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Post by tkaitkai on Feb 1, 2024 12:57:20 GMT -6
Kind of an odd topic, but does anyone else have this particular struggle?
Years back, I had a major lightbulb moment where I realized that in order to accurately judge mixes in the car, I have to bring them up to commercial loudness. Otherwise it'll sound flat and lifeless and won't be sufficiently loud enough to push the car speakers in the same way that commercial mixes do, which is what I'm used to hearing.
All fine and well, but sometimes I find I have to push things so offensively loud that it doesn't even make sense to me. And I'm generally a fan of loudness. Like this mix I'm working on now... I had to crank it to -5dB RMS to get it to sound right!
Drives me nuts because not every mix I do needs this. Some sound completely fine around -8, which is already fuckin loud. I'm thinking it might be more of an EQ/perceived loudness thing.
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Post by noob on Feb 1, 2024 13:40:24 GMT -6
I think you're onto something here. Most commercial mixes have that 4k spike that makes them pop out.
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Post by svart on Feb 1, 2024 13:45:17 GMT -6
I'm usually at -10lufs with my mixes and I don't really notice much difference in my car.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2024 14:48:14 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions.
Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it.
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Post by tkaitkai on Feb 1, 2024 15:53:50 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions. Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it. I agree, and I definitely have no reservations about smashing stuff to bits. It does get a little questionable at times, though... some of my mixes can get crazy loud with zero effort, whereas others almost seem to have a ceiling where it just cannot get any louder without completely crapping out. It's also getting harder for me to tell when a distorted mix is "acceptable" or when it's just totally blown out beyond repair. This is why you hire mastering engineers folks!  |
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Post by damoongo on Feb 1, 2024 18:05:45 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions. Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it. Post of the week! |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2024 20:30:48 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions. Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it. It pays the bills though mate.. Saturation, layering, harmonic manipulation, per channel limiting, wild boosting, transient shaping because why the heck not? Then smash it all, smash it all, I am one with the clipped out sine. Smash it all, smash it all, you'll never see it coming.. Heree I stand and here songs falllllll...
plinker, read it, read it again and get that song stuck in your head. Payback is sweet  .. |
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Post by chessparov on Feb 1, 2024 20:36:32 GMT -6
First cars.
What's next?
Boomboxes? Home shelf units?
At the Office?
I say we must refrain from...
Stereo types!
Chris
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Post by chessparov on Feb 1, 2024 20:39:23 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions. Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it. Despite the obvious resemblance of Dan's post, to Hemmingway's straight forward concise writing style (ala "The Sun is hot")... I agree. Chris |
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Post by audiospecific on Feb 1, 2024 21:01:22 GMT -6
Kind of an odd topic, but does anyone else have this particular struggle? Years back, I had a major lightbulb moment where I realized that in order to accurately judge mixes in the car, I have to bring them up to commercial loudness. Otherwise it'll sound flat and lifeless and won't be sufficiently loud enough to push the car speakers in the same way that commercial mixes do, which is what I'm used to hearing. All fine and well, but sometimes I find I have to push things so offensively loud that it doesn't even make sense to me. And I'm generally a fan of loudness. Like this mix I'm working on now... I had to crank it to -5dB RMS to get it to sound right! Drives me nuts because not every mix I do needs this. Some sound completely fine around -8, which is already fuckin loud. I'm thinking it might be more of an EQ/perceived loudness thing.
A small group of producers and engineers came up with soft clipping real converters so no limiting plug can get the same loudness and quality. They gate keep the music industry in the 90s with the help of the corporate consolidation of radio and they fired radio engineers and reduced the radio techs in the industry, and leave the orban at the station on a not so aggressive setting so that if your cd wasn't limited the same way it would sound weak even though the orban could fix this. Later on (1998), CD players actually lowered their DAC output level to give it extra headroom so these CDs produced in the soft clipping fashion would be loud without distorting.
My recommendation: If you are creating a recording for CD, I would get a nice mix for the song and send it to a good mastering engineer. I recommend Massive Mastering. I have never been disappointed with what I get back. Other people ruined the format on purpose so they can exclude anyone that didn't record with them.
I always wondered why it seemed like 3 or 4 people were mixing everything on the radio. They did and they screwed every one from the novice engineer to the band in the process.
Here is an example of mastering by soft clipping a mastering converter.
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Post by theshea on Feb 2, 2024 1:25:44 GMT -6
car mix test? always choose the one friend with the lowest tuned car. thats the one with the bass boost set to stun on his car hifi. ultimate test: if the whole car plastic vibrates and the side doors of the car open on kick drum hits, than bass in the mix is right. welcome to 1995! lol
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Post by robo on Feb 2, 2024 11:33:17 GMT -6
I’ve embraced mixing into some soft clipping and limiting. I put it on about a third of the way in and check references at the same volume. It takes some getting used to, but it’s a nice “what you hear is what you get” real-world perspective. It keeps me from being too precious or timid. Also, most of my clients don’t bother with outside mastering, so it’s literally the finished product when I’m printing most mixes.
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Post by nick8801 on Feb 2, 2024 16:49:37 GMT -6
Funny this thread just popped up. I’m working on a song for a young female artist and her ref really pops…..
Put it on in my car next to my pre-vocals production and it’s just soooo freaking loud! I look up the credits and it’s all top tier people. Funny how these little bedroom pop records actually cost a fortune to make. Anyways, I drop it in insight and the song is average -7.5 lufs. Short term - 4.5. True peak was +1 over zero. I used it as a reference to see what my production would sound like at that loudness. Really interesting results. First off, the warm kind of glued smoosh that Mathilda record has, was now in my production. Ozone basically put a tilt eq on the mix. Maybe -5 at the sub end and +5 at the top. Other than that, once the bass is lowered a bit and the mids and highs come up, it sounded pretty much identical. Pretty crazy. There’s definitely an art to pushing stuff that loud, and I’m a believer in good converters that can take it in a musical way. But when it’s done right, it’s actually really cool. Wilco is another example of “that sound”. It’s like pretty light music overall, but it’s cranked in the master, and it gets this tape like glue to everything. I actually like that sound to an extent.
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Post by kelk on Feb 2, 2024 17:27:55 GMT -6
Whenever Wilco gets mentioned I'll drop in to say that Tom Schick is such a masterful engineer. Way under-talked-about. Such a musical ear. Just an opinion.. Carry on.
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Post by nick8801 on Feb 2, 2024 20:04:06 GMT -6
Whenever Wilco gets mentioned I'll drop in to say that Tom Schick is such a masterful engineer. Way under-talked-about. Such a musical ear. Just an opinion.. Carry on. Right??! Those records sound so incredible. He’s one of my favorites! |
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Post by plinker on Feb 2, 2024 23:50:43 GMT -6
You have to smash everything and fit it all together again. Use samples. Faker gets louder. They push the mids up like crazy to seem louder, have tons of bass processing, saturate off everything. If your tracks do not look like a blob, you're doing it wrong. Do you think they do this by ear? No they do it to look like the Blob from 1988. That's why you see rappers and amateur musicians asking if their waves forms look right in the daw, not that pcm samples are the waves. Hell it will be clipped eventually by the limiter or final pcm file. Yeah blob it. smash everything. phase shift in later processors or speakers will add some totally unnatural sounding peaks. what do these guys care? they don't even know what a real drum sounds like. never the less a plucked bass note. What's a marshall? use an amp sim. It's more consistent than a real amp and crappier. emulsify it into whatever the flavor of the month distortion plugin is. the goal is to conform to the blob, to meld with the hivemind, to rearrange the music and sublate the recording into the confines of modern emulsified, microplasticized pop productions. Basically you have to make it sound like someone with an endocrines disrupted by microplastics face and a stupid broccoli haircut would listen to it. It pays the bills though mate.. Saturation, layering, harmonic manipulation, per channel limiting, wild boosting, transient shaping because why the heck not? Then smash it all, smash it all, I am one with the clipped out sine. Smash it all, smash it all, you'll never see it coming.. Heree I stand and here songs falllllll...
plinker, read it, read it again and get that song stuck in your head. Payback is sweet .. Nice move!! And I’m on my way to bed. This should be a fun night. 🖕🏻 |
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Post by christopher on Feb 4, 2024 23:47:25 GMT -6
Here’s what has helped me… I’m not perfect, but I’ve gotten better at it.
If it’s loud and not looking like a blob, for me that means I didn’t go heavy enough in the lows. Boost a peak between 20-70Hz about 5-10dB, touch nothing else, and watch your file turn into a clipped blob. So that blob energy is all sub, ime. If you can’t hear the sub down that low, it’s gonna be a flubby mess. The trick is high pass what you can’t hear, boost (to taste, carefully) where you can hear it. I’ll do this in the mix, choosing bass and kick for different sub areas. I figure mastering guys should be flat down below 40 Hz at least, and can dial the blob just right, where I have spots I can only guess. After the blob is dialed, I’ll adjust the rest to sound good. When the sub is slammed, I don’t have to slam the mids and top so much. Careful as pain can be an issue. Samples kill me often, I back them down if there is fatigue. I’m kinda over trying to win loudness
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Post by thehightenor on Feb 5, 2024 2:47:23 GMT -6
Kind of an odd topic, but does anyone else have this particular struggle? Years back, I had a major lightbulb moment where I realized that in order to accurately judge mixes in the car, I have to bring them up to commercial loudness. Otherwise it'll sound flat and lifeless and won't be sufficiently loud enough to push the car speakers in the same way that commercial mixes do, which is what I'm used to hearing. All fine and well, but sometimes I find I have to push things so offensively loud that it doesn't even make sense to me. And I'm generally a fan of loudness. Like this mix I'm working on now... I had to crank it to -5dB RMS to get it to sound right! Drives me nuts because not every mix I do needs this. Some sound completely fine around -8, which is already fuckin loud. I'm thinking it might be more of an EQ/perceived loudness thing.
A small group of producers and engineers came up with soft clipping real converters so no limiting plug can get the same loudness and quality. They gate keep the music industry in the 90s with the help of the corporate consolidation of radio and they fired radio engineers and reduced the radio techs in the industry, and leave the orban at the station on a not so aggressive setting so that if your cd wasn't limited the same way it would sound weak even though the orban could fix this. Later on (1998), CD players actually lowered their DAC output level to give it extra headroom so these CDs produced in the soft clipping fashion would be loud without distorting.
My recommendation: If you are creating a recording for CD, I would get a nice mix for the song and send it to a good mastering engineer. I recommend Massive Mastering. I have never been disappointed with what I get back. Other people ruined the format on purpose so they can exclude anyone that didn't record with them.
I always wondered why it seemed like 3 or 4 people were mixing everything on the radio. They did and they screwed every one from the novice engineer to the band in the process.
Here is an example of mastering by soft clipping a mastering converter.
It's true, my Crane Song HEDD 192 sounds very "impressive" if you soft clip it. I don't because I have zero intention of ruining my music. My attitude (for right or for wrong) if people want to hear my songs louder - they have a volume control, if that's too much trouble then listen to Ed Sheeran instead - you deserve each other |
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Post by audiospecific on Feb 5, 2024 7:44:40 GMT -6
A small group of producers and engineers came up with soft clipping real converters so no limiting plug can get the same loudness and quality. They gate keep the music industry in the 90s with the help of the corporate consolidation of radio and they fired radio engineers and reduced the radio techs in the industry, and leave the orban at the station on a not so aggressive setting so that if your cd wasn't limited the same way it would sound weak even though the orban could fix this. Later on (1998), CD players actually lowered their DAC output level to give it extra headroom so these CDs produced in the soft clipping fashion would be loud without distorting.
My recommendation: If you are creating a recording for CD, I would get a nice mix for the song and send it to a good mastering engineer. I recommend Massive Mastering. I have never been disappointed with what I get back. Other people ruined the format on purpose so they can exclude anyone that didn't record with them.
I always wondered why it seemed like 3 or 4 people were mixing everything on the radio. They did and they screwed every one from the novice engineer to the band in the process.
Here is an example of mastering by soft clipping a mastering converter.
It's true, my Crane Song HEDD 192 sounds very "impressive" if you soft clip it. I don't because I have zero intention of ruining my music. My attitude (for right or for wrong) if people want to hear my songs louder - they have a volume control, if that's too much trouble then listen to Ed Sheeran instead - you deserve each other
I always thought getting a great sounding mix is all I needed to do. Because I never had issue with making a mix for cassettes or vinyl. CDs on the other hand, I couldn't never seem to get the mix loud enough as the Cds after they pulled and exchanged them in the stores to their current loudness level. I've always had to use a mastering engineer for a CD. Now if its digital delivery, I never really had that issue. I analyzed the old commercial CD with their louder replacement CDs and noticed some sort of soft clipping or auto clip bias recovery was going on.
No DAW plugin can simulate what is going on in that video. I was upset when I found out this is how they got things a little bit louder. I knew it was something like this going on because the mix depth is shallower. Even on those remastered CDs. I used to drive myself crazy trying to get a mix loud while trying to maintain the mix composition until I stopped and look at what they did to their finished mixes. After that, I stopped trying and sent my mixes to a mastering engineer. Which it took me some time to find someone not interested in remixing my song for no reason, or screwing up the mix with a limiter.
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