Getting that loud sound with workflow

[Finishing Move]

Hi everyone, I've been producing remixes for some time, but I'm a complete amateur in reality. Mostly I'm happy with my productions but I always seem to lack the loudness. Others seem to acheive beautiful clarity and peak volumes. Or perhaps it's in my head... either way, I think my issues are in work flow...

In a nutshell:
1) mix the track together with a little compression and EQ
2) bounce the each track to wav
3) limit the track on the master bus
4) heavier multi band compression on the master bus

My setup I consider to be poor, completely software driven with no dedicated sound card or hardware.

Please share your workflows, tricks and tips. Any defo wins/fails
Thanks

 

[Adrian-MarQ]

Obtaining loudness isn't really a work flow issue. It has to do with dynamics and frequency balance. Obtaining loudness starts with how you mix your arrangements and can be refined with compression while mastering.

My suggestion would be to use a reference track when trying achieve a certain level of loudness. Having that can give you immediate feedback on anything lacking or overdone in a mix or master. You will also learn a ton once you work through issues that pop up while trying to achieve what the engineer of the reference did.

My quick tip is that I do not increase the output of anything I'm mastering to -.5 or 0 dB until I am satisfied with how it sounds at the level the original mix was at. We tend to perceive louder things as sounding better, so I keep the audio at the original loudness to avoid that bias.

 

[Finishing Move]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah my mix seems always bass heavy, maybe that's stealing all the headroom. If I decrease these bass frequencies, I end up with a weak sound.

Before I add any volume, my tracks about around -12db. Using various saturation, compressors and limiters I get the volume to peak at 0db.

I just noticed if I take the master into Audacity, I could gain another 3db if I hard limit and normalize. Sounds ok, but I think that's bad
I'm forever watching the frequency spectrum on my EQ's to see if certain frequencies are peaking.

What about plugins, can they help me to identify problems in my mix?

 

[sleepy]

You can't do more than -0dbfs. Not sure if that's what you mean by your db values. There's no secret or magic to reaching -0dbfs. You shouldn't go there either because you can still clip, even with a limiter.

If you're mixing and insist on exporting to wav to apply more processing (master), I'd suggest just applying the processors on the master bus unless you're running out of processing power.

The point of mastering is to take a mix and make it sound better. That should be your first focus. If you're doing your own mastering and you can improve your sound during the mastering stage, this only means that you could have done a better job during the mixing stage. If you have a snare that you are taming during mastering, it means that it's too loud on the mix. So, just go back to the mix and take care of it there. Then start your mastering stage again and again unless you find that there's nothing to fix.

Now that your mix is really well balanced you can limit the crap out of it for the sake of loudness. Now that I condone this, but we all know that this is what everyone wants.

Your mix should not be at, or close to 0dbfs. If it is, you mixed too loud. Go back and fix that.

Oh, yeah, if you need more volume during the mixing stage, use your volume knob. That's what it's for. Don't pull up the faders, use compressors, or limiters for the sake of loudness. If you did anything for the sake of loudness during the mixing stage, remove it and start over again.

Okay, so now you have your mix right? Great. That's what we want. Apply your limiter on the master track and see how long you can push it before it starts pumping. If you are not limiting much, it's not loud, and it's starting to sound like crap, this means that your mix still isn't right. A good mix will stand up to a lot of punishment. This is how commercial tracks handle all that limiting so that they can be loud. If your mix sounds fine, maybe the problem is what doesn't make a sound. Sub-bass may not be audible to you but your limiter doesn't care that you can't hear it, because it can hear it. You may or may not have to cut off some of the inaudible low frequencies. At this point, what you have to fix should be more obvious.

Multiband compressors are used to fix bad mixes. Fix your mix and forget about the MBC.

 

[Finishing Move]

Sleepy, thanks for all the feedback, much appreciated.

Its like black magic this mixing and mastering lark, but it does soo much for the final product.
I've heard people talking about m/s mastering, what's your take on that for achieving perceived loudness?

As soon as I've started another project I be trying all the techniques, do and donts

onwards and upwards!