Loudness - Limiting & Distortion

[BigDrost]

Hey guys. The thing is...

With this loudness war, EDM nowdays is peacking around -6 in the LUFS scale. Yeah, you don't need to be loud to sound good, and yes, getting it this loud is probably damaging it's quality. BUT, it DOES make an impression and most listeners will percieve a loud track as a better track, with that said, having a loud track can be a good ideia. For example, if you are participating in a remix contest, where the judges (or listeners) will be listening to ""the same"" track, remix after remix, a loud track is more likely to catch their attention.
Usually I like to keep my limiters a little lighter and maintain a little more of my dynamic range, considering that streaming plataforms limit the maximum LUFS waaay below -6.

Anyway, I mastered my track and limited it so it peacks around -6 LUFS (yup, trying to be loud), but everytime I do this, my kicks get distorted and it sounds wierd, you can clearly see it's getting distorted. Then I put a compressor on the kick channel and tweaked it to make the kick a little softer, thus making it less distorted with the limiter on.
So i'm wondering if this is pretty much the way to go about it, or if there's a better way of limiting the hell out your track without making the kick sound wierd. (Almost) All EDM producers seem to be making their tracks loud but it don't sound distorted.

 

[localspace]

You should do it in stages, never taking off more than 2dB with any one limiter or plug.
It'll always sound like shit though compared to your dynamic version, because music does that at -6LUFS.... screw the loudness war though.
It only stops when people like us stop telling each other that 'shit needs to be loud'.. because there's no purpose for it...

except for 'standing out' and wow, what a standout that crushed to death track will be... it'll sound worse in the club on a proper soundsystem..

where the judges (or listeners) will be listening to ""the same"" track, remix after remix, a loud track is more likely to catch their attention.

OR they'll get so fed up being pummeled with a bunch of poorly mixed super harsh distorted shite that your dynamically balanced track is a breath of fresh air?
If you work at a record label or something I gotta assume that you give more than an average fuck about sound quality, right?

 

[DarkRed]

Hey guys. The thing is...

With this loudness war, EDM nowdays is peacking around -6 in the LUFS scale. Yeah, you don't need to be loud to sound good, and yes, getting it this loud is probably damaging it's quality. BUT, it DOES make an impression and most listeners will percieve a loud track as a better track, with that said, having a loud track can be a good ideia. For example, if you are participating in a remix contest, where the judges (or listeners) will be listening to ""the same"" track, remix after remix, a loud track is more likely to catch their attention.
Usually I like to keep my limiters a little lighter and maintain a little more of my dynamic range, considering that streaming plataforms limit the maximum LUFS waaay below -6.

Anyway, I mastered my track and limited it so it peacks around -6 LUFS (yup, trying to be loud), but everytime I do this, my kicks get distorted and it sounds wierd, you can clearly see it's getting distorted. Then I put a compressor on the kick channel and tweaked it to make the kick a little softer, thus making it less distorted with the limiter on.
So i'm wondering if this is pretty much the way to go about it, or if there's a better way of limiting the hell out your track without making the kick sound wierd. (Almost) All EDM producers seem to be making their tracks loud but it don't sound distorted.

How and with what you dynamically build up a mix to this loudness level is the key. Because essentially whether you limit to -6 LUFS or -12 LUFS, in both cases the result is still relative to your dynamics processing know how. The common theme out there is that the louder the mixes are the more they are suffering in a set of other quality areas such as in the quality of the stereo image.

One of the keys about great sounding loud mixes is how each sound source in the mix individually starts to sound at very high velocities. Because it is when those combined very high velocities build up that you will get some serious amount of negative bite near -6 LUFS when it does not work. And to take that towards perfection you have to apply context based compression too. To make it exciting and cool sounding you need to work with various compression techniques both individually and context based. This is the art, to bring forward both the right frequencies on the sounds individually and as combined, across the whole velocity range. That is also not a right or wrong type of process, but depends a lot on what type of sound, impact and emotion you want - what fits to the music.

It is also key to be aware that when you push sound sources in the mix with lots of input gain through a lot of processing, what type of sound that makes depends a lot on the design of the analog gear and the resonance characteristics the gear produces under that load. This is not harmonic distortion, it is just harmonization through the effects of resonance.

 

[ibraheemmusic]

To reinforce what everyone else said in this thread: it starts in the mix. Also, assuming your using a drum pack that has already been processed, It's hard for me to see why anyone would ever compress then additionally for the purpose of altering the dynamic range. Unless I record an acoustic drumkit, I never ever compressor drums that comes for packs. A better bet is to cut off some sub freq's if you have a subheavy bass playing so less low end is competing. That's usually the reason why it sounds distorted.