Opinion on mix/master

I don't think just turning the main volume fader up for the bounce before mastering is going to make a difference (unless that causes a clipped file). What you're fighting is the crest factor, also known as the peak to average ratio. To make things have a higher average (and LUFS is a sort of measure of average), you need to decrease the peaks relative to the average so you can turn the whole thing up without clipping.

Distorted guitars by nature have a pretty low peak to average ratio. They're probably not adding much to the peaks of the song. Percussion tends to have high peaks relative to their average levels. Putting a limiter on snare and kick is usually needed to push the average levels up. Vocals can have substantial peak levels as well. But if you're shooting for 6dBLUFS, it's going to be really hard to make things work and still sound okay.

One thing I've found that increases peaks is high shelf boosts. On a couple of my mixes I could not get my level up without exceeding allowed true peak levels, even with a decent mastering limiter. I found that if I swapped out the high shelf boost on the overheads for a bell curve boost, it cured the peaking problem. You might try changing your HF eq, or adding a low pass filter on the whole mix.
 
Cool, to be fair I normally add a bit of compression to kick/snare, but I have never added a limiter to them. I am going to go back to my mix and see what I can have a play with to make a difference. :)

Out of interest what sort of range do you think I should be aiming for in regards to reduction on the limiter for the kick/snare?
 
Elliottina said:
Cool, to be fair I normally add a bit of compression to kick/snare, but I have never added a limiter to them. I am going to go back to my mix and see what I can have a play with to make a difference. :)

Out of interest what sort of range do you think I should be aiming for in regards to reduction on the limiter for the kick/snare?
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I don't know, maybe two or three dB each. It's the kind of thing where I really need to get my hands on the mix, and even then I can't say for certain I could do much better.

You could try soloing one channel at a time to see what's popping the meter the most.
 
Maybe you could put your current mix up on Dropbox or Google Drive in a non-lossy, 24-bit WAV format so someone could download it to see where the problems peaks are? Doesn't have to be the whole thing, just 30sec or so that's representative. Trim it down in Audacity and export the selected portion, is one quick way to get the excerpt.
 
Just something that I have found with Youlean, if you put it on the master track, it is probably pre-master fader. That means if you up the master fader, Youlean won't see the level change. It might say your peaks are -2 and if you bump the master +4, you clip. Your rendered file has different specs than what you saw premastered.

Keep the master fader at 0 or even -1 and you should be OK. I don't know if that's a factor with your mix, just something I've seen.

Also, if you are using an MP3 file for a reference, MP3 can recreate a file over 0dB in the decompression process. If you use the WAV file, it should not show anything above 0dB
 
Hey guys,

So, sorry it's been a few days. I have had some stuff going on at home.

I have taken a bit of a stock take of things, and had a rethink about how I wanted to attack this.

First off, I have tried putting a limiter on the kick and the snare. Not only do I think it has helped a bit with the mastering, but I feel it has helped with evening out the snare sound. It's still not what I would have if it was my snare but I am reasonably happy with it now as a compromise between what I would have and the sound that drummer had for his snare.

Part of my rethinking has been about what my goals actually are, and how I want the music I make to sound. On reflection I think I was focusing way too much on that one reference track because I saw the style of that track as being the closest I had to the band that I had recorded. However, as much as I do like Black Stone Cherry, in truth the music that I personally love/love the sound of the most is the rock/grunge/metal of the early 90's. So I spent some time doing some research. I basically ran a load of the type of music I love/would like to be able to produce through Youlean, and I have also done the same with some of the tracks I have that have been recorded in "proper studios" by bands I have been in, that we were happy with the quality of.
The 90's stuff is WAY quieter in the master than some of the newer stuff. I even ran a remastered Pearl Jam track that was louder than the original 90's one, but still coming up over 2 LUFS quieter than Black Stone Cherry.
So, anyway, what I drew up was a table that included the major points from the Youlean meter, as well as the RMS level of all these tracks, and then an upper, lower, and average amount for each value.
My thinking is that if I am hitting somewhere between the 90's and newer recordings, that should be a perfectly acceptable range where they still sound "new(ish)" but retain an older aesthetic (and make it easier on my cheap equipment not to clip the hell out of a track lol)

So, this is my latest attempt. I have tried it on a couple of speakers in my house, and haven't noticed anything too terrible with it, although I haven't had chance to try it out in my car yet, which is where I have picked up problems before. On the Youlean though I am pretty much in the range of the table I drew up. The only issue I can see from the Youlean is the True Peak is still coming in a little bit higher than it probably should be (although, all the "pro tracks" I ran through Youlean came up as above 0dB, mine is still higher), however it is still coming out lower than it was before, so I am kind of hoping that it is close enough.

So yea, let me know if there is anything you think I can still do better. I am still very much up for learning how to do these things better if I can. (and here's hoping this new one isn't a total mess since I haven't done the car test lol)


View attachment LandminesLUFSRemaster.mp3
 
TalismanRich said:
Just something that I have found with Youlean, if you put it on the master track, it is probably pre-master fader. That means if you up the master fader, Youlean won't see the level change. It might say your peaks are -2 and if you bump the master +4, you clip. Your rendered file has different specs than what you saw premastered.

Keep the master fader at 0 or even -1 and you should be OK. I don't know if that's a factor with your mix, just something I've seen.

Also, if you are using an MP3 file for a reference, MP3 can recreate a file over 0dB in the decompression process. If you use the WAV file, it should not show anything above 0dB
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Yes, I have noticed it do that as well. I try to change the volume of the channel track rather than the master is I can to combat that.

Having said that I have my master fader set to -1 now, and with the limiter set with a -0.1 ceiling it's coming out at -1.1 :)
 
keith.rogers said:
Maybe you could put your current mix up on Dropbox or Google Drive in a non-lossy, 24-bit WAV format so someone could download it to see where the problems peaks are? Doesn't have to be the whole thing, just 30sec or so that's representative. Trim it down in Audacity and export the selected portion, is one quick way to get the excerpt.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks Keith, I appreciate that. It's getting a bit late here. Just popped on to reply here quickly before I go to bed. I will try and get a WAV file on my google drive tomorrow and post the link to it here tomorrow :)
 
There are some nice parts to this....vocals sit quite well but there are some guitars in there that just sound set out the mix, Mostly those panned hard right. Timing is an issue on those early kicks. It all needs blending a little better but not a bad effort.
 
This latest version is WAY better than the first. Still that early guitar throwing it off early in the left channel.
 
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