A pro loudness technique
- Thread starter DarkRed
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AudioPhorm
New member
dupe
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AudioPhorm
New member
@laurend
Anyone can simplify anything. It is still a specific set of skills and ability that contains more than just a blanket statement, I'm sure you are aware of.
Anyone can simplify anything. It is still a specific set of skills and ability that contains more than just a blanket statement, I'm sure you are aware of.
chris carter
New member
I would urge everyone NOT to monitor at loud volumes while mixing. More conservative low to mid 80’s in the dB range are far more accurate. And a healthy dose of 60-70dB toward the end of the mix will help you really dial in the final details. It’s okay to crank it once in a while if you need to get motivated, but it won’t really help you make a better mix. Everything sounds better at loud volumes for physiological reasons that are very complex. Something mixed at a loud volume typically doesn’t hold up super well at normal listening volumes. But a mix that sounds great quiet will almost always sound great loud. Not to mention that your ears simply can’t handle the abuse for very long. If you monitor at 90dB, after about 30 minutes, regardless of the fact that you aren’t hearing the mix accurately, you will start to lose high end in your ears and will have to wait at least as long for it to return. And you’ll go deaf pretty fast in your career. I’ve met guys who are famous mixers from the glory days that always mix loud and it’s sad to realize how deaf they are now – and it often shows in their mixes these days.
I personally spend 90% of my mix time at about 84ish dB. I spend 10% of my time very quiet (65ish dB) and much of that is on 2 inch speakers. I maybe crank it once for 20 or 30 seconds or so for curiosity or if I need a shot of adrenaline. All my setup, housekeeping, and editing time I do at quiet volumes as well because although it doesn’t matter much from a sound perspective, I don’t need to put my ears through that.
I would also urge everyone to check mono when mixing. It’s crazy not to. When you are new to mixing, you should check a lot. Because a lot can go horribly wrong. With a lot of experience (years and years and years) you can start to spot stuff when listening in stereo that you suspect will be a mono problem and just check those. Every mix something comes up where I get suspicious and check mono. Whenever I set up any kind of hass type effect, I ALWAYS check mono. The notion that nothing can go wrong with mono compatibility in mixing is completely false. That’s where the vast majority of mono compatibility problems occur.
I personally spend 90% of my mix time at about 84ish dB. I spend 10% of my time very quiet (65ish dB) and much of that is on 2 inch speakers. I maybe crank it once for 20 or 30 seconds or so for curiosity or if I need a shot of adrenaline. All my setup, housekeeping, and editing time I do at quiet volumes as well because although it doesn’t matter much from a sound perspective, I don’t need to put my ears through that.
I would also urge everyone to check mono when mixing. It’s crazy not to. When you are new to mixing, you should check a lot. Because a lot can go horribly wrong. With a lot of experience (years and years and years) you can start to spot stuff when listening in stereo that you suspect will be a mono problem and just check those. Every mix something comes up where I get suspicious and check mono. Whenever I set up any kind of hass type effect, I ALWAYS check mono. The notion that nothing can go wrong with mono compatibility in mixing is completely false. That’s where the vast majority of mono compatibility problems occur.
laurend
Active member
Step 2:
A good monitoring needs to be calibrated because the human hearing system isn't linear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour
The K-system is good calibration basis. http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDownloads.cfm?docID=65
A good monitoring needs to be calibrated because the human hearing system isn't linear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour
The K-system is good calibration basis. http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDownloads.cfm?docID=65
rhythmgj
Character in Spades...
>>>>Everything sounds better at loud volumes for physiological reasons that are very complex. Something mixed at a loud volume typically doesn’t hold up super well at normal listening volumes. But a mix that sounds great quiet will almost always sound great loud.<<<<
(Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding) We have a winner, ladies and gentleman!!!!
GJ
(Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding) We have a winner, ladies and gentleman!!!!
GJ
Monitoring at low volume is good in order to lower ear fatigue and to protect your ears, therefore yes it is the winner in practice. But mixing at low volume is not the answer to a great sounding mix, definitely not. More than anything you need to mix such that the mix is interesting on many different playback levels and stays pleasant when cranked. But when cranked the mix is in its highest information density hence you get the most information about what the mix contains. Then you might notice you have issues in the lows, mids and highs, all of them. It is also at the cranked volume when the dynamic issues will stand out the most. You might for instance have a snare that has much too much high mids and highs for instance, quite common even among commercial mixes.I have found that basically the opposite is true. The quiet elements in a mix are paradoxically more audible when the whole thing is turned down.
I invite anyone to try that out.
Also, as far as mixing is concerned, if something is out of whack gain-wise, it is usually obvious at low volumes. Your ears during high gain are just not reliable.
I invite anyone to try that out.
Also, as far as mixing is concerned, if something is out of whack gain-wise, it is usually obvious at low volumes. Your ears during high gain are just not reliable.
In my view it depends on how much it is turned down and how dynamic the quiet sound sources are. The quiet parts in a mix are the first to go below the perception threshold, beyond keeping the ears fresh mixing at low volume can ensure the quiet sound sources get enough signal in the mix.
chris carter
New member
I’m sorry, but this is patently false.
1. Mixes that sound good quiet typically hold up very well at loud volumes. Any exceptions to this are anecdotal at best, or mix engineer error at worst.
2. It’s a false assumption that you get “higher information density” (I’m interpreting that as meaning you get more information about what you are hearing into your brain). The reality is that the way the human ear works, when you go too loud (too loud being a combination of both volume, and time exposed – with the emphasis on volume), you actually get LESS information about the sound into the brain. There has been tones of research going back many many decades on this.
3. The threshold of hearing is technically 0dB at 1kHz. In practice, it’s more like 4dB. That’s REALLY freakin’ quiet.
Which brings me to two points to consider. If you consistently find that you need to listen LOUD (as loud as the OP is talking about) to get a balanced mix and to hear details in your mix, then one or both of the following is mostly likely the reason:
1) You are mixing in a noisy environment. If you have traffic noise, noisy A/C units, other noises in the house, noisy computer fan, etc. That will all mask sounds in your mix. The louder that stuff is, the louder you need to listen in order to compensate for that ‘noise floor’. I would suggest you make a thorough evaluation of your mixing environment. You don’t have to go hardcore like me and keep computers in another room and seal the damn place up to make it dead silent. But you should minimize background noise as much as is conveniently possible.
2) You have moderate to serious hearing loss. This is a common problem that causes people to mix loud, particularly folks that have been doing this for a long time and slowly have to keep cranking it up as they get older and build more damage. And of course, the more you do that, the more you exacerbate the hearing loss. The hearing damage causes, essentially, dips (or holes as one audiologist that tested me likes to call them, because it’s scarier and forces people to take stuff seriously) in the frequencies you can hear. So in order to get those frequencies loud enough to hear them adequately you have to turn everything up. You should periodically have hearing checked with an audiologist. I do it every few years. It’s also a good idea to never listen to loud music for long periods of time, and wear earplugs at concerts, whenever using the lawn mower, power tools, in any kind of noisy environment.
But seriously, I can almost promise with near 100% accuracy that unless you are monitoring loud just because you like the feeling of music hitting you in the chest, you have one of the two above problems.
This is in my view because of the gain/rms structure inside of the mix signal. Although you might have good gain/rms structure, you might not have the right mix peak content. In my view mixes that sound great when cranked have great peak content too.
That's in my view when considering gear/amp/speakers not having an impact on the evaluation at a particular loudness level, but I think it has.
In my view the perception threshold is where the information density passes below a certain level, the brain then has so little information about the source that the information about the other sources totally fill up the perception.
Agree.
Agree when considering gear/amp/speakers not having an impact on the evaluation at a particular loudness level, but I think it has.
Yeah all up at the end of the day, I don't personally give a shit about the loudness wars.
If if I like a track and it's too soft, I'll reach over and turn up the volume.
Onnthe he other hand if I hear a track I don't like and it's nice and loud I'll reach over and turn it off!
The loudness of a track doesn't make a difference whether I like it or not.
The dynamics within the track are another thing altogether, but I think many people complicate shit way too much.
Gotta draw a line somewhere,
I mean what's better? Do do you like making and listening to music or fiddling endlessly with knobs chasing a phantom when it's all inside your head.
If if I like a track and it's too soft, I'll reach over and turn up the volume.
Onnthe he other hand if I hear a track I don't like and it's nice and loud I'll reach over and turn it off!
The loudness of a track doesn't make a difference whether I like it or not.
The dynamics within the track are another thing altogether, but I think many people complicate shit way too much.
Gotta draw a line somewhere,
I mean what's better? Do do you like making and listening to music or fiddling endlessly with knobs chasing a phantom when it's all inside your head.
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Loudness is important enough to a point where it's gotta be audible enough to listen to properly.
But it everyone has different ears too, are you saying that every single engineer and mixer has a standardized set of ears with no bias towards a favorite or preferred sound?
and also at the end of the day no matter how much technical stuff you know, if the listener doesn't like it, they aren't going to listen to it.
Also, who says a pop mix is the standard to which you must mix to.
Theres differnces in in the way every genre is mixed.
Listen to to a metal album and then listen to a pop album. You see the difference.
I find a lot of the shit people say about mixing and loudness is a load of shit. It's more of a selling point in preference.
Similar to how a salesman sells you a car. There's many other cars out there that will do the same thing with no issues, but why do you choose the car you buy? Because you prefer it or the salesman sold it to you. i find that's exactly the same as music.
But it everyone has different ears too, are you saying that every single engineer and mixer has a standardized set of ears with no bias towards a favorite or preferred sound?
and also at the end of the day no matter how much technical stuff you know, if the listener doesn't like it, they aren't going to listen to it.
Also, who says a pop mix is the standard to which you must mix to.
Theres differnces in in the way every genre is mixed.
Listen to to a metal album and then listen to a pop album. You see the difference.
I find a lot of the shit people say about mixing and loudness is a load of shit. It's more of a selling point in preference.
Similar to how a salesman sells you a car. There's many other cars out there that will do the same thing with no issues, but why do you choose the car you buy? Because you prefer it or the salesman sold it to you. i find that's exactly the same as music.
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Since a lot of content now is on-demand streaming stuff is pieced together in real-time you get massive variations in loudness, pretty soon, if not already, the people hosting the content are going to move towards standards based on average levels so that you don't get massive spike in loudness when adverts come on.
When that shift happens all the brick-wall limited music is gonna sound shit.
When that shift happens all the brick-wall limited music is gonna sound shit.
Bit hard to implement I think,
why wouldn't they just compress the shit out of it like the radio already does? Wouldn't that be easier and cheaper at the expense of dynamics which no one seems to give a shit about in radio.
