[kim_otcj]

I tried a bunch of different limiter plugins for mastering, and Melda Limiter was by far the most transparent sounding. I think I’ve mentioned the Melda Free plugin bundle here before.

I used to master all my tracks with Audacity. That’s got all the dithering options that aren’t in Podium, and some useful stuff for controlling volume and dynamics. But these days I don’t even bother. I just master straight from Podium with some EQ (mainly just a high-pass filter), Ferric TDS, and Melda Limiter on my 2-bus.

If there’s any nasty artefacts from downsampling from 32 bit to 16 bit, I’m not hearing them. And if it really mattered that much, then I know a professional mastering engineer locally who masters tracks for not very much money.