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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 2, 2021 11:43:10 GMT -6
Actually, I was able to get this to about -6 RMS without much effort. Louder than I thought. But I SWEAR it's still not as loud as other commercial releases.
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Post by svart on Feb 2, 2021 11:56:21 GMT -6
Actually, I was able to get this to about -6 RMS without much effort. Louder than I thought. But I SWEAR it's still not as loud as other commercial releases. We're more sensitive to mid range frequencies, so if the mix is mid centric it'll sound louder for the same measured loudness
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Post by phdamage on Feb 2, 2021 12:10:31 GMT -6
I almost exclusively work on mixes that are incredibly dense and i work exclusively in the box. i have a lot of parallel processes going on - many involving compressors or distortion plugs - and then going again to a master bus with even more comps and distortion plugs/tape emulation. I often end up in the realm of -8dB RMS or sometimes as loud as -6. if i find myself needing to squeeze more level out, some things i use: Oxford Inflator, ProAdudioDSP DSM V3, UAD Studer or even the UAD Fairchild with barely any gain reduction happening. aside from the studer, all allow for parallel processing.
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Post by Ward on Feb 2, 2021 12:25:33 GMT -6
I know a guy who can help. He can make your masters REALLY loud without losing all dynamics or introducing/inducing much distortion. But it's what he does. A lot of people don't get the masters they want because of what they neglect to do in the mixing stage. HPF @ 29-30hz LPF @ 16.1Khz 99.999% of people can't even hear below 40hz or above 12khz anyhow. Why waste all the sonic real estate for your pets? Most people can't hear the difference between an mp3 or a Wav. Why waste the storage space with wavs? 😂😂 That's maybe 25-40% of people, not most. LOL . . . but you are FUNNNEEEEEE. LMAO
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Post by tkaitkai on Feb 2, 2021 12:25:54 GMT -6
Reading a bit about LUFS, apparently the frequency weighted averaging is done over a short time and a long time and integrated together. Apparently you can fool the LUFS measurement by having breaks in your songs every few seconds and it will average lower LUFS than a mix that's dense throughout but it will be louder sounding overall. Also apparently people are using this knowledge to write songs that have a lot of breaks to fool the LUFS systems on the streaming platforms and getting songs that are just a bit louder than their peers. It's kinda funny that folks have already gamed the system designed to keep them from making things louder. Anyway, from what I read the biggest reason for having high LUFS but low apparent loudness is low end below about 40hz. I'd prescribe to the missing fundamental trick (like RBass) to make it seem like there's more bass and then cut the real deep stuff from the mix. Also, tkaitkai , I agree 100%. Louder is better for me as well, but most folks don't understand that getting a great loud mix is MUCH HARDER than getting a good soft mix. It's not anywhere as simple as just compression and limiting the soft mix, which is why so many have a hard time getting good loud mixes.. You have to build the mix to be loud from the ground up. you can't just send a soft and dynamic mix to a mastering engineer and expect a great loud mix either. The hardest mix to do is a solid sounding loud mix. Absolutely. You pretty much have to craft the entire production with loudness in mind. I spend a lot of time choosing samples and tones that stay in their own lane and aren't stepping all over the place. Drums + bass need to be compact/dense and feel huge without actually being huge. Loads of very intentional filtering, transient shaping, and harshness management at every stage of the process. But as much as I love and strive for insanely loud mixes... it sounds like Johnkenn's client just wants him to push the louder button on an already great mix, which is a major PITA if it's setup to sound great at -10. The OTB recommendation would probably be the way to go here. Or maybe a mastering guy that can do some crazy black magic.
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Post by kaleida on Feb 2, 2021 18:24:26 GMT -6
Short answer: the more you rely on the limiter for loudness, the more audible distortion you’ll get. Using multiple stages of more incremental compression will generally give more transparent results. That can happen on individual tracks, busses / groups, the mix bus, or all of the above. Some limiters (like DMG Limitless, Newfangled Elevate, and iZotope Ozone) have an additional dynamic control stage and some even have a clipping stage before the brickwall limiter for the same reason. As a thought exercise, imagine that all of your tracks are full on flattened out sausage square waves with zero dynamic range. You could theoretically raise the level to -0.1db without requiring any limiting at all and it would be insanely loud (and unlistenable of course). On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you have a drum kit that has wildly loud kick and snare hits, a dynamic singer that goes from whispering to screaming, and guitars that go from soft strums to loud wailing when the chorus hits, all of that dynamic range is going to run into the limiter in unpleasant ways if you’re trying to bring the average volume up to a commercial loudness. Some of that range has to be sacrificed to get there without nasty artifacts. Personally, I find that it’s usually drum transients that are the last culprit if everything is well balanced and relatively controlled dynamically, but the limiter is still struggling. Sometimes some drum bus compression or parallel compression to bring up RMS while turning down the bus will solve that. Clipping too, especially on the snare, or even the whole track if appropriate, but of course you’re still adding (hopefully tasteful) distortion in that case. As an example, on a track with little dynamic range (electronic music, heavy rock, rap, etc), I usually find that I’m hitting about -14ish LUFS or louder without any limiting happening. In those cases, it’s easy to drive them to -6 to -7 LUFS at the loudest points without noticeable artifacts. With more dynamic tracks, I shoot for -7 LUFS at the highest peaks and will walk that back to -8 LUFS or less if the song needs to open up and be more natural sounding. I hope that helps! Happy to take a listen and troubleshoot on a concrete example if that would be useful - just shoot me a PM
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Post by brenta on Feb 2, 2021 20:44:06 GMT -6
I just can't understand why anyone would want their song that loud, especially these days when music is normalized nearly everywhere. These super loud mixes just sound like crap to me, and when they get normalized, they sound weak too. What are people trying to achieve with these super loud masters?
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Post by svart on Feb 2, 2021 21:03:05 GMT -6
Just loaded up a track I've been messing with and it's easily -8 lufs without trying.
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Post by kaleida on Feb 2, 2021 21:09:47 GMT -6
I just can't understand why anyone would want their song that loud, especially these days when music is normalized nearly everywhere. These super loud mixes just sound like crap to me, and when they get normalized, they sound weak too. What are people trying to achieve with these super loud masters? To a large extent, I think people have just gotten acclimated to the sound of highly compressed music. When it’s done well, it does have the virtue of sounding consistently “exciting,” but at the expense of having less nuance and movement. It leads to kind of a ridiculous game trying to find workarounds beyond volume to give the chorus more energy than the verse when the verse is already loud to begin with! It’s not appropriate for everything, or even most things necessarily, but it is expected these days, for better and worse, and some folks have found artful ways to do it without making things lifeless and squashed. Until there’s a universal standard for loudness and a transparent method for normalization, I don’t think the loudness wars are going anywhere.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Feb 2, 2021 21:55:26 GMT -6
OK, I'm gonna throw some water on the fire here. Like John, loudness has bugged me. My last album came out pretty good, but I still wanted a bit more. There's a reference song I liked and it continued to annoy me, it ws so loud and SO clean! I was visiting Southern Ground studios two years ago and their head engineer, Brandon Bell was kind enough to let me drop in on a mix for 5 minutes in studio B. He was with another top Nashville producer, but I don't recall his name. I mentioned the board there, I think it was a Neve and when I happened to mention I was struggling to get the volume level I really wanted, I mentioned a track by Peter Bradley Adams, and how it was super loud and yet super clean. They said they were pretty sure Vance Powell did that recording and it was a Neve board.
The moral of the story? Even with lots of plug-ins, going through a high end analogue board seems to do the trick.
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Post by Blackdawg on Feb 2, 2021 22:09:22 GMT -6
OK, I'm gonna throw some water on the fire here. Like John, loudness has bugged me. My last album came out pretty good, but I still wanted a bit more. There's a reference song I liked and it continued to annoy me, it ws so loud and SO clean! I was visiting Southern Ground studios two years ago and their head engineer, Brandon Bell was kind enough to let me drop in on a mix for 5 minutes in studio B. He was with another top Nashville producer, but I don't recall his name. I mentioned the board there, I think it was a Neve and when I happened to mention I was struggling to get the volume level I really wanted. I mentioned a track by Peter Bradley Adams, and how it was super loud and yet super clean. They said they were pretty sure Vance Powell did that recording and it was a Neve board. The moral of the story? Even with lots of plug-ins, going through a high end analogue board seems to do the trick. You can push a console that operates on +/-24 or 28v power rails a LOT. Is a big thing for sure.
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Post by sean on Feb 3, 2021 5:31:58 GMT -6
Damn, sometimes I struggle to get like -13 RMS but I record a lot of acoustic music 😂
Interesting filtering below 40 and above 16. I rented a Dangerous BAX EQ and tried mixing with the 18Hz filter in and I felt like I all the body of the upright bass. And mixing into a Avalon 2055 having that 25K shelf is just magic.
Its interesting using something like Izotopes Tonal Balance Control so you can compare another mix with yours and see where the energy is and that might reveal a frequency spectrum you might be pushing too much or not enough.
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Post by stormymondays on Feb 3, 2021 5:47:26 GMT -6
Fabfilter Pro L2 has a button "1:1" that lets you hear the limited and not limited at the same volume. You really have to go nuts to cause artifacts. Or maybe I'm going deaf...
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Post by nick8801 on Feb 3, 2021 5:53:28 GMT -6
I’ve used audio hijack to run tidal masters into insight to see what’s going on. I’d say most bigger masters are hitting around -6 LUFS on the loudest parts. Some even go to -4. It’s insane but they are getting them that loud. I’ll restate what I said before, and others have mentioned....it really does start in the production/mixing stage. Loudness is a psychoacoustic phenomenon mostly based on perception. If you combine that with the physics of digital audio and speaker systems, you can get stuff pretty darn loud without too much artifact. Check out the latest Brittany Howard record.
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Post by nomatic on Feb 3, 2021 6:57:35 GMT -6
It has been covered before but loud is all about the mid and presence range in the mix first then filters and cascading gain stages then eq and compression and limiting in my shop. Feel free to send a Mix anytime you want and I will process it for you my Brother just for kicks. At this point I have to turn down my Masters...
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Post by theshea on Feb 3, 2021 7:47:49 GMT -6
i find PA AB metrc very useful. you can isolate various frequency portions and a/b it woth mastered reference tracks at the same volume. it can be quiete revealing. and like others said before, limiting and saturating in various stages helps just as lo cutting and hi passing. usually i am „limiting my mixes at 30 Hz - 22 kHz lately for acoustic, rock, indie music. and i still use the free „ancient“ Vlad limiter n6. it has a compressor, a clipper, a multiband section, a limiter ... a LOT of tools to get a master loud.
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Post by svart on Feb 3, 2021 10:52:09 GMT -6
OK, I'm gonna throw some water on the fire here. Like John, loudness has bugged me. My last album came out pretty good, but I still wanted a bit more. There's a reference song I liked and it continued to annoy me, it ws so loud and SO clean! I was visiting Southern Ground studios two years ago and their head engineer, Brandon Bell was kind enough to let me drop in on a mix for 5 minutes in studio B. He was with another top Nashville producer, but I don't recall his name. I mentioned the board there, I think it was a Neve and when I happened to mention I was struggling to get the volume level I really wanted, I mentioned a track by Peter Bradley Adams, and how it was super loud and yet super clean. They said they were pretty sure Vance Powell did that recording and it was a Neve board. The moral of the story? Even with lots of plug-ins, going through a high end analogue board seems to do the trick. Took a listen to this and it was very mid-centric and very low-bass shy, which is why it sounds so loud.
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Post by jmoose on Feb 3, 2021 11:05:00 GMT -6
Actually, I was able to get this to about -6 RMS without much effort. Louder than I thought. But I SWEAR it's still not as loud as other commercial releases. Many times its about frequency content and balance, not so much overall level but more about perception of levels. I remember once getting a master back where I mixed but didn't track, and the artist asked me why a couple of the songs weren't as loud as the others. They were just as loud, but the songs in question? They did a 3 or 4 mic thing on the drums and by golly, those kicks & snares didn't have the same impact as the others with close mics. Part of the "loud issue" which wasn't much of an issue, went back to tracking. Anyway... To me the simple answer is hire on an actual mastering engineer. I can & have mastered plenty of releases. Even label stuff! But I don't have all the tools & tricks of someone who does it day in and day out.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Feb 3, 2021 11:37:10 GMT -6
Took a listen to this and it was very mid-centric and very low-bass shy, which is why it sounds so loud. I'm sure you're right svart, but I compared this track to so many tracks back then, and it was significantly louder than most, including some not so much low bass tracks. There's some thing happening there I don't completely understand. next time I meet Vance Powell, I'll ask him about it. It may be a while though, but until Covid is handled, no one's meeting anyone at the moment.
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Post by EmRR on Feb 3, 2021 12:39:35 GMT -6
The better mastering guys I use return tracks that sound almost like remixes to me, while retaining all of my intent.
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Feb 3, 2021 13:22:30 GMT -6
Had a client tell me a song that averaged about -10LUFS wasn’t loud enough. But I definitely hear distortion when I ram it beyond that. What the hell are people doing to get these songs so loud? Still one of my favorite mixes of all time.
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 3, 2021 13:57:38 GMT -6
Had a client tell me a song that averaged about -10LUFS wasn’t loud enough. But I definitely hear distortion when I ram it beyond that. What the hell are people doing to get these songs so loud? Still one of my favorite mixes of all time. That’s fantastic
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Post by Quint on Feb 3, 2021 15:10:02 GMT -6
Hahahaha. Nice!
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Post by kaleida on Feb 3, 2021 15:47:01 GMT -6
Had a client tell me a song that averaged about -10LUFS wasn’t loud enough. But I definitely hear distortion when I ram it beyond that. What the hell are people doing to get these songs so loud? Still one of my favorite mixes of all time. Hahahaha amazing. This feels like a personal attack For a long time, I always high passed every mix / master, but lately I've found that just turning down or EQing the offending tracks (usually bass and kick) gives more natural sounding results. Sometimes a HPF on one or both is needed, but if I can get by with a bell / shelf cut or a tilt EQ, it seems to sound slightly better. Worst case scenario, I do very light multi-band compression on just the low end (<80hz-ish) to keep it controlled yet solid. Occasionally with HPFing, the phase shift actually makes the mix louder, which partially defeats the purpose, and using linear phase EQ to avoid that smears the low end with pre-ringing, which sometimes sounds nice on bass, but makes the kick lose its punch. I would definitely advocate for treating tracks and busses rather than the mix bus if possible. Sometimes that low end content is really wonderful or the phase shift trade-off in the rest of the spectrum isn't worth what's gained.
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Post by thehightenor on Feb 3, 2021 17:05:58 GMT -6
IME Loud masters start from the get go - arranging, sound choice, mixing etc.
It's hard to impose extreme loudness at only one process like Mastering.
I don't like "loud" overly dense music personally but I do get that some people do like it/need it and request it for productions.
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