mastering/loudness

Hey guys Ive tried to use compression pre-mastering and then limiters and whatnot in the mastering phase, but it seems that I can only get so-much loudness out of my track, how is it that the waveform looks just the same as others on soundcloud but sounds way quieter, any tricks to maximizing the loudness so it doesnt sound all chumpy compared to some weak dubstep tune (that sounds really loud)

Cut out some the sub bass it's probably dominating the whole mix even though it's not adding anything.

Just read this, it'll help considerably - http://www.tweakheadz.com/EQ_and_the_Limits_of_Audio.html

if you can't smash enough loudness out of your track then it is probably just not mixed well. be mindful of how different channels overlap in the frequency domain, and focus on EQ and strategic panning. there should be some threads on here about EQing and mixing. also articles like eq primer give some generalizations that may give you a sense of what to listen for. of course, don't treat such articles as fact, just use them as a rough guide.

my two cents: the only way to win in the loudness war is to not let your tracks fall prey to it. let those other tracks that are smashed to a square wave continue ruining everyone's playlist experience, and don't let those tracks dictate your sound.

  On 8/19/2010 at 8:16 PM, Adjective said:

my two cents: the only way to win in the loudness war is to not let your tracks fall prey to it. let those other tracks that are smashed to a square wave continue ruining everyone's playlist experience, and don't let those tracks dictate your sound.

some fucking good advice there.

i agree that loudness wars are nothing more than a giant version of the penis game... yet, i have to say, clark's track sound the best on my car's shit stereo when i max to the point that the speakers start crapping out

in any case, what i do for trax done with plugins:

1. get each channel sounding right on its own

2. listen to it and note my reactions

3. go back and cut frequency X from track Y because i feel it is eating too much loudness

4. repeat until track sounds right

5. compression

  On 8/19/2010 at 9:30 PM, oscillik said:

  On 8/19/2010 at 8:16 PM, Adjective said:

my two cents: the only way to win in the loudness war is to not let your tracks fall prey to it. let those other tracks that are smashed to a square wave continue ruining everyone's playlist experience, and don't let those tracks dictate your sound.

some fucking good advice there.

my thoughts exactly

  On 8/19/2010 at 9:50 PM, hahathhat said:

in any case, what i do

it takes time to learn how mix well enough that you can get tracks loud, keep dynamics and not distort/ruin the sound with smashing. If its really well Eq'ed and produced you can apply a considerable about of limiting to bring everything up bring down the ceiling on everything. I really wish the loudness war didn't destroy the sound of a lot some really great artists... but you do have to play the game a little. There's no short easy answer. I've read a lot of great articles on EQing and compression and even after receiving all that knowledge my application was often wrong. I was EQing TOO MUCH a lot of the time, compressing with bad attack and release times etc. Personally it took a long while of feeling it out. All the people telling me what to do helped me in the end but it took a long while to learn. Maybe if I actually had a really good producer that I trusted completely described and showed me first hand how to deal with certain situations I would have excelled a lot faster.

Learning to mix and master for all the different situations you should encounter making dynamic music is a fine art.

  On 8/20/2010 at 6:23 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

  On 8/19/2010 at 9:50 PM, hahathhat said:

in any case, what i do

 

it takes time to learn how mix well enough that you can get tracks loud, keep dynamics and not distort/ruin the sound with smashing. If its really well Eq'ed and produced you can apply a considerable about of limiting to bring everything up bring down the ceiling on everything. I really wish the loudness war didn't destroy the sound of a lot some really great artists... but you do have to play the game a little. There's no short easy answer. I've read a lot of great articles on EQing and compression and even after receiving all that knowledge my application was often wrong. I was EQing TOO MUCH a lot of the time, compressing with bad attack and release times etc. Personally it took a long while of feeling it out. All the people telling me what to do helped me in the end but it took a long while to learn. Maybe if I actually had a really good producer that I trusted completely described and showed me first hand how to deal with certain situations I would have excelled a lot faster.

 

Learning to mix and master for all the different situations you should encounter making dynamic music is a fine art.

wat

The most important thing Ive learned from making my own track is not to have stuff in the same octave as it fucks with your sound. I like my shit LUSH, so usually the ends up in something being masked.

If you're using ableton I usually ad a utility to any tracks that sound a bit quite.

  On 8/20/2010 at 8:14 AM, hahathhat said:

  On 8/20/2010 at 6:23 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

  On 8/19/2010 at 9:50 PM, hahathhat said:

in any case, what i do

 

it takes time to learn how mix well enough that you can get tracks loud, keep dynamics and not distort/ruin the sound with smashing. If its really well Eq'ed and produced you can apply a considerable about of limiting to bring everything up bring down the ceiling on everything. I really wish the loudness war didn't destroy the sound of a lot some really great artists... but you do have to play the game a little. There's no short easy answer. I've read a lot of great articles on EQing and compression and even after receiving all that knowledge my application was often wrong. I was EQing TOO MUCH a lot of the time, compressing with bad attack and release times etc. Personally it took a long while of feeling it out. All the people telling me what to do helped me in the end but it took a long while to learn. Maybe if I actually had a really good producer that I trusted completely described and showed me first hand how to deal with certain situations I would have excelled a lot faster.

 

Learning to mix and master for all the different situations you should encounter making dynamic music is a fine art.

 

wat

I was stoned as fuck when I typed that, basically I was saying its a long road to get tracks loud as well as sound really tasteful and like your a 17 year old kid that just downloaded a waves mastering bundle.

Using a good limiter with proper attack and release etc. can make tracks loud really easily but to have them still sound good is a fucking art form.

I personally think a lot of music should not be mastered as loud as today's loudness war would have them. There's tracks from the pre-2000's that weren't mastered thaat loud and you can turn them up soo much louder and it still sounds really dynamic and pristine. you master something to loud to help when people don't want to turn it up and your happy but then people want to turn it up really loud and all of a sudden you can hear the distortion from the over saturation and they don't want to turn it up as loud as mix that wasn't mastered as hard.

and lol I thought hathathat's post was the OP and thought you had timed what do I do, so I was responding to the OP basically. again I was really really stoned.

WAT

I totally agree. However, I LOOOOOOOOOOVE the sound of over-compression. Sometimes I just throw 20 compressors and 20 eq's to filter out the mids on top of some white noise just for that way it fucks your brains. Brick wall songs are teh coolest.

  On 8/22/2010 at 11:54 AM, hahathhat said:

WAT

  On 8/21/2010 at 6:26 PM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

lol I thought hathathat's post was the OP and thought you had typed what do I do (as in how do I approach mixing and mastering music louder), so I was responding to the OP basically. again I was really really stoned.

remove bass and high frequencies and you got proper loudass noise

  On 8/24/2010 at 12:34 AM, chimera slot mom said:

remove bass and high frequencies and you got proper loudass noise

or remove everything except bass and high frequences and you get proper chris clark

  On 8/19/2010 at 8:15 PM, mcbpete said:

Cut out some the sub bass it's probably dominating the whole mix even though it's not adding anything.

Just read this, it'll help considerably - http://www.tweakheadz.com/EQ_and_the_Limits_of_Audio.html

Hey guys thanks for the responses I actually forgot about this thread and came back to it just now, mcbpete, this is a real good article and explains things clearly, is there a vst that helps with "thinning" down tracks? I looked at spaceboy but that just seems to identify "wormholes" and not necessarily thin down the tracks for you by identifying the main frequency and cutting out what isn't necessary.

What you want is a parametric EQ vst that also displays the frequency 'response' of the track in real time - Something like Izotope Ozone (though that might be a bit overkill)

ok I've used vsts that displays frequency response, and ozone looks useful, but are you aware of a vst that will apply band pass filtering automatically based on how it analyzes a sound to reduce unneeded or less used frequencies, or at least present the user with a choice of what they want to do based on the analyzation. From what I read in the manual, ozone doesnt do this?

No, I'm not aware of anything like that - But I dunno that sounds dangerous, I think automating a process like that could lead it to making incorrect decisions. I'd say mastering is more an art than a science - trust your ears more than what a system tells you. One cool thing that Ozone does is you can play a track at it you like the EQ curve of and it'll remember it and you can then apply that curve to your own track.

yeah well thats why i was asking about one that if not pass banding automatically it could present the results of its analyzation to the user and give choices, but then again that wouldnt be that automated and i think you can just do that manually with not much extra steps,

even better would be one that pass banded dynamically in real time based on the input signal, kind of like a dynamic compressor i guess? does such a thiin exist?

*Brain explodes*

PSP vintage warmer with a bit of EQ but get your mix sounding clear before you do this

  On 10/27/2010 at 7:42 PM, bigfatLOL said:

yeah well thats why i was asking about one that if not pass banding automatically it could present the results of its analyzation to the user and give choices, but then again that wouldnt be that automated and i think you can just do that manually with not much extra steps,

 

even better would be one that pass banded dynamically in real time based on the input signal, kind of like a dynamic compressor i guess? does such a thiin exist?

As a CS guy, I love the idea, but it would be kinda crazy to implement I'd say.

Grab yourself some multiband EQ/compression/whatever and do it that way.

  On 10/27/2010 at 8:44 PM, soundwave said:

PSP vintage warmer with a bit of EQ but get your mix sounding clear before you do this

They have a vintage warmer for the PlayStation Portable?