bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
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.
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.