mastering and normalizing

[jef]

i am trying to master some of my latest songs, and i don't seem to get them loud enough without getting digital clipping. a friend of mine, who is a sound technician, told me i should get my average volume around -12 dB for digital recording, but when i keep my peak level at -0.1 dB, my average output is too low (when i analysed it with audiograbber, it appeared that my peaks went up to 100 %, whereas my average was about 21 %, and i had a compact ratio of about 35%). i tried putting a compressor (digitalfishphones endorphin) on the master mix, but even when i cranked the compression sliders up to the maximum, i couldn't get my average output higher than 32 % (unless i just put up the volume, but then i got peaks of 8 dB). should i use more than one compressor? or just another one (i've also got the timeworks mastering compressor, but it doesn't seem to do much more than boosting volume (average and peaks)). and by using more than one compressor, won't i lose too much of my dynamic range (well, i haven't really noticed that actually)? most of my song start of pretty soft (as in 'one acoustic guitar and vocals'), and end a little louder (some percussion, an accordeon, a bass, things like that).
any solution is most welcome
thanks
jef

oh yeah, does someone have a conversion scale for dB and the percentvalues used in audiograbber? it's not hard to figure out that 100% is 0dB, but i'd like to know how much % -12dB would be.

and yet another oh yeah: i've bought a new sound card yesterday, an m-audio mobile pre usb, and though it sounds good and has less noise than a behringer eurorack plugged in my fabric soundcard, it seems to have some difficulties when i'm running more than 4 tracks in my mix (i use acid pro). it produces some clicks and sometimes breaks down in nintendo-ish low bitrate noise. i thinks this is weird, 'cause normally just the mastermix goes back through the audio interface (i suppose), and that's just one stereo track...

 

[jef]

i don't know what else i might be doing wrong, but feel free to listen to some of my tracks on www.myspace.com/jefendefijnevleeswaren . maybe you'll find some things out that i don't know about. all these songs are recorded with a shure pg58 mic run through a behringer eurorack plugged straight in to the line in of my (dell optiplex) computer's fabric soundcard. they were mixed in acid pro 4.0 using as least effects as possible, to obtain a 'live' sound. some eq's and an occasional reverb were used, and mastering was limited to some minor compression using the free digitalfishphones endorphin.

 

[mshilarious]

i am trying to master some of my latest songs, and i don't seem to get them loud enough without getting digital clipping. a friend of mine, who is a sound technician, told me i should get my average volume around -12 dB for digital recording, but when i keep my peak level at -0.1 dB, my average output is too low

Well let's start with your friend. -12dBRMS (average level) is fairly loud, although not quite stupidly loud, it's getting there. It is louder than the normal dynamics of a typical rock mix, which before compression might mixdown to -16 or so. So you are wanting 4dB of compression or limiting.

But first, it's not a good idea to push every song to the same RMS. Some tunes will just break down and sound like poo. For a natural sound, it's difficult if not impossible to get more than 2 dB of RMS gain on the master.

So I would suggest you start with a good mix in the -16 range, and shoot for -14. If you mix is well below -16, it is either a bad mix, or just a very dynamic song that shouldn't be pushed too loud.

(when i analysed it with audiograbber, it appeared that my peaks went up to 100 %, whereas my average was about 21 %, and i had a compact ratio of about 35%). i tried putting a compressor (digitalfishphones endorphin) on the master mix, but even when i cranked the compression sliders up to the maximum, i couldn't get my average output higher than 32 % (unless i just put up the volume, but then i got peaks of 8 dB). should i use more than one compressor? or just another one (i've also got the timeworks mastering compressor, but it doesn't seem to do much more than boosting volume (average and peaks)).

I dunno about your specific plugs, but a general approach would be to first look at your EQ and see if you have some frequencies, especially low-end, that are out of whack. Fix your EQ, then progress on to compression. Try to get about 1dB from compression, and the 1dB from limiting.

and by using more than one compressor, won't i lose too much of my dynamic range (well, i haven't really noticed that actually)? most of my song start of pretty soft (as in 'one acoustic guitar and vocals'), and end a little louder (some percussion, an accordeon, a bass, things like that).

By definition, in making your average level louder, you are trying to get rid of dynamic range. This is probably not a good thing, but that is what you want to do.

oh yeah, does someone have a conversion scale for dB and the percentvalues used in audiograbber? it's not hard to figure out that 100% is 0dB, but i'd like to know how much % -12dB would be.

dB = 20* log ( % )

-6 is 50%
-12 is 25%

32% average output is -10dBRMS, which is almostly certainly way way way too loud.

 

[mshilarious]

OK I listened to "callmeyour". This is -22dBRMS right now, but that's because of relatively few stray peaks, mostly the percussion in the left channel, and a few errant recorder peaks. Go back to the mix and compress those instruments (or just turn them down), or in the case of the recorder, edit the peaks. Once those are under control you'll get a free 3 or 4 dB. You could then use a little compression and limiting on the master to get a couple more dB. Most of the track is well under -6dBFS, so that should be very safe.

It's a fairly quiet, open song though, it's probably a mistake to push it past -16dBRMS.

 

[jef]

are you sure about this percentual values? i ran a 'real' professional song of a normal audio cd through the audiograbber analyzer, and it read "peak 100.0, Avg 74.28, compact ratio 70.09'. this song has quite the same dynamic flow as most of mine, but i suppose it's not recorded digitally. if i just turn up the main volume of my songs, i can get the same average value, but the peaks are like 6 dB.

 

[jef]

thanks for the listening and advice. i think i did more or less what you adviced me to, and i uploaded the new version of the song

 

[mshilarious]

are you sure about this percentual values? i ran a 'real' professional song of a normal audio cd through the audiograbber analyzer, and it read "peak 100.0, Avg 74.28, compact ratio 70.09'. this song has quite the same dynamic flow as most of mine, but i suppose it's not recorded digitally. if i just turn up the main volume of my songs, i can get the same average value, but the peaks are like 6 dB.

Yes, I am sure about percentages to decibels, what I am not sure about is how your program is calculating averages, or what the compact ratio is. It seems that it has its own, rather non-standard calculations.

How loud a track ends up has little to do with the recording medium. The average commercial CD has gotten much louder since studios have moved to digital recording.

 

[mshilarious]

thanks for the listening and advice. i think i did more or less what you adviced me to, and i uploaded the new version of the song

It's better, but there are still stray peaks. Go back to the percussion track and compress it--each hit should peak at the same place, if you want to get maximum level out of the entire track.

Next if you want it louder, I would turn down the loud section by 2 or 3 dB, and then hit the entire track with a limiter at +4 dB or so.

 

[jef]

thanks a lot. i've done what you said for all the acoustic tracks, and now they have more or less the same loudness as things that studio people record. or so it seems. i learn a lot these days (i had never used a limiter before)...

 

[jef]

though the mastering issues seem to be cleared, i till have some other: i have bought the m-audio mobile pre this week, mainly because i thought my behringer eurorack+dell fabric soundcard was a noisy combination. unfortunately i seem to have some problems with it. when i hook up my mic, everything is fine, and i have less noise than with my previous setup. however, when i hook up my synth (using the line-in), i get quite a lot of AC-hum (well, i suppose it is, as it's about 50 Hz). this is not a very big problem (i can easily eliminate the hum with an eq), but there is more... playing audiofiles is no problem, but when i play my mixes in acid pro, i often get clicks when a new track starts (like, for instance, there are three tracks (bass, snare, guitar) running, and the vocals drop in). moreover, when a relatively high number of tracks (say more than five) are running simultaneously, it often occurs that my sound suddenly distorts and sounds like a broken nintendo (as in 'broken nintendo'-guitar instead of acoustic). quite annoying. when i stop the sound, and i try again, it mostly works fine. but it's still crappy. this didn't happen with my eurorack+stock soundcard.
i always thought your soundcard just plays the stereo master track, and not every track apart. so i supposed acid pro did the 'thinking', putting the tracks together, not the soundcard. this still seems quite reasonable to me.
a possible explanation could be that the m-audio mobile pre uses too much of the memory for acid to work fine, but then again i have one gig of RAM, and acid only uses about 40 Mb, whereas the mobile pre uses 5 Mb. choosing a higher latitude setting doesn't solve the occasional clicking and distorting, so it must be something else. and the recordings are 44.1 kHz and 16 bit, so nothing fancy.

 

[jef]

ah look. apparently i have only half a gig of ram.
darn.

 

[mshilarious]

ah look. apparently i have only half a gig of ram.
darn.

Not sure about all the other stuff, but the hum is probably a ground loop. Put the synth on the same outlet as the m-audio and see if that helps. Also try a different cable, and try to use as short a cable as possible.