louder?

A

ad0lescnts

New member
I don't want to start any arguments, because i know that everyone here is against having music really compressed etc...

but this band i'm recording noticed that their CD isn't near as loud as the rest of the CD's they listen to. I don't mind making it this loud, i just dont know HOW...

I had a limiter on the recording and the meters were to the limit almost throughout the song. What else do i do to make it louder??

It's pop punk so the loud is kind of what they're going for anyways...

can anyone help?

thanks,
T
 
How good is this band and how much time is put into the recording? If all of this is final "keeper" work, it is best to let an independant mastering guy get the volume up.

If it's just a demo, go to town with that multi-band compression and limiting until they're happy. Do a search in the mastering board here and I'm sure you'll turn up a ton of info.
 
do what the talent wants, and save a different mix for yourself!

you want to make the guys happy, so just compress the hell out of it. compression won't really raise your overall level so after you compress normalize the track to get the levels nice and loud

now they might have a more distorted sound in their head too, so maybe adding some tube warmth or something like that might help.
 
I'm not even "against" heavily compressing music - IF it can be done without ruining it.

That's another story...

That being said, a lot of "pop-punk" is heavily compressed and limited at the TRACK level - That's going to give you some more "available" volume without the same artifacts you'd get from compressing the entire mix.

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
 
Massive Master said:

That being said, a lot of "pop-punk" is heavily compressed and limited at the TRACK level - That's going to give you some more "available" volume without the same artifacts you'd get from compressing the entire mix.

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
Click to expand...

John
is that a general rule? What sort of artifacts do you get from a mix compression that don't appear on track comprtession?
 
Generally speaking, if you throw a hard-knee limiter on a bass in a mix, it's only going to squash THE BASS.

If you limit the mix, anything that goes above the threshold is going to squash the entire mix. It's easy to hear in poorly mastered hip-hop... Every time the kick hits, the rest of the mix goes down 3-4dB for a half second or so. The whole mix pumps because of one improperly set compressor.

So essentially, even if you limit every track in a mix, using different settings, they won't pump at the same speed, and the mix won't suck itself down a hole. Not that I'm recommending putting a hard limiter on every track, but I'm sure you can imagine it that way...

Hope that helps a bit.

John -
 
another idea

a couple tapeops ago (#37, iirc) was a FANTASTIC interview with michael brauer and bus compression. in a nutshell (and not doing the article or interview any justice), instead of compressing the entire mix (on the stereo mix bus), rather he splits the mix into several segments (low end, guitars, high end), etc., and busses them out and applies different compressors/compression schemes out to each of the busses. namely, in some cases, you might want a more compressed low end but open high end, etc. of course, he went into what compressors he normally uses for what duties, you name it. the pictures of his compressor racks were astounding.

it was extremely enlightening and i'm looking forward to giving it a go sometime here in the future. it would definitely be a nice twist to simply slapping a compressor on the mix bus and just letting it ride. and it definitely keeps things like the kick from making the rest of the mix pump, etc.


i generally avoid as much "mastering compression" as i can when i'm mixing. i just don't like my music/mixes very squashed--personal preference. still, i DO find that i want them to be listenable to in the truck without having to crank the dial to 11 (which kills me and the speakers when i forget and turn it back to the radio without turning it back down first). it's a matter of squeezing only a couple of dBs, and in my case, it's usually "just" the transients on the snare that catch most of it anyway.

in the case of clients, it's hard to get non-engineers (and musicians in general) to understand WHY what they're hearing from an unmastered mix is so "quieter" than the dreck they buy at the store. i'm all for "preserving the integrity of the music", but i'm all about making my clients happy too, and find that there is usually a middle ground--that extra couple dBs is generally enough to make everyone happy, but some folks just won't be til it's been pounded into one loud mass of gunk. if they're absolutely insistent that you squash the crap out of their music, i would far rather give them a "good, unsquashed" mix and refer them to a professional mastering house than killing it myself.


wade
 
if you try opening a professionally recorded song in a wav editor, like Cool Edit pro, you'll see the wav looks like this:



||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||



basically a solid block of sound. you could try that... it got my songs as loud as pro recordings... except they don't sound as good... :( :D

good luck
 
one of the worst examples of this i've heard is Rush's Vapor Trails cd from 2002. it's all one big wav block, and FULL of digital overs and quite audible distortion. i got an "early/advance" copy of it on cdr and thought "wow, what shitty mp3s this was made from" and then when i bought it the next week, it wasn't any better!

if you read interviews with Geddy, he gets VERY defensive about it and contends that it was b/c they used certain parts that were recorded early on in the recording process (they recorded to computer) and the levels were really low and had to over-compress them to get them up to level. hello? if it was recorded in 24bit, just normalize the damn things, THEN mix/compress. if it wasn't recorded in 24bit, then someone ought've been shot for incompetence.

my guess is that they squashed the everliving shit out of it at the mastering phase and the fans called em on it. fwiw, geddy was involved in just about every phase of that album (and the Different Stages live album prior to that, which is also horribly overcompressed), so i'm guessing that it was really geddy's idea to let the compression run amok. it's a shame, b/c it ruined what was easily the best Rush album in 10 years....and heaviest album in 20. i'm hoping for a "remaster" one day that fixes this.....one day when the current trend reverses itself.

so no matter HOW or WHO does it, over compression at the mastering phase makes music sound like shit. and it's all for the sake of Clear Channel Radio. Thanks asswipes. not only do you cram bad music down our throats, you make it sound bad while you're at it.


glad i'm not a professional mastering engineer,
wade
 
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