345) a mix will quickly descend into over-the-top harshness if you're not careful. I have not tried the TG Mastering Chain on actual mastering yet but have put it on the master fader and on individual instruments in a mix. The plugin immediately adds presence and boldness to the sound which is great for vocals and drums, not so good for acoustic guitar. My feeling is that this plugin will prove really useful when I learn to use it subtly but that will take a while considering that the faithfullness to look-and-feel on these things doesn't translate so well to digital user interface.

So yeah, sounds big and bold and has tones of gee-gaws but I'd probably go to a more modern channel strip plugin 9 times out of 10.

If you're looking for a Channel Strip to process your Master, this is not the best bang for the buck.
It may be good for processing individual instrument tracks, but it doesn't give you the Punch you get from other plug-ins, like 1K Multimedia's CS series, which is much more powerful and effective, for both individual tracks and master mix.

The Compressor/Limiter sections tend to exhibit a lot of "pumping" and "breathing." At the same time, they're not as effective in getting the punch you want from a Master Mix.

As far as "Character" goes, I'm not sure it's really as noticeable as you would expect.
But the EQ section is effective. It's just that it's not really bringing anything special to the party. Most DAWs have EQs built in that are just as effective.

Overall, I have to say there's really nothing special to recommend this over other free or cheaper alternatives. Your money is better spent elsewhere.

I wish I could have given this Zero stars ... it doesn't work. I should have known there would be problems after reading other reviews, but I figured... I would chance it. It simply doesn't work: It loads (slowly), but then you see nothing in the meters that would suggest that signal is being processed; and when you try various presets there is no change whatsoever. Nothing. And Waves support is mindbogglingly ineffective (again, check other reviews.)

Sorry to make this into a longer review, but the truth is that this seems to be the way of all things Waves over the past year. I've spent a gagillion dollars on Waves plugins over the years, and was generally pleased -- until, that is, they got to Version 9.xxx. Now, under Windows using Presonus Studio One Version 3 and 4, they pull your system down to the point that it's all but unusable. I don't want to go on and on here in a review, but please know that I'm a very knowledgeable user (I've been doing computer-based audio for over 20 years), and have gone through everything I can think of, including completely uninstalling DAW and Waves and doing a full re-install more than once -- including after getting this plugin. (Abbey Road TG is a new Version 10 plugin, BTW, and it doesn't work at all -- that makes me feel good about the future.)

Now, maybe these work better (working at all, would be better) under ProTools, or with a Mac, or ... But that's not how I work, and if those are requirements, then Waves should say that. This review is specifically about the Abbey Road TG plugin, but this rant has been coming for a long time. I'm very invested in Waves, and they keep making their stuff more and more difficult to keep working, if it works at all. Not happy and until I see a real change, I'm done with Waves.

Hi folks..be mindful when you buy this software cause it doesn't run with Mac os 10.7 or below even though on the web page there are some instructions on how to do this, it s only for products released before 2015 and this software was released later than that. All this info is scattered through different links and not clear on the product specifications, but the software is NOT REFUNDABLE, and that is very clear.

Let me start by saying that I'm giving this a 1 star, because it's doesn't work in Studio One 3 on a Windows 10 computer. I have no clue how it sounds, so the rating has nothing to do with it's sonic character at all.

I've not been able to utilize it at all, because there's a compatibility glitch. Waves still has no answers for the issue, and I can only hope that they figure it out. So... buyer beware if you're running the same software combination as I am.