Mastering without compression?

ashcat_lt said:
LOL. IDK where you learned this kinda math, but... ;)

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Edit - To be fair to @keith.rogers, LUFS math isn't exactly as straightforward as RMS or peak math because of the way LUFS is sort of dynamically windowed. Changing the overall level can actually change which samples even get figured into the calculations. I tend to think that a 4db discrepancy would be fairly extreme, though. :)
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I wasn't exactly saying that the LUFS would change 1:1, but the peak(s) *will* change exactly by the amount of gain you apply. (Well, the "theoretical" peaks after D/A, of course.) That's arithmetic. But, you might try using gain on a low mix and see what happens to LUFS. It does depend on the content, but in my simple [mix] world, it's often fairly linear up to a point, maybe enough for a voice-over part of a video, for instance, so long as you have a low-enough noise floor.
 
Don't use compression as a limiter, it has an attack time, even if setting the attack time to the fastest and at the highest ratio. A decent limiter has a lookahead time.
 
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The ReaComp can go down to 0 attack time. If you set the RMS to the lowest value, it's effectively instantaneous. And it has a pre-comp setting.

But I still prefer Pro-L 2.
 
ReaComp, nice to know. I'll try it out at some point.

L2 is THE limiter, I wish others would have that handy level matching handle. I wish it was a standard feature for every limiter
 
bouldersoundguy said:
You can download the whole Cockos plugin pack for free.
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The VST versions which work in other DAWs are not necessarily completely up to date, but ReaComp has worked as a decent limiter for quite a while. It’ll also do hard clipping and newer versions (not the VSTs) will work pretty well as a lightweight saturation as well.
In Reaper itself we also have ReaLimit, which compares favorably to the more popular limiter plugins.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
I'm sure there are limits to it, but streaming services nowadays will automatically boost/limit your mixes to match the overall volume of the platform.

In the 90s through late 2010s, mastering a recording to commercial standards did require compression.
When working with analog formats, mastering meant adjusting the audio to sound its best on the specific medium.

We're finally at the point where digital singles don't need anything special for mastering. As farview put it. Do things that make the track sound better. If the track sounds the best it can, then it's mastered I guess, regardless of if you compressed it
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Not if the material you submit to them falls within their guidelines. I do my best to make sure the mixes that I work on don't end up being changed by the service. YMMV.
 
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