Compressor/Limiter on master track

I

ivanyoung

New member
Im mixing on nuendo4
and I always put a limiter and multiband compressor on my master bus, I set my limiter on 0db, just use it to prevent the track from clipping, and I use the multiband compressor and tweak my mix so sounds hot like those commercial CDs....
but, one thing confused me for a while......is this right ??
I mean, i've been reading alot of thread about mixing and mastering, I find out that what Im doing here, actually is oversteping to the mastering process....
Should I take out the compressor and limiter, tweak the volume of each track and master track untill its not clipping.....export it and add those when I do mastering ?
 
I personally think its important to mix with the idea that you're going to be leaving around 3-6 db of headroom.

That being said i also like a suble amount of compression on the 2 bus to glue things together a bit, but even post compression i still keep the 3-6 headroom.
 
ok, so you mean its ok to compress a little at the master track...
3-6db of headroom meaning ? I pull the master track fader down to 3db, and then balanced other tracks volume down to the point its not clipping ??
 
Your mixes should 'naturally' (with no peak limiting at all) peak lower than -0dBFS (preferably with a few dB of clean headroom). And if you feel the need to put a maul-the-band compressor on the master buss, I'd seriously reconsider why you'd need such a thing.

"Overstepping the mastering process..." Doing things to make stuff loud is NOT "the mastering process." Sure, the "final playback volume" thing is a small part of the mastering process, and you're most definitely throwing a wrench into the mastering process should you send your project out for mastering at any point - Heck, even if you're doing it yourself.

When you're mixing, MIX. Don't worry about playback volume. DO worry about keeping a good amount of headroom (at every single possible step in the process - Especially when tracking).

Worrying about volume is one of the best ways to make sure you won't have it.
 
I really never worry about the overall volume of the song till muchhhhh much later.

I mix first. only MIX, leaving gratuitous amounts of headroom. (keep in mind I always keep my individual faders way below unity gain).

After mixing, I bounce the project, then pull it into it's own track of a new project or "master" it on a mastering program, I add the volume in this stage.
 
ok, thanks for u guys advices.....
so, I should take out all the inserts on the master track, and tweak all the volume of my tracks till the peak level meter on my master track "naturally" stays around -3db~-6db....
ok, another question here is, should I keep my master track volume fader at 0db and tweak all the tracks volume ? or.....tweak both the tracks and the master fader ?

TO : MassiveMaster,
I know mastering is not only about bringing up the volume....hehehe
I use the multiband compressor to compress and eq-ing the song to make it sounds closer to commercial cd's song.....and after I learn a little bit about mastering, I find out thats not what we do when mixing...so....im confused....

but then, all the ppl said, there are no rule in mixing.....hmmm
 
Personally, I'd ignore the master fader. In some DAW's, you *can* lower the master fader to reduce overall level, but at best, it's "bad form" (for lack of a better term).

But like everything else - Start "too low" and work your way up (as if you'd need to). Assuming you tracked at reasonably normal levels (as opposed to "as hot as you can without clipping" which is for a whole new thread), it shouldn't be too difficult to get the overall levels for the mix in the neighborhood very quickly.
 
I use compression on the master bus...I also sometimes use a saturation plug as well.

I would rather mix through a compressor than add it later on afterwards...Mixing through a compressor sounds better to me...also when compression is already on master bus I tend to use less if any compression on indivdual tracks...they tend to need it less which makes for a more dynamic mix I think.
 
I try to get my mixes to around -3 to -6 and then add a compressor and then tweak some more then check it without the compressor. I sometimes find that when I compress a mix some surprises pop out, so if I can get the mix to sound good with or without compression, I feel like it's a better mix....but who knows :rolleyes:
 
ok, now I know....thanx guys...
To : Massive Master
thanx.....I'll keep the master fader at 0db then...
and about the recording, yes, I do leave some headroom....I always watch out for the input signal; hot enought to sounds good but yet, without clipping at all....leave some room there.....cuz thats the first lesson I've learned from a experienced music producer....haha

To : D_Vincent & jlewis
yeah....I thought about that too.....thats why I put a multiband compressor and tweak it till my mix sounds closer and closer to those commercial rock songs....and then I'll A-B check with or without the compressor to find out whats wrong with my mix...and fix it....thats why I thought thats what we should do....then I read thread about mastering and mixing....I find out that thats part of mastering process...so, I'm confused.....but since, Im gonna do the mastering myself....so...I guess its ok....
 
Hey fellas...First post here...and yes I do realize i am digging up some thread graves to give my 2 cc's...but I couldn't help myself! :) Over my sorta -semi-sucessfull career as a producer as well as a piss poor mix eng. and mastering eng....I at some point over the last few years fell into just completely forgetting about mixing and mastering while I'm writing. Aside from the EQ w/ Spec Analyzer just to keep an eye on my frequencies and what could potentially become a problem later down the line, maybe a compressor set up pretty fast with a very fast release time....just barely nudged down until it begins to compress ever so slightly, mostly just so I get "the sound" from it and I can hear it as part of my mix...then I give it just a touch backwards so I am still getting a little action and a bit of the sound of it to boot. So in a nutshell its not doing much at all...just guiding my mixdown basically. And of course keep the makeup gain down so I'm not boosting the signal much at all...just hearing what the compressor is doing. A/B comparisons work out very nicely when it's got no make up gain worth speaking of..I'll just hear the compressors behavior. Then on the end of the chain... a limiter...again set so ridiulously lightly that its not getting to do much. Mostly just hanging out in case something jumps out and it can just tick off the overly spikey transients and to let the signal flow thru it so it too can influence my mixdown... slightly.

Then I just write away, usually taking care of the simple EQ'ing (like HPFs and LPFs and maybe a little de-mudding if needed but no real intimate EQ'ing) and SC Comps set up where needed (and settings dialed in so they are working just as I'd like them to) as I write but no heavy duty mangling or squashing or anything too intensive at this time. Alot of the times while I'm writing, my master meter is banging around somewhere near 0dBFS. (Much too hot for the processing to come later on but who cares for now...just wanna make it sound good). But I do try and get a rough mix of all the tracks going while I am still writing. Many times it will be way too loud...but its a mix I am liking or at the very least a solid start for when the real mixdown comes. When I'm finally done tweaking and fixing and adding parts and changing synths and rewriting that part and maybe that one too...etc, etc....lol I then start thinking about the proper mix. This is usually when I finalize that rough mix I started with. Get it sounding exactly how I want it with heavy EQ work...compression on individual sounds if necessary. Always compress my bus channels (albeit very lightly)...as I like to use all of my compressors in this way. Starting with individual channels, then the bus and then the first compressor on the Mixbus or Master channel depending what DAW you're in. As I'm constantly checking in on the mixbus chain to see if any of my settings are now irrelevant due to the levels and sounds changing during the mixdown and make the necessary changes as I go but always keeping them relatively light.

Now that the mix is nice and shiny, that's when I grab all of my faders and bring them all down (relative to one another of course) until my master is reading somewhere around -10. Take a nice long break to give my ears some rest and then come back in and do those final touches. This channel needs a bump up a couple dB or so...this one down a dB...that one...up a hair...etc, etc. This almost always put me right where I want to be for sending it out to the mastering house. Usually somewhere around -8dB to -5dB. Most of the mastering engineers I have spoken to prefer a mix that sits no louder than -6dB and they won't complain one bit if you give them something close to -10dB either although that may be pushing it in the opposite direction a bit too much as well...according to some other guys. So I shoot to stay at least a couple dB away from their Do Not Cross This Number....number! lol The more headroom they have to work with the better, within reason of course. Going too far in the opposite direction...well that is an entire discussion to its own but I don't think that's a problem for us too often. :)

Thats one bounce to be sent out, check it here, check it there...check it on every damn system I can get my hands on just to hopefully see some continuity and if not make the appropriate corrections.

Then another for playing it out right away I will usually just tighten up my settings. Get a little more aggressive with the first fast compressor (hoping to take care of the few really spiky trans that I don't want hitting the limiter and causing it to react on something I can handle before it gets there. Then lastly pull down the threshold on the limiter just to get some more gain...without completely squaring off the damn thing (as I see this EVERYWHERE and it makes me wanna puke!) But loud enough to where I can still play it out and have plenty of loudness (mixers have volume knobs too... :) for the club or event I'm in. Some times I go crazy and add things like a really good saturation plug used extremely subtly and a really good multi band stereo image plug that allows me to mono my low low end and selectively spread each of the other bands to taste.

Holy moly...i think I've over answered! lol Sorry guys I had no intentions of writing a book, buuut I am sleep deprived here and I was just thinking about this when I ran into this rotting corpse of a thread...so I thought I'd raise the dead thread with an overly complicated, over-answered...answer! lol

Ok, gonna get some sleep now... :)
 
There is a difference between mixing through a bass compressor to glue the mix together and mixing into a multi-band compressor.

the multi-band should be done in a separate pass, if at all. It fundamentally changes the tone and balance of all the instruments, if you are tweaking that while you are mixing, you can easily get into a situation where you are doing something like cracking the highs in the mix to make up for bringing them down in the multi-band. Its way too easy the chase your tail and end up with a goofy sounding mix.

It is so much better to get the mix sounding right on its own, render it, then do all thru mastering-type processing in a separate process.
 
One thing to remember is that adding a compressor to the master fader does nothing to your mix until you actually mix it down. During the process of mixing, it's only changing what you hear. Frankly, whatever the arguments about dynamic range on the final mix, the OP's procedure doesn't do much other than mean you're listening to a sound that you can't/won't/shouldn't use at the end of the process.

Now, a thought about using the Master fader during the mix. Frankly, it depends on whether your DAW uses an older integer based system or a better 32 bit floating point internally. I've never used Nuendo so don't know what the situation is there. However, if it IS floating point then there's absolutely no reason not to use the Master to regulate the overall level while mixing. It's a valid weapon in your armoury and you shouldn't feel constrained by the bad things that used to happen. (Perhaps my view is affected by the fact that Cool Edit/Adobe Audition was the first DAW to work in 32 bit FP so I've had around 15 years to get used to it.) On the other hand, if you're stuck with an integer based system then I must agree with the advice to leave the Master at zero.
 
Nuendo is 32 bit float. But if there are plugins inserted on the master buss and the signal feeding the master buss is above 0dbfs, it really screws with how much control you have with the compressor settings and such.

However, you can turn down the trim on the master buss to get the signal feeding the channel down where it needs to be. It is usually cleaner to just keep proper gain structure through the whole thing, then you don't have to worry about this sort of thing.
 
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