Transients, limiters and LUFS

P

PFC9

New member
I noticed aiming for a good loudness (-9 LUFS) I'm always stuggling with drums transients.
I end up with something like 5 or 6 dB of gain reduction on snare hits; lowering snare track with fader or using saturation (tape or soft clipping) "helps", but doesn't solve the problem (since everybody talks about 1-2 dB fo GR maximum on their final limiter). Where am I wrong? Is it a desperate fight looking for loud, punchy drums and good mix/master RMS?
 
Well, I'd love to say that -9lufs is astronomically gargantuan. But in this century I know it's not. So...as a layman...try sidechaining. Since snare hits are fleeting, use sidechain compression to duck other stuff out the way of the snare. You can duck the bass, all the guitars, whatever. This way you can possibly build everything around the snare nice and robust...but for that split second when the snare hits...stuff can duck out of the way. Accumulatively, when you duck a bunch of stuff out of the way it might be effective. It also means that you're not constantly addressing the snare itself...trying to limit the piss out of it or saturate it to hell and back. If you give it room by ducking everything else then everything else can exist tight in and around the snare without feeling like you've got to keep boosting the snare to get it present on top of everything. Use this strategy in addition to other stuff probably, not as a silver bullet. Maybe, I dunno.
 
I would say that -9LUFS is a fairly high level to aim for and that it is probably too high for your material. Try easing back by a couple of dB.

Have you tried parallel compression? That is a good technique to use if you want to retain transients but bring the level up.

It may also be worth posting an unmastered extract somewhere for people to comment on.
 
What are your reference tracks that you're trying to emulate? Analyze them and figure out how to do what they're doing, is what I'd be trying. And, maybe post just a snippet of one of those that does what you want to do, along with your unprocessed bit.
 
I'd be curious to see what your overall track levels are prior to your 2 buss limiter. I am also curious whether you think your mix sounds good now, but you feel the need to control the transients simple to control the LUFS meter?
 
Is there specific reasoning behind aiming for -9 LUFS?

I would call that level A. really loud and B. pretty common for rock music mastered for CD.

Does that level include leaving any headroom between your peaks and 0 dBFS?
 
58andCounting said:
I'd be curious to see what your overall track levels are prior to your 2 buss limiter. I am also curious whether you think your mix sounds good now, but you feel the need to control the transients simple to control the LUFS meter?
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I'm aiming for -20dB RMS, around -6dBFS peaks. My drums bus peaks between -9 and -6dBF. My master chain for "home mastering" is: HP filter around 30hz, SSL-like bus comp (10-20ms att, Auto release, 4:1 ratio, 1-2dB GR), MB comp for getting lows in control, 2dB GR clipper, 3-4dB GR limiter, 1-2 dB GR extra limiter with -0.5dBFS True Peaks. I'm afraid that's already A LOT of GR/limiter effort and it's all about snare/kick peaks (limiter doesn't reach "the meat" of sound). Any advices?
 
rob aylestone said:
I could not tell you my specs like you have? I have no idea I just mix till it's sounding what I want, then I'll check levels - and only the master stereo bus not individual tracks!
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That's good, but I can't reach a good level (-10/-9 LUFS) without involving a huge amount of GR... So I must be wrong somewhere BEFORE reaching the master bus.
 
This topic comes up a lot. The biggest issue is often arrangement and automation issues. Depending on the genre there are going to be different ideals. However, in any track that is supposed to be drum driven, the easiest way to keep levels even is to do more LCR where the only thing really centered are the drums, bass and leads, with a bit of reverb.

Getting loud sounding drums while reducing peaks is most easily accomplished by parallel processing. NOT squashing with a compressor on the original track and trying to blend with a mix knob on the comp/limiter. Squash separately, mix back in and watch those average levels go up while the peaks go down
 
Probably I'm such a newbie I miss something. Let's say I have my drum bus peaking at -6dBFS everytime the snare hits. Now, I add bass and guitars and stuff. To keep a sense of dynamic and punch, there's quite a difference in amplitude between those snare peaks and "meat", no less than 3-4 dB. With a limiter, pushing the meat against the threshold, you get 4 dB of GR. I wonder if the whole thing is about crest factor, so keeping drums lower (really lower!) during balancing: why always struggling for "keeping transients untouched" when those transients drive limiter like crazy (to reach a decent loudness)?
 
PFC9 said:
Probably I'm such a newbie I miss something. Let's say I have my drum bus peaking at -6dBFS everytime the snare hits. Now, I add bass and guitars and stuff. To keep a sense of dynamic and punch, there's quite a difference in amplitude between those snare peaks and "meat", no less than 3-4 dB. With a limiter, pushing the meat against the threshold, you get 4 dB of GR. I wonder if the whole thing is about crest factor, so keeping drums lower (really lower!) during balancing: why always struggling for "keeping transients untouched" when those transients drive limiter like crazy (to reach a decent loudness)?
Click to expand...

As James basically said, don't overthink it. Don't analyze your meters. Don't look at everything in terms of level #s. Just mix your music and experiment.
It helps (sometimes) to lower all your faders well below clipping and start again. Mixing is as individual as the music itself, regardless of time-proven techniques. Don't clip your digital audio; outside of that, everything is allowed. And as a word of observational support... just mix. Don't attempt to mix and 'home' master (as you put it) at the same time.

My 2-buss chain is my favorite chain. And it's my most vibiest gear IMO. But it never comes at the expense of the fundamental mix.
I am a big proponent of mixing with a 2-buss comp/limiter but learning your mixes without it is useful.

I'd love to hear the mix in question.
 
One of the ways to do this is to compress the drums in the mix, instead of at the mix buss.

Having don't a lot of metal, I would end up compressing the drums at the individual channel level, then send them to a buss and compress there as well.

This has the effect of lengthening the drum 'note' which can make it more apparent in the mix without having to be as loud in the mix as it would be otherwise. Which keeps the mix buss compressor from having to work as hard
 
Yeah, I've got same approach: I go for compression for sound shaping, limiting/clipping on individual drums track, then compression AND parallel compression on drums bus, but I always feel like snare is needy about extra taming and I was wondering how much GR do u guys get through saturation (tape? Tube?) to level out the whole percussions thing to get that matchable with other stuff (avoiding mix bus limiter working like 5-6 dB of GR to get a loud master)...
 
I don't use saturation or parallel compression. The snare channel can get 5-6db reduction. My drum bus compression tends to be high ratio with a reasonably fast attack and release set to pump in time with the tempo of the song.

I use compression for tone shaping and to get things to sit in the mix, not to control levels.
 
I keep having an issue where, and I'll throw out some numbers...my mix is peaking at -6db with an average level of about -22lufs. My goal for the master is to be about -12.5lufs. I master it with some very light compression, maybe half a db. Then I use a clipper, driving into the clipper something like +6db which causes the clipper to clip off about 1db here and there as the peaks are driven in. Then into the limiter which I might drive into a little, 1db or something and the limiter tends to clamp down between 1and 3db and I've reached my target loudness for the song. The mastered mix sounds good on all my headphones including bluetooth and it sounds decent on my phone. But it sounds quite awful on my laptop on soundcloud in particular...despite me mastering it for -14lufs which is the soundlcloud standard. On soundcloud what it sounds like is that the snare has gone AWOL, it's weak and ill defined and every time it hits it sucks the life out of the song. As the snare hits there's a slight pumping it seems as it's clamped down on and it dives the rest of the mix down...but leaves kind of this low mid range...so the vocals and some guitar riffs will stand out in an ugly way...as the snare gets squashed.

I feel like I'm not over compressing or limiting or clipping. The mix sounds ok...except for on soundcloud especially on my laptop. Any ideas?

Bugger it. I deleted my soundcloud account. Problem solved.
 
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