An interesting thing... usually when I listen to music, I will gradually increase the volume or raise it the second time around to try to hear things. On this one, I turned it down not once, but THREE TIMES! After the initial portion, it just becomes a wash of distortion and reverb. As Mickster said, that might be what you want. I just don't think it the overall sound for the final 2/3s blends well. Its not just the compression, It's more a case of too many elements hitting hard, all at one time.
ok thanks indeed I turned down the volume of the guitars and drums in the explosive final part, so it was maybe too dynamic.
I think I improved it a bit but I still have an issue.
There is a part of my song where the drums are more quiet and then an explosive part where they hit hard.
Since the drums were causing some peaks in the master, mostly kick and snare, I placed a limiter on the drums bus in the mix.
Now what happened is that the volume of the snare in the explosive part is a bit lower than before and is sitting back in the mix, is not anymore slammed as it was.
Also basically in the quiet part of the song, the snare remained the same volume so quite ok for me, but in the explosive part is actually lower in volume compared to the quiet part!!!
This because the limiter is attenuating the snare transient in the explosive part while keeping it normal in the quiet part, result: a lower volume of the snare in the explosive part which is not good.
Raising the snare volume or increasing the compression won't change much because the limiter is stopping it from peaking.
So I don't know what to do here, if I don't put a limiter my overall volume of the master will not be as loud as my reference track because if I raise the Master Limiter Threshold down to increase the volume the transients will cause a gain reduction over 4 or 5 db!
From my understanding in order to have a Loud Master without clipping and distorting, I should place limiters in the mix busses like drums or bass for instance so that the mix will sound louder but maintaining headroom for the master, correct? The problem is that if I use the limiter too much in the drums bus it results in what I just explained, so basically it mess up the song dynamic limiting the snare for instance where it should be slammed and not limiting it where is less slammed, so the snare gets low where is shouldn't be.
It's like a snake biting its tail.
