Dynamics/ Stereo Widening on Master Bus

Hey guys, I just finished a track for an upcoming compilation and have decided to try and treat it dynamically myself. A friend can master it for me, but I want to try and do it myself, if it would be called mastering what Im doing here. Ive got some questions and would appreciate it if you could enlighten me with what you know about the procedure.

I usually keep my tracks at around -3 db on master buss before rendering, I also tend to use a multi-band compressor to raise the dynamics a bit and fix some frequencies. Ive heard from a friend and some other people too that they render at -15 db for mastering. So Ive got an ambient track here, it peaks at around -15 db. I have a multiband compressor on master buss, raised the dynamics/fixed frequencies and added +4.7 db on compressor's output. After that I have a mastering EQ, sounds better after some tweaking. Last thing I have in the chain is a Stereo tool, Ive added +2db on the input of the plugin and stereo-widened the track a little bit at 122%. Now the track peaks at -3,5 db and I intend to normalize it in Audacity as somebody has advised me to do. I think it sounds OK and it doesnt sound squashed, but Im not sure, I might have done everything wrong as Ive never done stuff like that before.

1) What did I do wrong and what I shall do instead?

2) Shall I render the track first without anything on master buss and then do this procedure separately on a rendered track?

3) Shall I worry about the out-of-phase thing with stereo-widening the track even though I just did a bit?

4) Shall I normalize the track after the whole procedure?

Thanx in advance for any help.

As long as you are working at 24-bit, you can be anywhere on the meters. Some people like to keep the mix-in-progress surprisingly quiet because it’s more convenient (easier to tweak shit without clipping something unexpectedly), but it doesn’t actually make it sound any different in the end.

If you are confident in your monitoring situation (good speakers, in a good room, have a few disparate places you can check the changes like the car, a boom box, etc.) then go crazy with the processing. Personally, I have never worked in good acoustical conditions so I never try and surgically EQ anything—without a real clear listening space (ideally several of them) it’s very difficult for me to tell whether I am actually helping or hurting myself by overthinking things like that.

I view multi band compression as somewhat safer because you are not necessarily cranking frequencies as much as you are choosing to accentuate certain pieces of what is just naturally already in your mix—so I feel it is harder to go off the deep end with that. Oversquashing is a concern, but just do what sounds right to you.

I am not sure how every stereo widener plugin works, but if it is just adjusting the M–S levels, then I would not worry about it. Cranking up the side signal, similar to what I mentioned above, will not necessarily introduce new phase problems into your mix, it will just make louder whatever phase relationships are already there. So, assuming you have carefully constructed your mix in this regard, 122% sounds pretty safe.

People will get really heated about normalizing and to not do it, or whatever, and it depends on how loud the tracks surrounding you on the compilation are, but audio quality wise: as long as you are doing stuff to a 24-bit (or higher) file, it’s fine. The Bad Thing about normalization is to do it on a 16-bit file and thereby introduce quantization distortion into your mix.

The (again, somewhat primitive) thing I do is: limit and/or normalize up to -1 or -.5 db, then convert down to 16-bit as the last step. Depending on how you do it, the bit reduction could nudge some peaks around, so converting down a fully-normalized file could clip in a few spots.

Just do what sounds good to you and no more. Don’t do anything that you aren’t sure is definitely an improvement, and don’t do anything that seems ambiguous to you but you think you ‘need’ or are ‘supposed’ to do.

  On 3/10/2014 at 10:37 PM, Ascdi said:

Just do what sounds good to you and no more. Don’t do anything that you aren’t sure is definitely an improvement, and don’t do anything that seems ambiguous to you but you think you ‘need’ or are ‘supposed’ to do.

Great advice!

Thanx

  On 3/10/2014 at 3:49 PM, mollekula said:

4) Shall I normalize the track after the whole procedure?

 

You seem to be doing fine. However:

I don't use Audacity very often, but usually 'normalize' isn't the same as 'gain'. I don't trust normalization as it tries to...well 'normalize' all the audio to a certain volume in the way hard limiting would while 'gain' simply ups the volume of the whole track to a certain peak to, say, -0.2 dBFS for example.

  On 3/13/2014 at 1:50 PM, paranerd said:

I don't use Audacity very often, but usually 'normalize' isn't the same as 'gain'. I don't trust normalization as it tries to...well 'normalize' all the audio to a certain volume in the way hard limiting would while 'gain' simply ups the volume of the whole track to a certain peak to, say, -0.2 dBFS for example.

  On 3/13/2014 at 4:41 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 3/13/2014 at 1:50 PM, paranerd said:

I don't use Audacity very often, but usually 'normalize' isn't the same as 'gain'. I don't trust normalization as it tries to...well 'normalize' all the audio to a certain volume in the way hard limiting would while 'gain' simply ups the volume of the whole track to a certain peak to, say, -0.2 dBFS for example.

I'm really confused by this statement - either my or your idea of normalisation is very out of whack

 

It might be because we had video editors use a normalization plug-in in Avid Media Composer to boost audio that limited the audio to the point of having all the room tone of an audio clip boosted to the same volume as, say, someone's dialogue. It would bring all that background noise way up. Ever since, we have this running joke where the editors would say 'just normalize the mix' knowing full well that it would sound horrible. While the Gain plug-in would just bring all the audio up evenly. It could be that 'normalize' in other audio editors or DAWs acts like 'gain', but it certainly doesn't in Avid.

Ah yeah, good ol' Avid (currently learning the joys of it at work), yeah in pretty much everything else 'Normalise' would gain the signal to whatever value you put in - wouldn't change the dynamics/compression ratio at all...