Peak Limiting... without destroying the music?

[Steve-0]

Hi, I'm Steve. I'm new here. I've been doing home recording (as in terrible sounding DI guitar tracks) for a few years, but I've recently gotten into the art a little bit more and I thought I'd join the forum (I've been lurking for a while) and see what's up.

Anyway, I'm primarily a musician, and I'm not a big fan of having every ounce of dynamic range smashed out of compositions that I've worked really hard on, so I'm not the biggest fan of using Peak Limiting, at least in more than a subtle fashion.

I'm not really interested in making my tracks match what's on the new Big Rock Album of the Week as far as volume is concerned, but I'd like to at least some punch and volume to a recording. Not enough to destroy the music, but enough to at least make the difference in volume between a pro-rock track and my track a little less significant. (I use the Waves Maximizer plug for this.)

I know it depends on the genre, and the song itself, but I was wondering if someone could give me (or link me to) an idea of what the dynamic range is on a modern rock album, or a ballpark for the RMS of the same, so that I could back it off by a few dB and make a good compromise between loud and dynamic. Or if you think this is a shitty idea, why? I know I should rely on my ears for what sounds best, and don't go louder than that, but I'm new to mastering in general, and although I can hear the difference between "compressed" and "way too compressed" I don't exactly have golden ears yet.

I've managed to get a couple metal-ish songs with pretty consistent instrumentation up to about -10dBFS or so without hating the way it sounds but it's all downhill from there the louder it gets.

-Steve

 

[mshilarious]

I'm going to assume you aren't using real drums, which should make your task a bit easier.

First off, -10dBFS RMS is fairly loud, and you aren't likely to be able to exceed that with peak limiting unless the underlying tracks are properly recorded and mixed. Punch doesn't come from a limiter. In fact, you can think of a limiter as a de-puncher.

This is because when we look at a compression envelope, you can think of punch being the attack, and peak limiters by definition have an extremely fast attack. So if you've set up a track to bleed a few dB of punch on the attack before the compression kicks in, a peak limiter could undo that.

The next issue is what is triggering the peak limiter? Often that would be drum hits that don't peak at the same level, but that's a feature of real drums more so than e-drums. But if you have a few egregious peaks sticking out, use a volume envelope to control them. If you have a lot, either retrack or use the limiter on that track rather than the whole mix.

Next, what is the maximizer doing? More than peak limiting, usually. This raises the question of what the frequency balance of the music is before limiting. You can crank the RMS figure of a mix by turning up the treble, but it sounds horrible. I recently heard the GnR track "Chinese Democracy". The low end was very, very punchy, one of the best I've heard; obviously a $14M professional mix

But the highs were simply turned up to ear bleed level. Why? For an RMS score? I hope not.

Anyway, that's just one example, but if your frequency balance is out of whack, limiting can often just make the sound much worse. This is probably the ceiling you are hitting now.

If all the ducks are in a row mix-wise, you can safely and easily get a few more dB on a limiter, but I wouldn't try to go much beyond -10dBFS RMS, because at some point it's just a numbers game and not music.

 

[Massive Master]

up to about -10dBFS or so without hating the way it sounds but it's all downhill from there the louder it gets.

If it makes you feel any better, I've never - ever - heard a recording that sounded better at -10dB(FS)RMS than it did at -14. Not once, not ever and I don't ever expect to.

-10dBRMS "Without hating" on its own is saying something. I tend to pretty much "hate" things that are up around -10dBRMS. Not that I'm not as guilty as any other mastering guy (or gal) out there in "crushing" (usually with some measure of protest) projects - But it's truly a rare mix that actually sounds "good" at that level.

 

[Steve-0]

I'm going to assume you aren't using real drums, which should make your task a bit easier.

First off...

...If all the ducks are in a row mix-wise, you can safely and easily get a few more dB on a limiter, but I wouldn't try to go much beyond -10dBFS RMS, because at some point it's just a numbers game and not music.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a great reply. I really appreciate it.

I am certainly using e-drums (I don't have the equipment or skill to do a better job with real ones,) and it does make it easy to keep all the hits pretty close to the same level.

I don't think I really want to go beyond 10dBFS actually, I think I kinda wanna back off a few dB in fact. I would love to sound as loud as every Death Magnetic track, but I don't want to sound as horrible. I have a demo I'm recording for my band and I'm thinking somewhere between -14 and -12dbFS, so it's good to know that as long as I mix it really well that I can go at least that far without too much sonic destruction.

I do try to set my compressors to kick in just late enough to let the attack of the drum in. I haven't been entirely sure that's what I'm "supposed" to do, but if I set the compressor to be too fast it sounds horrible to me and I can't stand to do it, least of all to drums.

I've actually never considered using a limiter on anything other than the final mix of a track, but now that I consider it I can see situations in which it might be really useful, especially one something like a snare hit.

My peak limiter is multi-band, and even if I have a high pass at like 50hz right before it, it always seems to be triggering from below that frequency range, so I just set it to cut and ignore about 40hz or so and below entirely, it seems to work well enough and let the other bands be a bit louder before the limiter smacks them down.

Chinese Democracy probably has a great low end because they've had 14 or so years to work on it, and it probably has bleeding highs because the people who mixed it have been working for so long on it, that they're all really old and can't hear anything higher than 10k anymore.

I really want to hear the album, even though I'm not expecting much.

Thanks again for your reply, I do appreciate you taking the time to write it.

-Steve

 

[Steve-0]

If it makes you feel any better, I've never - ever - heard a recording that sounded better at -10dB(FS)RMS than it did at -14. Not once, not ever and I don't ever expect to.

-10dBRMS "Without hating" on its own is saying something. I tend to pretty much "hate" things that are up around -10dBRMS. Not that I'm not as guilty as any other mastering guy (or gal) out there in "crushing" (usually with some measure of protest) projects - But it's truly a rare mix that actually sounds "good" at that level.

Thanks for taking the time to write. =)

I'm certainly considering backing off to more like, 14dB or so because even at 10dB when I don't hate it, I still kinda hate it, and because I'm certainly not good enough at my mixing to really go that high without sounding terrible.

My other thread has a song that's about 10dB though, just because I was trying to match the loudness of the studio version we did a year ago and I took it a little too far, and I can certainly hear parts of it that make me want to never listen to it again.

-Steve