Like A Candle by Peter D Jakobsen | Free Listening on SoundCloud
Am I mixing it too loud?
Any suggestions, not just to the mix but overall?
Am I mixing it too loud?
Any suggestions, not just to the mix but overall?
PS I actually downloaded starboy and imported it into protools to reference.. but I guess my track might have been louder.. but not much or I would have noticed.
You will find that it is better to go for clarity and punch (loudness perception), You just have to settle with the best you can get. Over compressed and distorted is not at all the way you want to go. You are actually going to get the opposite result.
Ashway , I've found it better to export the best mix I can come up with , averaging no louder than -6 db including the peaks to a folder on my desktop. Then I import the mix into a project I have set up for mastering. That's when Ozone comes into play. The very last thing in my chain is Lufs metering checking for spikes and overs caused by Ozone. The basic versions will sometimes let real quick spikes thru at times. If it's just a couple of quick ones I'll just use "G clip" on them without having to remix. -14 lufs is the target and plenty loud. If its' louder other streaming sites will turn it down anyway. Good luck .. ms
CC, I looked at the final mix in Orban, and did the stereo mix in Reaper with SWS Loudness. The LUFS readings were almost identical. Then I split the stereo track into two monos to compare the channels. That's what is in the screen cap above. All faders are set at 0, so I didn't boost or drop anything.
Maybe I'm hearing something different, but it seems the whole song has a distorted "haze", including the drums and the vocals in the chorus. I listened on two different systems, and it was apparent to me on both. That just makes a good song unlistenable for me.
It may be that the original instruments have that distortion on them. That's possible with synths depending on the waveform built. But the vocals should NOT have that type of sound unless that's what the singer wants and purposely made them that way.
The OP asked it it was mastered too loud. Certainly it will get squashed by any of the streaming services, but it may not just be an issue with mastering. If the original tracks were recorded loud and have distortion, then that's going to carry through the whole process. By that point, the damage is done, so no amount of volume decrease will change the overall sound.
Perhaps someone else has some ideas.