mastering: making a track less loud

W

wuting0987

New member
so i have an album w/ 10 tracks. 9 of them were mastered by myself and 1 track by another studio.

the track by the other studio is too loud (yes a track can be too loud, just trust me, it doesn't fit the album).

wuts the best way to make the track less loud (I use izotope ozone for mastering)?

i'm hesitant to just put a limiter on it, because then i'd lose some of the work the mastering engineer put into the mastering.

thanks!
 
an expander or a compressor able of negative compression (ratio < 1:1) will do the trick.

a parallel setup might help to minimize the expansion artifacts (especially if you don't really understand the process and the parameters), try to mix an expanded version of your track with the original.
 
Just turn the volume down!!!...am i missing something here?
 
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^^^Turning down the volume won't fix it. It's more than just "volume" involved in the sound being "loudened"(for lack of better word). Best bet would be to try to contact the studio and see if you can get the raw files.
 
deRaNged 4 Phuk'dup said:
^^^Turning down the volume won't fix it. It's more than just "volume" involved in the sound being "loudened"(for lack of better word). Best bet would be to try to contact the studio and see if you can get the raw files.
Click to expand...

He said the track is too loud! he said nothing about it being too squashed or anything relating to the dynamic content of the track.

If its too loud turn it down!
if your not happy with it coz its been squashed to death then contact the mastering engineer and tell him to back off the level from the source program.
 
^^^Now you're getting into schemantics.

I'm saying this in the most respectable tone possible, not trying to argue.

If no processing or clipping at all occured, nomatter how "loud" it was it would be below 0db(clipping). Which would make pretty f**king far from "too Loud". Once dynamic processing or clipping is introduced, turning down the volume is no longer an option for fixing the problem. So logically, turning down the volume alone will not fix the problem making it a bad suggestion.
:cheers:
 
JonnyBongo said:
He said the track is too loud! he said nothing about it being too squashed or anything relating to the dynamic content of the track.

If its too loud turn it down!
if your not happy with it coz its been squashed to death then contact the mastering engineer and tell him to back off the level from the source program.
Click to expand...

the odds are if its that much louder than everything else, it has been squashed. but i agree, contact the mastering engineer to fix it. that would give you the best results
 
cool thanks a lot for the help.

one really weird thing tho, as i was playing w/ this track and trying to roll off below 40hz:

the track originally (straight from the hands of the mastering engineer) doesn't get past 0db. but when i put a high pass filter on it and slide the filter frequency down, it peaks over 0db.

i'm not increasing either the input nor the output (at least not through the filter settings).

this certainly seems weird to me. you'd think that using a filter and cutting out some frequencies would take down the overall level of the track, but apparently not?

i don't know too much about the physics of waves, but my only guess at what's happening is that originally, some of the low end was cancelling each other, and now when i filter some of it out, the other part spills out and brings the whole thing over 0db?

can anyone make sense of this?
 
wuting0987 said:
cool thanks a lot for the help.

one really weird thing tho, as i was playing w/ this track and trying to roll off below 40hz:

the track originally (straight from the hands of the mastering engineer) doesn't get past 0db. but when i put a high pass filter on it and slide the filter frequency down, it peaks over 0db.

i'm not increasing either the input nor the output (at least not through the filter settings).

this certainly seems weird to me. you'd think that using a filter and cutting out some frequencies would take down the overall level of the track, but apparently not?

i don't know too much about the physics of waves, but my only guess at what's happening is that originally, some of the low end was cancelling each other, and now when i filter some of it out, the other part spills out and brings the whole thing over 0db?
Click to expand...

wow! you just figured it out yourself. it's called the gibb's effect (gibb is a guy who proved this mathematically)

yeah, that's exactly what happens. big, large low level waves do not only increase the other frequencies - they also attenuate them. usually exactly 50% of the time.

that's why you should never high-pass filter (or better: not filter at all) previously limited material. it will in fact completely change the shape your waveform and boost some parts by 3dB and more. the material will not have clear peak limits any more but still sound squashed (=limited).

in any way, even the slightest phase distortion will have this effect on waveforms - every active analogue gear and any kind of filter will affect and slightly distort the phase over the spectrum. another reason why hardcore limiting is completely useless in the real world. mp3 encoding for example will extremely distort the phase of your material - effectively making your limiting useless but still clearly noticeable. the same happens in typical hi-hi components before any sound hits a speaker.


in short:

- don't rely too much on how you waveform looks. it will change (increase its max level) quickly in the listeners playback chain. don't limit to a 0dB ceiling.

- don't high pass strong limited material. it will not remove the squashed sound, but increase the max-peak around 3dB.
 
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Moses called it. any type of filtering will effect the phase across the whole spectrum. Heavy filtering will cause there to be constructive and deconstructive interference. this interference will make some feqs louder and diminish others. you have alot of options on trying to fix the track, but your best option is to fix the problem at the source, which in this case is the mastering stage.
 
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