how to get more volume out of my mixes

[RAMI]

I said: not implying you're a newcomer just mentioning it in general

That was just a general sentence I was not referring to someone and of course I never implied you.

I also mentioned I wasn't referring to anyone... And you neg repped me? For real?
That's a nice and easy way of using your power there sir.

And even if I was referring to someone - but I didn't - did you hear your name?

he who smelt it, dealt it i suppose

Looks like I hurt your feelings. Lol. Sorry man, Sometimes the truth hurts. Like I said, get off your high horse.

Once again, it seemed like it was directed at everyone that tried to help, not just me. Believe me, I'm very confident about my abilities. One stranger calling me a new comer wouldn't make me respond as much as calling others the same thing would.

As far as "I said:not implying you're a newcomer just mentioning it in general", that was directed at Jimi, so you guys trying to use that as some kind of defense is plain dis-honest. Starting a thread with "Most new comers will say...." and then repeating what most people in the thread were talking about makes it pretty clear how much arrogance was involved in that post. At least stand up to what was said, don't be a hypocrite. Seriously.

 

[Paschalis I.]

I give up. I feel like I am talking with 13 year olds on League of Legends.

Anyway. I am out of this thread.

Peace.

 

[RAMI]

I give up. I feel like I am talking with 13 year olds on League of Legends.

Anyway. I am out of this thread.

Peace.

It was going great before you came in here.

See ya.

 

[RAMI]

...So, anyway Jimi.....

If you want more volume out of your mixes, you use a limiter, like I and pretty much everyone else has said.

We assume that if you want to "master" or "pseudo-master" your mix, then you're already happy with the mix, so all the rest is just SOME people needing to hear themselves talk.

Not directing that at anyone, just in general.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I didn't say he was not correct. Read my post again.

I didn't see anything arrogant about it, just straightforward statement of facts that would benefit the OP.

He was only the second person to clearly state that loudness has to be dealt with in the mix before it can be fully realized at mastering. I first made that point in post 25 and it had otherwise been ignored besides vague references to good mixes not needing much in mastering.

 

[RAMI]

I didn't see anything arrogant about it, just straightforward statement of facts that would benefit the OP.

He was only the second person to clearly state that loudness has to be dealt with in the mix before it can be fully realized at mastering. I first made that point in post 25 and it had otherwise been ignored besides vague references to good mixes not needing much in mastering.

There's a reason your post seemed to go un-noticed, and that's because you just gave good advice, without the passive aggressiveness.

Like I said, Jimi was simply asking how to make his mixes louder. A bunch of people said they use a limiter. Then one guy comes in saying "most new comers will say...blah blah blah", and then repeated exactly what everyone in the thread said. You don't see that? That's ok. I do.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

There's a reason your post seemed to go un-noticed, and that's because you just gave good advice, without the passive aggressiveness.

Like I said, Jimi was simply asking how to make his mixes louder. A bunch of people said they use a limiter. Then one guy comes in saying "most new comers will say...blah blah blah", and then repeated exactly what everyone in the thread said. You don't see that? That's ok. I do.

Well, no, he added some information. I was the first to clearly state that loudness happens in the mix, not after it. He added more useful detail to that, specifically that you have to limit or edit things in the mix to prepare it for loudness. Every other post up to that point simply said little more than "slap a limiter on the mix".

 

[RAMI]

Well, no, he added some information. I was the first to clearly state that loudness happens in the mix, not after it. He added more useful detail to that, specifically that you have to limit or edit things in the mix to prepare it for loudness. Every other post up to that point simply said little more than "slap a limiter on the mix".

You're missing the point. Did I say his or your responses were wrong? I'm not taking about the advice given, I'm talking about the extra fluff attached to his response. It's all good, man. I know what I'm talking about, and I also know by the couple of positive reps I got from my posts in this thread that others see it exactly the same way I do, even if they don't want to express it publicly.

The main thing is, Jimi got his answer and more. That's why I love this place.

 

[miroslav]

If you want more volume....use a bigger hose.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

You're missing the point. Did I say his or your responses were wrong? I'm not taking about the advice given, I'm talking about the extra fluff attached to his response. It's all good, man. I know what I'm talking about, and I also know by the couple of positive reps I got from my posts in this thread that others see it exactly the same way I do, even if they don't want to express it publicly.

The main thing is, Jimi got his answer and more. That's why I love this place.

Okay. I just didn't see arrogance. I saw thoroughness and depth, especially in light of the shallow advice preceding his.

 

[RAMI]

especially in light of the shallow advice preceding his.

Hehe...Answering a question directly is now "shallow advice". I see what you tried to do there. You 2 seem to have something in common.......



Dude 1: How do I make my car go faster?

Dudes 2-15: Press harder on the gas.

Dud 16: Most beginners will say press harder on the gas (not saying you're a beginner, just in general). But in reality, you need to make sure your car is able to go faster. You should check your transmission, check your oil, and do about 100 other things that you didn't ask about, but I still want to mention them so that I can sound smart.

Dude 4: You're being arrogant. We're not beginners. He asked a simple question and he got a simple answer.

Dud 16: I wasn't being arrogant and I didn't call any of you that gave the correct answer beginners, even though I mentioned your response and said that this is what most beginners would answer, it still has nothing to do with you.

Dude 4: You're full of shit. You know it, I know it, and everyone else that responded knows it.

Dud 16: I'm leaving. You're a meanie.

Dude 4: Good. See ya.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Four reasons mainly:

1 force of habit (I used to use Logic for tracking, Soundforge for mastering).

2 the two particular tools that are present in Soundforge but I haven't found in Reaper, i.e. RMS normalisation, and RMS analysis.

3 the sense of separation it gives between mixing and mastering (this is more a psychological thing)

4 in SF I can load a CD's worth of tracks, and click and play instantly on each to get a sense of relative levels.

For quick and nasty "mastering" (like, most of what I do...) I do exactly the same thing and for exactly the same reasons. It really was the extent of my mastering process for quite a while.

Lately, though, I've been doing and more and more in Reaper itself. Especially for full albums, I like to bring all the individual mix files into a new project where I can lay them out with proper gap timing and all that stuff.

I have come up with a chain of 2 or 3 instances of ReaComp. The first will have a very long RMS time, lookahead time about half that, and a very low ratio just to kind of reign in the average levels a bit without screwing up the transients too much. The following instances will have shorter times and more aggressive ratios, but at higher thresholds. Put a ReaEQ or two in here or there mostly to kind of "steer" the action of the compressors (pre-emphasis/de-emphasis kinda thing) and a "diode clipper" or two for a little hair and true peak limiting and it comes out pretty damn smooth. It's almost kind of scary how transparent and huge it stays even at some pretty extremely small crest factors.

'Course, none of these techniques really work well unless the mix itself is relatively controlled for dynamics at a track and/or sub-mix/bus level first.

 

[Mr Clean]

Hehe...Answering a question directly is now "shallow advice". I see what you tried to do there. You 2 seem to have something in common.......



Dude 1: How do I make my car go faster?

Dudes 2-15: Press harder on the gas.

Dud 16: Most beginners will say press harder on the gas (not saying you're a beginner, just in general). But in reality, you need to make sure your car is able to go faster. You should check your transmission, check your oil, and do about 100 other things that you didn't ask about, but I still want to mention them so that I can sound smart.

Dude 4: You're being arrogant. We're not beginners. He asked a simple question and he got a simple answer.

Dud 16: I wasn't being arrogant and I didn't call any of you that gave the correct answer beginners, even though I mentioned your response and said that this is what most beginners would answer, it still has nothing to do with you.

Dude 4: You're full of shit. You know it, I know it, and everyone else that responded knows it.

Dud 16: I'm leaving. You're a meanie.

Dude 4: Good. See ya.

LMAO Can't argue with that!

 

[gecko zzed]

Lately, though, I've been doing and more and more in Reaper itself.

Yes . . . this is what I should be doing . . . but I need to make the big leap across.

I was forced to make the leap from Logic to Reaper when I started doing collaborative work with a mate, and he used Reaper. It just made more sense.

I need something to force me to make the next leap.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Yes . . . this is what I should be doing . . . but I need to make the big leap across.

I was forced to make the leap from Logic to Reaper when I started doing collaborative work with a mate, and he used Reaper. It just made more sense.

I need something to force me to make the next leap.

Yeah. ReaComp is such an incredible tool. It can do that really slow leveling thing for vocals, drums, full mixes, but it also works really well as a variable curve clipper, and everything in between. And that's before you get into its filters or sidechaining! It really is the only compressor I use for anything anymore.

For those who don't know about SoundForge, if you go into it's Normalize function, and hit scan, it just tells you the level of the loudest peak and the overall integrated RMS for the whole file (or selection), which tells you the crest factor/dynamic range of the piece. It's super quick and easy to get that overview. Then, if you ask it to normalize based on RMS level, it has an option to compress peaks that might otherwise clip, which can be a bit more transparent than just slamming it into a peak limiter. It can get nasty, though, and the way I do things now (per my post above) is usually a little cleaner, expecially when you need to do more than shave off a couple db from a couple aberrant peaks.

I don't know how the SWS extensions do the RMS analysis/normalization because I haven't installed them. People over on the Reaper forum (Do any of you hang over there? My username is the same everywhere) tell me they are indispensable, but it always feels like I'd spend more time searching around for actions which may or may not exist, customizing toolbars or hotkeys or whatever, and never actually get anything done. There are a lot of times I find myself doing repetitive or cumbersome things that would probably go a lot quicker with custom actions, but I'm not about to stop in the middle of a mix to re-program the damn program. Maybe I should start keeping a log or something and go search for those kind of workflow enhancements in my "spare time", but...

 

[jimmys69]

Your link just goes to the first post of this thread. I don't see any parenthesis.

Actually the link does go to this post by Pas:

"Many newcomers to recording (not implying you're a newcomer just mentioning it in general) think that slamming a maximizer on the master channel would get them the same volume as the commercial volume.

When they do that they realize that the maximizer is starting to work so hard and destroy the mix and then they are forced to either:

1) Squash the dynamics of the song to get to that commercial level
2) Ease off the limiter , keep the dynamics but the song would be quieter.

The problem lies in the mix though.

When you've got tracks that've got peaks "jumping" here and there it's pretty logical for the maximizer to "meet" these peaks
and work against them.

So make sure that if you want to get the loudness (I assume the genre is asking for loudness) then compress/shave peak right during mixing
and the final maximizer would not have to meet all these transients that'd got nothing musical to offer to the listener.

Go back , re-mix , fix stuff and you're on the right path to loudness without destroying the dynamics of your mix.

Hope this helps"!


I feel there was a misunderstanding there RAMI, as I would absolutely call this 'solid good' advice. Maybe read it before the morning coffee?

I could see you being pissed if someone came in and called you a noob, but he didn't dood...


Just sayin...

 

[RAMI]

Actually the link does go to this post by Pas:

Ah, I see. Well, it didn't go there when I clicked on it earlier. Anyway, I got what he was referring to. Like I said, he's telling Jimi in those paranthesis that's he's not calling HIM a noob.

You probably didn't go through the whole thread, or you'd see that I explained more than one time how I read it. If there was a mis-understaning, then that's fine. But I think there was more to it than that.

"Most people who are new comers (read noobs) to recording will say to use a maximizer...." and it just so happens that this is what most people said they used in the thread.Now, please tell me, why would anyone start a sentence that way in this context? I know why. That's why I said it was passive aggressive.

I feel there was a misunderstanding there RAMI, as I would absolutely call this 'solid good' advice. Maybe read it before the morning coffee?

As I mentioned at least 3 times, I have no problem with the advice, and I said it's good advice. That's not the point. I'm not going to re-hash the whole thing. I already explained what I was referring to, and why I said what I said. I was just calling it a s I saw it, wasn't even pissed off, and had plenty of coffee in me at the time.

I could see you being pissed if someone came in and called you a noob, but he didn't dood...

Again, I wasn't pissed. If anything, he got pissed and stormed out of here, not me. I ended up having fun with it, and even made a funny attempt at recreating the whole thing, using a car as an example.

Anyway, this situation is so this afternoon, it's old news now. No big deal either way. Patchialis is usually pretty helpful. I've checked out a t least one of his videos, if I'm not mistaken, and I think it offered good advice. Got nothing against the guy. I just happened to speak my mind about what I thought was a slight against a few members, not just myself.

OK a round of mental health on me, everyone.

 

[TimN]

I don't render the mix--I'll mix the song, and make 320 mp3s along the way as I'm adding things, or tweaking the mix. On the master bus I have Slate Virtual Tape machine pre-fader, and Am-munition (native to Samplitude), a limiter/compressor, post-fader. Depending on the song, I might push the output of the Tape Machine so that it hits the limiter harder. Or not. I use pretty modest RMS levels on the limiter--say, -12dbFS, and the peak levels hit around -2dbFS, typically, for an mp3 that I'll use to audition a "pre-final" mix (heh heh). If and when I post a mix on the mp3 thread here, that's the way it will come in.
So, I simply bounce the mix down right out of the DAW, and don't render the mix unadorned and then add limiting or whatever. It's all done beforehand.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Oh yeah, there was some discussion about how to get to mp3, wasn't there? What I do is render to (16 bit) .wav either from Reaper or SoundForge, then find it in Windows Explorer, right-click, and choose "Convert Audio Format". It opens a little widget that is somehow related to Windows Media Player that just does it. Never bought a codec or nothing.

 

[TimN]

As far as the strife goes, I read the troubling post and immediately felt that he was only referring to the OP with the business about "newcomers," and even then he qualified his remark.