Getting Louder using plugins?

Sad, Massive.
Where there's money or competition, people can't be trusted.

If you give out 100 hammers and have a nail hitting contest, they'll hit each other with the hammers.
 
AND SPEAKING OF TOOLS ---

On reasonably - I don't want to call it "nice" - side effect of this whole thing is the gear. Some of it is absolutely insanely good and can handle ridiculous amounts of abuse. I remember when "clipping the converters" - even on freakishly expensive stuff - yielded, you know - clipping noise. It was horrible. Now, these guys are designing *better* converters that actually "clip with style" (for lack of better terminology). I use a (Crane Song) HEDD192 -- You can push that thing like a mule. Wouldn't have even thought that possible 15 years ago. Noise floors on mastering gear is getting obscene (in a good way). My "typical" chain - engaged - with additional gain and everything, runs at about -100dB(FS)RMS. In-friggin'-sane. I just sold an EQ because it was sitting at -90 on its own. Too noisy. Who the hell is even going to hear it? Okay, I could hear it. And that's why it's gone.

Yet we continue to push for crest factors of 7 or 8dB... :facepalm:
 
I love that digital platforms are setting standards for loudness.

One thing I've found is that EQ balance has as much to do with loudness than anything. I would even bet it's the most important thing, since compression changes the EQ prI file of music as well as, you know, compresses it.

A thing I started doing was soloing the low bands of a non-engaged floating point multi band compressor after the limiter to hear if there was squishiness or soft clipping happening down below 100hz. It saved three or four of my mixes where one limiter hit the low end weird, but another was more transparent.

What I guess I'm saying is, it's not necessarily what you have, but how you use it. Of course there is that line ... good is good.
 
ya, meter action will be weighted towards the bottom end, and most people over pump as they don't employ loudness compensation to their speaker SPL
 
"Loud" is easy. It's an afterthought - honest. Least important and most simplistic part of the entire process with a reasonably well-balanced mix.
Absolutely. Working the quality is the important bit, setting the quantity is the easy bit at the end.
 
There's that Auto Master button in the consumer Magix that gets around -7rms with the typical electrified soundscape. Its not gonna' put any engineers out of work. But I can play some reverse engineering game and try to give it what it wants
 
Before even going to mastering to get your track louder, it all starts with a proper mixing session. Believe me, if you want your track to be the as loud as possible, you need to make sure that every elements of your mix sound great together and are not fighting for the same frequency zones! This way, everything will sound great when you will squeeze your mix into the limiter in mastering!

All the best,

Synergy Sound
 
Concerning the Mercury bundle, try taking a look at the manuals that come with the plugins, they are a great resource. I bought the musicians 2 bundle. Just reading through the manuals of those plugins was a good starting point for me.
 
I try to keep from hitting the limiter and then ideally raise the volume during mixdown.
Lately I've just been raising the volume on the final mix using a dumb free program that I downloaded.
If you don't want anything fancy there are apps that do just that.
I downloaded a free app that actually works pretty good for this.
It's zero frills but it does the job for me.
I think this is what I got.
I can't get to it from work but I think this was it.
Increase MP3 Volume Online, MP3 Volume Booster Online, MP3 Volume Louder
 
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