These two sit at opposite ends of the same shelf and almost nobody should be choosing
between them on sound. The question is whether you want the decisions or whether you want
them taken away, and being honest about that answer saves both money and a great deal of
time.
What each one actually is
The FabFilter bundle is a set of separate, precise processors. An equaliser, a
compressor, a multiband dynamics unit and a limiter, each with the best metering in the
category and none of them adding character you did not ask for. You build the chain, you
choose the order, and everything is visible.
Lurssen is a model of one mastering team’s actual chain, presented as a single console
with a small number of controls. A Chain view lets you look at the modelled units and
alter some of their settings, and the shape of the path is fixed. You cannot reorder it,
swap a module for your own plugin or add a stage that is not already there.
That is the whole comparison. Everything below follows from it.
Speed against control
Lurssen reaches a convincing result faster than anything else in this category. Load a
style, push the input, and a mix that sounded like a demo sounds like a record. For a
composer sending a cue to a director who will play it on a laptop, that is frequently the
entire requirement.
The FabFilter set will beat it given an hour and an engineer who knows what to do with
that hour. It will also lose to it badly given twenty minutes and someone who does not,
because precise tools in untrained hands produce precise mistakes.
What you give up with a locked chain
The cost of Lurssen is that when something is wrong you can only fix it within the shape
somebody else chose. If the model is adding mid range weight your cue did not need, the
Chain view will show you which unit is doing it and let you reach some of its settings,
and what you cannot do is remove that unit or put a different one in its place. On
material the chain suits, this never comes up. On material it does not, the options run
out quickly.
Composers writing orchestral and hybrid cues hit this more often than pop producers do,
because a dense orchestral master and a dense rock master want different things from a
compressor and the console was voiced for one of them.
Transparency
FabFilter is the transparent one and deliberately so. It adds no analogue weight, which
is a real limitation if what your master needs is exactly that, and a real advantage if
you want to hear your mix rather than a plugin’s opinion of it.
Lurssen colours everything, which is most of why it works. The two are not competing on
this axis so much as answering different briefs.
Cost
The FabFilter bundle costs several times what the console does, and that gap is smaller
than it looks, because the bundle is four tools that get used across every mix rather
than a mastering purchase. Judged as a mastering chain alone it is expensive. Judged as
the equaliser, compressor and limiter you will use on individual tracks all year, it is
not.
Side by side
| FabFilter Mastering Bundle | Lurssen Mastering Console |
|---|
| Signal path | You build it | Fixed shape, some settings reachable |
| Character | Transparent, adds nothing | Coloured, adds weight |
| Time to a result | Slower, then repeatable | Under a minute |
| When it goes wrong | You can see and fix it | Adjust within the chain, never rebuild it |
| Metering | Best in the category | VU meters and a waveform view |
| Also useful for | Every mix, every track | Mastering only |
Which one
If you are a composer who resents mastering and wants cues that sound finished, buy the
console. It is cheaper, it is faster, and the control you are giving up is control you
were not going to use well.
If you are prepared to learn, buy the FabFilter set, and accept that the first twenty
masters will be worse than the console would have produced. The reason to do it anyway is
that the ceiling is far higher and the tools do not stop being useful when you leave the
mastering chain.
Buying the console as a stopgap and the tools later is a defensible plan. Buying the
tools and never learning them is the expensive mistake, and it is the more common one.
The rest of the category is in the
mastering plugin roundup.
