Clipping after limiting

[Humbucker]

I've just finished mixing an instrumental track I'm working on and to add a bit of polish(I certainly wouldn't call it mastering hehe) I EQ'd the final mix a little, compressed it a little and put it through the Kjaeurhus Master Limiter aswell as adding dithering using the Cubase UV22. I'm just a little confused as to how to tell if it is 'over' in terms of peaks. I know obviously you should hear some distortion but I don't hear that. Basically I just added a couple of decibels to it with the Limiter, but how do I know how far I can push it? There is a meter on the Classic Master Limiter but it was going nowhere near the red on there, however when bringing it into T-Racks(purely out of interest to see the level) it said it was going over. Also in Cubase it was going way into the red. Can I basically push it as far as I want, but of course the further I push it the more it is gonna be 'squashed' as to limit the peaks it needs to compress the signal? I'm thinking it's a case of trusting your ears, but I know there are far more experienced ears out there than mine so I don't necassarily trust my own 100%. I guess Im basically asking for a summarised explanation of limiting. Here's the track I'm talking about, like I said it has +2b on top of it with the Limiter. Can I take it higher or should I just leave it the way it is? Apologies for the nieve undercurrent to my questions, but you gotta ask Here's the track:-

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=3188

[TheDewd]

You have room to push it much more.
But there are some problems with your mix...the worst being that the bass is MUCH too loud. This doesn't help if you want to push the levels to the top.

[Humbucker]

Originally Posted by TheDewd

You have room to push it much more.
But there are some problems with your mix...the worst being that the bass is MUCH too loud. This doesn't help if you want to push the levels to the top.

Argghhh the balance in volume between the bass and the drums has been the main thing I've struggled on with the mix. Today I turned the drums down a little and the bass up a little. To my ears the bass level sounds OK, but admittedly I'm not listening through monitors or anything, just through a Hi-fi. But great to know I can push the levels some more in terms of the final mix - many thanks.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by Humbucker

Argghhh the balance in volume between the bass and the drums has been the main thing I've struggled on with the mix. Today I turned the drums down a little and the bass up a little. To my ears the bass level sounds OK, but admittedly I'm not listening through monitors or anything, just through a Hi-fi. But great to know I can push the levels some more in terms of the final mix - many thanks.

Yep, but lower the bass some before attempting to push too much, since low frequencies eat up a lot!

[Humbucker]

Originally Posted by TheDewd

Yep, but lower the bass some before attempting to push too much, since low frequencies eat up a lot!

Yeah, definetely.

[SonicAlbert]

In most brickwall limiter plugins you can set the maximum level. That can be set anywhere from -.1 to -.5 and you'll be pretty safe from overshoots. I usually set it to -.3 on my stuff.

[Humbucker]

OK here's my final mix of this piece:-

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=3195

The limiting definetely added a decent amount of volume - the software(Classic Master Limiter) said it wasn't going over and it sounds fine so I assume all is well. Would appreciate some more experienced ears taking a listen though.

[Dogman]

I think it sounds pretty decent man.....

[Humbucker]

Originally Posted by Dogman

I think it sounds pretty decent man.....

Cool - thanks.

[SonicAlbert]

The only thing you might want to consider is treating the guitar solo at the beginning differently from the rest of the song once the drums come in. The reason being that when you limit you bring everything up in volume, and I felt the sound of the fingers sliding on the guitar was a bit too much. Not hugely too much, but it kind of got in the way a little bit, at least for me. Once the beat kicks in I thought the limiting was fine.

[Humbucker]

Thanks for listening SonicAlbert - yeah I agree about the bass in the beginning, aswell as the limiting I had to boost the high end EQ a little bit so that definetely had an affect on that. When I recorded the bass I forgot to turn on the lo-cut filter on my DMP3, which meant I had to EQ more than normal to correct the boominess. I'll definetely know for the future though. Thanks again.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by Humbucker

Thanks for listening SonicAlbert - yeah I agree about the bass in the beginning, aswell as the limiting I had to boost the high end EQ a little bit so that definetely had an affect on that. When I recorded the bass I forgot to turn on the lo-cut filter on my DMP3, which meant I had to EQ more than normal to correct the boominess. I'll definetely know for the future though. Thanks again.

You didn't do much to the overall loudness. Limit the shit out of that song!
You can limit much more than this. It's not competitive enough.
You have to peak some red on the limiter!

IMHO, the Classic Limiter is bad for getting high levels. Sorry, I can't recommend anything better that's free, but I know it sounds ugly when you try to hit reasonable levels (about -8 dB RMS).

[SonicAlbert]

Actually, I thought the amount of limiting was fine, once the song got into the part with drums. My meters were almost all the way to the top, as far as volume. And the song still sounds natural. There's no reason every song has to have *all* the dynamic range crunched out of it.

[TheDewd]

Originally Posted by SonicAlbert

Actually, I thought the amount of limiting was fine, once the song got into the part with drums. My meters were almost all the way to the top, as far as volume. And the song still sounds natural. There's no reason every song has to have *all* the dynamic range crunched out of it.

I thought like that and stayed away from the crunching until I found out that most (if not all) of the rock bands I like get their "crunchy gritty" sound by limiting the crap out of the mix.

Furthermore, being competitive is so important in today's rock music....