Ok, this goes into the "new guy trying to use common sense" department.
As I get more and more samples back from mastering houses that offer a free preview, I swear, they all seem to simply be EQ'd and then limited to death. While some offer a tradeoff between "loudness and quality", I wonder if really all that is going on here is some EQ, and deciding how far to slide the Threshold control on the limiter. (Note, one master house that gave me a sample did not do this, offered various samples at different settings, and overall have been great).
Again... I'm new to this, but I think I'm a pretty smart guy...
What I did in my own master is simply automate the Threshold (not to mention I also automated the priority for which freq bands the threshold is applied to in the L3-Multi). This allows me to maximize the softer parts of the song, and then back off the gain for the louder parts of the song so I keep the limiting to a minimum. The song *IS* a loud in your face song, so I am not shy about getting the thing loud, but in the samples I got back from some of the mastering houses, they slam the hell out of it and the big crescendo ending is pumping and heaving all over the place, and the kick drum is getting mashed.
Or should I be volume equalizing my mix? However, it seems that really is for the mastering phase, so if my mix will have variance (i.e. first verses are just one instrument and a vocal, last verses an all in fire and brimstone in your face rage), then it seems I need to boost the first verses to fill the radio. If I boost the first verses to get to -0.3db, then of course, my last verses will be crushed unless I automate the threshold.
So... this is what I am doing. It sounds great honestly, but what am I missing here, or doing wrong?
As I get more and more samples back from mastering houses that offer a free preview, I swear, they all seem to simply be EQ'd and then limited to death. While some offer a tradeoff between "loudness and quality", I wonder if really all that is going on here is some EQ, and deciding how far to slide the Threshold control on the limiter. (Note, one master house that gave me a sample did not do this, offered various samples at different settings, and overall have been great).
Again... I'm new to this, but I think I'm a pretty smart guy...
What I did in my own master is simply automate the Threshold (not to mention I also automated the priority for which freq bands the threshold is applied to in the L3-Multi). This allows me to maximize the softer parts of the song, and then back off the gain for the louder parts of the song so I keep the limiting to a minimum. The song *IS* a loud in your face song, so I am not shy about getting the thing loud, but in the samples I got back from some of the mastering houses, they slam the hell out of it and the big crescendo ending is pumping and heaving all over the place, and the kick drum is getting mashed.
Or should I be volume equalizing my mix? However, it seems that really is for the mastering phase, so if my mix will have variance (i.e. first verses are just one instrument and a vocal, last verses an all in fire and brimstone in your face rage), then it seems I need to boost the first verses to fill the radio. If I boost the first verses to get to -0.3db, then of course, my last verses will be crushed unless I automate the threshold.
So... this is what I am doing. It sounds great honestly, but what am I missing here, or doing wrong?
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