Need help maxing-out tracks!

[Linchpin]

I'm going to be sending my bands cd out for pressing this week. The problem is, I'm at the mastering stage and I need help getting the last 1 or 2 db volume I'm shooting for. We need the extra loudness to stack up to other metal bands.

Right now I'm using waves linmb and L2 to compress the mix. Everything that seems to give it that extra juice, on a closer listen it clips or adds weird compression artifacts.

Does anyone have any advice or a magic software plugin they could suggest run my tracks through?

Thanks,

[matt rascal]

Don't give in.

[Massive Master]

Does it need a MBC? Is the mix lacking something that the MBC will give it? Does the mix have the anomalies that MBC will treat? And if so, why not just fix those problems at the mix level?

Why the hell does everyone grab for MBC's?!? Why does everyone think that "LOUD" is do damn important? Why does everyone think that a MBC is the secret to "loud" anyway?!? Where are they getting these ideas?!?

[bennychico11]

loud has always been perceived as better. probably the same reason why you'll see EQs on a home theater system with the high end cranked up. people like those high frequencies. and people like loud music. Why do clubs and bars have sound systems that could rival outdoor arenas? Why does T-dog have 3 sub woofers in his car that you can hear 20 miles away? 'Cause for some reason people who listen to those styles of music like it cranked up. On the other side of things, I doubt you ever see a mixing engineer putting an 80:1 limiter on a classical orchestra track and beating the shit out of it with the L2. Dynamics are more important in classical than modern/popular music.

that being said, personally I find stuff like the L2 or maxim can make a mix sound worse. i feel like sometimes it brings out mistakes that you made that otherwise would have been masked if it was kept off the track. wrong notes, bad mixing, botched automation or crossfades, etc. So really, use it sparingly i guess.

try this though: limit then maximize
I don't use the L2 but I use maxim. And sometimes to get that extra volume i'll add maxim on the master track and use it just as a limiter where the ceiling and the threshold are linked together. then tame about 3 to 6 dB of the peaks. then make up the difference by adding another maxim plugin below it but just adjust the threshold. this way you can bring it up as loud as you want and won't have to worry about it clipping.


but like the other two said above, your mix might stand out more by not using it. and to add to massive's quote:
"There is no prize for getting everything as close to 0dBFS as possible. You won't get paid more, girls will not flock to you offering sex, just turn it down."
--Farview

[Linchpin]

For our genre loud is important. When someone puts our cd in their stereo I want it to compare to other similar bands. I might have to settle for our current levels, but I really wish I'd be able to get that last bit of juice.

Here's a quick sample of what I'm talking about.

http://www.forgetforever.com/Forget_...t_MASTERED.mp3

[Cloneboy Studio]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

Why the hell does everyone grab for MBC's?!? Why does everyone think that "LOUD" is do damn important? Why does everyone think that a MBC is the secret to "loud" anyway?!? Where are they getting these ideas?!?

Monkey see, monkey do.

It drives me insane as well.

[msmales555]

"you don't need volume to be powerful" - John Motto

[Massive Master]

Originally Posted by Linchpin

For our genre loud is important. When someone puts our cd in their stereo I want it to compare to other similar bands. I might have to settle for our current levels, but I really wish I'd be able to get that last bit of juice.

That's kissing -10dBRMS in places... AND it sounds relatively decent (MP3 swishiness aside). I think it could sound much better sans the MBC, but that's for another thread. If it needs to be louder than that, consider the recordings you're comparing it to - Are these recordings made with similar gear/budgets/skill levels? Could you be "asking too much" of the recording?

And of course, something to really think about - How much quality are you really willing to give up for the sake of sheer volume? I certainly don't mind cranking up a good sounding recording - I won't even listen to recordings that are smashed... To fatiguing - Metal or not (and I'm a fan, trust me). Most of the time, the listeners will choose sound quality over volume - It's the bands and the labels that are driving the volume war.

I used The Dark Saga (Iced Earth) as an experiment in nastiness once - I can't remember the RMS level on it (it was a "healthy" level for the time), but I remember how it fell apart with 2dB of gain pushed on it. A great, airy, well-imaged recording turned into an unlistenable irritating mush with only 2dB added to it...

It's one of those albums that sounds great when you crank it up - After adding the 2dB, you couldn't turn it down enough to make it sound good.

I know it probably won't make a difference - Just food for thought.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Linchpin

Does anyone have any advice or a magic software plugin they could suggest run my tracks through?

Screw the plug ins, go in there and fix it yourself. Manually knock down the ten or so largest peaks in the editor before applying any compression. By doing this you avoid having to use a limiter and can push your compressor much lighter to get the thickness you want. Those both mean a tighter sound envelope with less unwanted artifacting from heavy compression or limiting inside the sound.

Or, you can screw the useless extra couple of dBs of volume and stick with having your music actually sound good. God created volume controls so His children could turn up what they wanted louder and turn down what they wanted quieter; if He intended all CDs to sound the same, He'd create The Dave Matthews Band. Oh, wait....

G.

[Linchpin]

Thanks for the advice. I'll try knocking down the highest peaks again, though it really killed the impact of the track last time.

The thing that really boggles my mind is that I was able to get our last cd about 4 or 5 db louder than this sample (at least to my ears). True it was only 5 tracks and there was almost no compression on anything other than vocals during mixdown.

I was up until 5 in morning last night trying to figure this out, but nothing really helps. Do you think what I have is good enough, as is, to send away for pressing?

[Cloneboy Studio]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

go in there and fix it yourself. Manually knock down the ten or so largest peaks in the editor before applying any compression.

Screw that.

I cannot imagine a good result coming from that.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Cloneboy Studio

Screw that.

I cannot imagine a good result coming from that.

Au contraire, my doppelganger friend. There is no easier and better way to start the compression process clean and with no audible artifacting at all than to zoom in on the few of the most-offending (tallest) peaks and knocking just those transients down by 2 or 3 dB. The result of that stage is all but inaudible 99% of the time. Of that 1% of the times where it is audible, 99% of those times the audible difference is actually for the better.

This is really just manually performing what a limiter does. There are four important differences, though. The first is that you can pick and choose just which peaks to affect. The second is that you can knock down the peaks by equavalent volume levels (e.g. knock them all down by, say, 3dB.) instead of hard limiting them to a set peak level. This helps keep a natural relative envelope shape to the wavefrom rather than giving it a crew cut like hard limiting will do. The third is that no coloration is added to the sound of the mix. While sometimes the color added by a limiter is positive, often times you might want the color to come from the compressor only because the combo of colors from both the limiter and the compressor are just overkill. The fourth, is that once proficient at this technique, it is just as fast and easy as finding the optimal choice of limiter (hardware or plugin) and then dialing it in just just the right setting to match the compressor. I'll go up against anybody (except maybe the likes of John "Massive" ) on speed and accuracy when it comes to manual limiting vs. using a limiter.

This is just the first stage; it's "prepping the patient" for compression by getting rid of the blatent or abnormal peaks in a mixdown so you don't have to dial up the compressor too hard and squash the sound to a pancake to get the higher RMS level. Many people use limiters to do this, and that's fine. I'm saying that often times manual surgical strikes to the waveform will actually give cleaner and more pleasing results than a limiter. It's an option.

An option, BTW that I have been using since the days when VST plug-ins were just wistful daydreams in the minds of engineers because they hadn't been invented yet. Engineers actually used waveform editors to digitally edit the waveforms then and got excellent results. And it's a technique that works and sounds good even today, often better than plugins.

Plugins are nothing more than automations of manual digital editing procedures. That's all they are. Some of them are very sophisticated automations, for sure; there is no way one could manually reproduce the sophisticated algorithms that are used for things like amp modeling or modeling of vintage gear like tube compressors. It is for those reasons that plugins were created, to be able to apply sophisticated algorithms to the waveforms that the human hand just cannot do. But for something simple like taming a waveform before compressing it, plugins are not only not necessary and not what they were designed for, but are often overkill. Throwing a big limiting algorithm at a simple transient is sometimes akin to putting out a birthday candle with a garden hose or using the Ferrari to bring a movie back to the Blockbuster just down the street from your house.

What is often forgotten in this day of plug-in mania is that NLE's actually give us the ability to manually control and edit every bit down to the individual sample level. It's just like being able to control every single pixel of an image in Photoshop, except we're doing it with sound instead of pictures. Sometimes you just gotta manually remove the specs of dust form the picture first, and that is often best done manually to individual pixels or a small area of pixels and not by applying an effect to the entire picture. Digital sound editing is not different. It's just bit manipulation, nothing more. Deciding when it's best to juggle a bit manually or to throw an unthinking automation at it is just as important as deciding which mic to use or which way to pan a reverb.

G.

[Matheon]

forget nudging it up.

its already been nudged up a few dbrms over what most folks would call reasonable.. but its metal so it needs that extra zing right?

you've already zinged it.

print it!

[emergencyexit]

This won't help, but how did you get your drum sound? sounds great.

[Linchpin]

Thanks for the help everyone. I managed to sqeeze a little more loudness out of my tracks overall. It's still quiet compared to most metal albums today, and it sounds a little shreiky at high volumes, but I think I have to send it away. It's already been in the making for too long, and I just don't know what I could do to improve upon it.


emergencyexit - Thanks man. The drum sound was such a mess to achieve. Lets just say that a C1, a 3 band eq, some reverb and a good source is your key to sounds like this. Also, don't be afraid to add some lows on your snare.

[Cloneboy Studio]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Au contraire, my doppelganger friend. There is no easier and better way to start the compression process clean and with no audible artifacting at all than to zoom in on the few of the most-offending (tallest) peaks and knocking just those transients down by 2 or 3 dB. The result of that stage is all but inaudible 99% of the time. Of that 1% of the times where it is audible, 99% of those times the audible difference is actually for the better.

Screw that.

You have WAYYY too much time on your hands.

[boingoman]

Don't people turn up their stereos anymore when they want it louder?

[metalhead28]

I must agree with Massive Master here. I am no master engineer, but I know that I prefer a good sounding mix that you can turn up and not get irritated by it! Some of the newer metal stuff is loud as hell but I don't even like to really crank it up. BTW - Iced Earth was a good reference, as I've noticed that most of their releases aren't as hot as alot of other bands, but they stand up really well to being cranked up LOUD, they sound even better!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Cloneboy Studio

Screw that.

You have WAYYY too much time on your hands.

Maybe you're just getting back at me for originally using the term "Screw that" when someone asked how to use plugins to solve their problem. Perhaps you're right and I should have been more diplomatic and not used the term "Screw that".

But I gotta say that I find the trend these days extremely disheartening where everybody looks to plugins for solutions to basic audio engineering problems. Someone half-jokingly said in one of the other threads that the only reason they used their NLE software was as a host for plugins. That cuts so close to the truth with many of the folks new to this racket as to be painful. It is a lazy and ridiculous philosophy that wipes out 70% of the power an engineer has at their fingertips when they are using digital NLE software.

I'll stand by that procedure as one that has worked for me (and many other engineers who have been around the digital editing and engineering block for more than just the short existance of the 21st Century), is sonically invisible, and takes no more time at the editing desk than tweaking in and rendering the right settings on limiter and compressor plugins.

I'm not expecting to change the minds of those who haven't even tried it and yet dismiss on this forum out-of-hand. If they are happy with the work that results solely from the use of canned algorithms and find the only solution to that is to buy yet more canned algorithms, who am I to disagree?

But to those who are still learning, trust me when I say, you have an EDITOR at you fingertips for a good reason. Learn to actually use it and you'll learn many techniques for making a much better recording.

Take that or leave it. It's up to you.

G.

[FALKEN]

Originally Posted by metalhead28

am no master engineer, but I know that I prefer a good sounding mix that you can turn up and not get irritated by it!

damnit SO WHAT if I want my mix loud? fuggit! I want that sheeit loud! I don't want it annoying. I know what you mean. it gets irritating. how can I avoid this? Don't say go out and buy waves cuz thats bullcrap. we want the real deal!! where's it at yo?

[metalhead28]

I think the point some of us are making is that making it that loud is exactly what is annoying about it. I don't know what you're getting at, falken??
I for one simply turn up the volume to listen to something louder. I can't say that I have ever listened to anything during which the volume knob on my stereo has been insufficient for achieving enough volume
I have alot of older CD's that are not nearly as loud as newer releases, and I dont find the quieter levels to be a big deal at all. In fact they usually sound better to me!

[FALKEN]

well if you just turn the volume up it doesn't do anything to the sound of the track now does it?? I want everything louder!!


actually to get serious here for a minute,

I was doing a mix all day yesterday, 11 songs. and I wake up this morning and give it a listen in the headphones, and DAMNIT I made the guitars too loud, like EVERY time DAMNIT. the drums sound like they're UNDER WATER. And I havne't even converted it to mp3 yet. Its freaking horrible. so Im in the car going to work and Im like "ok I"ll throw on the radio and see how they deal with this issue" and on comes offspring. wait a minute..

their drums are underwater too!! WTF! their guitars were SO MUCH louder than mine, the drums sounded like sheeit! I would say that most of the mixes on my local clearchannel station had the same element as mine..the guitars are too loud so you can't hear the drums. or you can hear them, but only in the quiet parts, which is like for 5.7 seconds, in most songs.

so what I mean to say is it is really hard to get everything to sound loud in a mix. it friggin sux when your guitars drop and you want to go 'yeah!' but your drums just fell in a swimming pool. and I experienced this without putting a compressor on the mix.

[DonaldChang]

linchpin-dont wory about maxing them out-your music sucks .

[Cloneboy Studio]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Maybe you're just getting back at me for originally using the term "Screw that" when someone asked how to use plugins to solve their problem. Perhaps you're right and I should have been more diplomatic and not used the term "Screw that".

Nah, it's because I don't have that kind of time in sessions. Plus, if I'm having to do something along that lines IMHO something went wrong during the recording process.

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

But I gotta say that I find the trend these days extremely disheartening where everybody looks to plugins for solutions to basic audio engineering problems.

IMHO good engineering happens before recording so you DON'T have to do that kind of stuff.

Maybe it's growing up on analog when you couldn't do stuff like that, but my first impulse on a lot of "imperfections" like that is--hey, that's how it happened so let's roll with it... keep it real... the compressor will take care of it just fine. And you know what? It usually does.

I just think it's dangerous to get TOO visual and edit happy with music. We all need to listen more, and not get too carried away with the power at our disposal.

But hey, that's why *I* don't do things your way. You have your approach so go for it. If the end product is good you're never wrong.

[johnsuitcase]

I find it interesting that everyone is talking loudness and only mentioning compressors and limiters. One of the points that Emily Lazar made at this year's TapeOpCon (which I was able to attend, and I'll say it was awesome) was that digital recordings are often loaded with low frequency junk. Anything below about 30hz is inaudible, but takes up huge amounts of acoustic energy. Filter that crap out and bang, your mix can be louder. If you want really low lows, use something that is perfectly phase-coherent (that means a synth bass, or synth kick) mixed in.

First thing, high-pass filter your mix, set to 30hz, then normalize to an RMS of -6 db or so (I use Amadeus II on OS X, it works great for this), then limit it to -.1 db.

Just my 2 cents.

Oh, and if it's still not loud enough, crank up the mids. Those are the frequencies that "sound" loudest to our ears (something about being evolved to hear human voices over the din of nature) ;-)