Losing dynamics in mastering

T

trickrick

New member
I've struggled with this forever and it gets on my nerves to a point where I'm no longer satisfied with my tracks in the end.

I went to music production school, followed YouTube videos from pros and teachers, watched the Deadmau5 masterclass... But never ever will my master sound as loud and clear as the pros.

Everything seems okay until I get to the limiting. That's where I lose the kick punchiness and high end clarity (that's if I over-crank it) but when I don't it's like half as loud as the pros.

What do my levels need to be pre-limiting for best dynamics and clarity conservation?

I hate this whole loudness war because my music is good pre-limiting. Why don't DJs just raise the track gain?

Any ideas on what I could be doing pre-limiting in my master chain that could affect the final output? (I use the classics; multiband compression, EQ, harmonic excitement, etc.
 
Ignore the loudness war is my opinion :]
But yeh the solution would be to not compress alot just to get something loud and learn other methods to achieve a good mix.
 
No one at this level will notice or care if your track is 1 or 2 db less than the people you mention. Especially if as you are saying the sound is good before the big squish. All those over hot masters are going to be turned quieter by new standards that are coming through anyways.
 
Thanks for the feedback! You caught my curiosity, would you have a link to an article which explains these new standards coming up? I've been waiting for this for a while now.
 
Sorry I don't. It pops up from time to time in things i read, watch etc but I've saved nothing. The standard already exists in adverts for TV and is used by some services etc. Loudness normalisation as apposed to peak normalisation we use.

Do you use a proper loudness meter when you are mixing/mastering one that displays the appropriate scale you require? In Cubase the loudness meter has all the different types.
 
That's very good to know! Can't wait til it comes to electronic music.

I actually don't use a loudness meter. I just look at Ableton's master meter which now shows peaks too. Would you have a VST meter to recommend? Thanks!
 
The loudness wars are over. Don't worry too much about that. You want a level that is competitive (maybe competent is a better word), but don't put everything in the "loudness" basket. Experiment with limiting (as it seems obvious that you have somehow been over limiting).

I believe the new standards have to do with iTunes, not a universal mastering standard, iirc.
But mastering engineers (real mastering engineers) have been saying for years that most of the mixes they get, and pretty much all of the self-produced/home studio type mixes do not leave them any room to master, as the limiting that has been added has already maxxed-out the levels. Try shooting for half of whatever you were doing, and see if that gives you volume and punch while leaving some headroom without destroying your dynamics.
 
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Thank you! I usually leave 6db headroom in my mix but by the time I get to the limiting in my master chain, there is probably only 1-2 db left of headroom. Is this too little?
 
Preparing a loud master starts from the beginning. Even from the arrangement; the ever so popular ducking in house music gives a funky touch, but it's also handy to not have the bassline and kick playing at the same time, for example.

A good tip is to use different stages of compression but very light; you can put a bit of compression on the kick, a bit on the drum buss and a bit while mastering. If you apply three times 2 dB of gain reduction, it will sound less destructive than 1 compressor doing 6 dB of gain reduction.

Low frequencies are easily distorted while limiting and you will be amazed how much low frequencies are reduced on commercial loud songs.

Distortion is a good way to give the feel of loudness, of course only if it fits the song. Distortion on acoustic guitar is a big mistake, for example... If you listen to a flute and a chainsaw on the same volume, you will experience the chainsaw as being louder because of the distortion. It's psychoacoustic. You already use harmonic excitement.

Some tips to get things loud;

1.parallel compression; compress the hell out of your song and add that to the uncompressed signal. Or use a compressor with a mix knob. It helps getting things louder but preserve transients.
2. Use tape saturation (like U-he Satin or even Fabfilter saturn)
3. Use a software clipper to take a dB or 2 of the loudest peaks.
4. Now your song is ready for limiting. Some people say Dadalife's sausage fattener is a great replacement for a limiter because it does compression, clipping and limiting at once. Nobody does know the real secret of sausage fattener.

Could you upload a mix (or a part of a mix) on which we can try?

Cheers,
Dirk
 
manducator said:
Preparing a loud master starts from the beginning. Even from the arrangement; the ever so popular ducking in house music gives a funky touch, but it's also handy to not have the bassline and kick playing at the same time, for example.

A good tip is to use different stages of compression but very light; you can put a bit of compression on the kick, a bit on the drum buss and a bit while mastering. If you apply three times 2 dB of gain reduction, it will sound less destructive than 1 compressor doing 6 dB of gain reduction.

Low frequencies are easily distorted while limiting and you will be amazed how much low frequencies are reduced on commercial loud songs.

Distortion is a good way to give the feel of loudness, of course only if it fits the song. Distortion on acoustic guitar is a big mistake, for example... If you listen to a flute and a chainsaw on the same volume, you will experience the chainsaw as being louder because of the distortion. It's psychoacoustic. You already use harmonic excitement.

Some tips to get things loud;

1.parallel compression; compress the hell out of your song and add that to the uncompressed signal. Or use a compressor with a mix knob. It helps getting things louder but preserve transients.
2. Use tape saturation (like U-he Satin or even Fabfilter saturn)
3. Use a software clipper to take a dB or 2 of the loudest peaks.
4. Now your song is ready for limiting. Some people say Dadalife's sausage fattener is a great replacement for a limiter because it does compression, clipping and limiting at once. Nobody does know the real secret of sausage fattener.

Could you upload a mix (or a part of a mix) on which we can try?

Cheers,
Dirk
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed reply homie! I actually do use parallel compression as well as saturation (Saturn) in my mixes. I realized it had to do with Fabfilter's Pro-L advanced settings. Had no idea they existed. Tweaked a few settings and tada, got the clarity and loudness I was looking for! But thanks for that software clipper tip.

Cheers
 
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Its all in the mix, I know you probably hear this like 10000 times,
but you should start mixing with this goal

if your mix is balanced it will translate to something good in mastering
you can achieve something like RMS -10, -11 with only cranking up the threshold like -5, -6
Its all about the tools you use in the mix to control transients,
one big mistake is over processing the sounds
 
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Great post Dirk!

YES to compression using multiple-layered "brush strokes," No to over-compressing by over-compensating.

And yes, TR, we are all guilty of it at some point or other, but 6 dB of headroom is better than 1 or 2.

I also like to normalize my individual tracks and my stereo master (I know there are arguments for or against), but knowing that the file will only be increased in proportion to the loudest peak is important. Rather than "blow-up" a file using normalization with a few very hot transient peaks, I will sometimes try and isolate these peaks, bring them down some, and then normalize the entire file, which brings the overall volume up... BUT, leaving more headroom rather than having the meters constantly banging the red, or near clipping at those peak points.
 
Use a soft clipper to clip off peaks without altering the sound on individual tracks. Then later when you master, clip again right before the limiter so the limiting won't be as harsh cuz the peaks are easier to work with. You can try Kazrog Kclip or Stillwell Event Horizon. I mess around with both until I settle on what sounds good to me. Trust me, the clipping plugins help like crazy.
 
there's always the 2 free mastering with LANDR per month...but ya, i have the same problem, but getting better at it...

but we're here to learn this, ...so never mind, dont use LANDR. haha...I just spend more time on the creativity of making music than on the production and clarity. but you all are helping a lot, so thank you!
 
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Like many have said if you are trying to go loud the use of a clipper before limiting can help. Also do not use one limiter to do all the limiting use a couple...each doing a bit of limiting. For example I used 3 limiters on several projects, each doing 0.5 to 1 db of GR.

Also loudness come from the mix and a good mastering eng will know how to get it loud while retaining dynamics.
 
trickrick said:
I've struggled with this forever and it gets on my nerves to a point where I'm no longer satisfied with my tracks in the end.

I went to music production school, followed YouTube videos from pros and teachers, watched the Deadmau5 masterclass... But never ever will my master sound as loud and clear as the pros.

Everything seems okay until I get to the limiting. That's where I lose the kick punchiness and high end clarity (that's if I over-crank it) but when I don't it's like half as loud as the pros.

What do my levels need to be pre-limiting for best dynamics and clarity conservation?

I hate this whole loudness war because my music is good pre-limiting. Why don't DJs just raise the track gain?

Any ideas on what I could be doing pre-limiting in my master chain that could affect the final output? (I use the classics; multiband compression, EQ, harmonic excitement, etc.
Click to expand...

This difference between home mixers and commercial mixers is created in primarily 4 dimensions. The first dimension (A) is the waveform of each individual track. The second dimension (B) is what individual tracks have been selected to blend into a mix, which is a producer/arranger-mixer thought process. The third dimension (C) is the waveform of all chosen individual tracks in a combined state. The fourth dimension (D) is how the acoustics of the recording room and control room impact on the three dimensions. (A, B, C) It is the combination that causes the difference in what the home mixers call "loudness".

Because of the complex 4 dimensional nature of the issue, many home mixers struggle with this a lot, both the understanding part of it and the solution part of it. Three out of these four dimensions (A & C & D) are resolved simply by using and focusing on hardware instead of software when creating and processing audio. The third dimension (B) comes with experience and an understanding about such things as headroom, signal economics, rms/peak meter reading, monitoring and gain staging.

I would say that to solve the issue most effectively, you should purchase a new audio interface with more headroom and combine that with switching over to hardware based processing, with focus on plenty of headroom in the gear and getting enough performance out of your acoustics both on the input and output. It is kind of like the difference between two long alien hands with the fingers of each hand not in between each other (software production) and two human hands put together with the fingers in between each other (hardware production), the second pair of hands fit naturally, you can move that pair of hands higher up before clipping. The result is a more natural resonance and that resonance amplified more as well. You have frequency, frequency amplitude, resonance, resonance amplitude.

With software processing, you have this:

Problem:
- Frequency
- Resonance
- Resonance amplitude

Not a problem:
- Frequency amplitude

With hardware processing, you have this:

Not a problem:
- Frequency
- Frequency amplitude
- Resonance
- Resonance amplitude

So it hence becomes a matter of achieving the right frequencies to achieve the desired resonance.
 
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Dark Red--

This forum is primarily made up of members that almost exclusively use "in-the-box" software solutions. When will you understand that? When will you understand that despite our personal love for analog/hardware solutions, that major productions today are by-and-large made in the digital/software realm (from conception through mastering)????

ANSWERING EVERY QUESTION WITH "You Must use Hardware, mixed with Extra-Special Fairy-Dust (tm)" IS NOT HELPFUL.
 
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