volume on my songs..

B

borsat

New member
i need more volume on my songs...what do you recomend? a compressor on the master or a lm1 ultramaximizer, a Nuendo plug in?
do i need to have my stereo out at 0db or can i put it more higher when i'm mixing?
when i listen a cd with my songs the volume is a little bit low and the eq from winamp or from my Hi-Fi system seems to have some less on the high frequencies?
what do i need to do?
i used mackie onyx 1620 as the pre-amp, and the mic for guitars and voice was akc c2000B.
 
borsat said:
i need more volume on my songs...what do you recomend? a compressor on the master or a lm1 ultramaximizer, a Nuendo plug in?
do i need to have my stereo out at 0db or can i put it more higher when i'm mixing?
when i listen a cd with my songs the volume is a little bit low and the eq from winamp or from my Hi-Fi system seems to have some less on the high frequencies?
what do i need to do?
i used mackie onyx 1620 as the pre-amp, and the mic for guitars and voice was akc c2000B.
Click to expand...

As far as the volume goes, it depends on what you want to do with it. If you're just putting it on a CD to listen to in different places, don't worry about the volume. Just turn the knob up on whatever you are listening to it on (boombox, car CD player, home stereo, etc.) loud enough to listen and make sure the mix is right. If you are planning on releasing it to the general public I highly recommend you have it mastered by an experienced mastering service, which is exactly WHERE you will get that volume that you want. If you absolutely MUST have it loud NOW then use a limiter to bring up the levels but be careful you don't overdo it. -3 should be good, at least it's what I use.
 
hm...

when i was reading the basics of mixing, there was a pretty good story related about swing and compression and the "loudness wars"and ruining music.

seems that if you listen to an original CD from the 80's, and buy the identical CD printed last week, you will notice the newer CD is louder. Also claimed that if quality ears gave a critical listen, the 80's softer one was a better recording (mix, whatever...lol)

there was loudness wars going on, and every company wanted to have their CD be louder then the next guys on the jukebox...so, too much compression to make it "loud". ALso related was the fact if a non-critical listener heard two identical files, they wluld always say the louder one sounded better.

if you want to TEST this, take a few bars of a pretty sounding acoustic, with a nice flat response condenser mic...a cheapie computer mic will do for this...save it twice to two diff. files. Leave file #1 alone...and let that waveform SWING from bottom to top freely...sounds half decent, doesnt it?

now compress the shit out of it, and really amp it to "compensate", lmao. It will sound much louder...just lovely right? look at the new waveform...its more square wave than smooth sine now...sure its louder, but no longer beautiful sonding...it has a flat, even texture now. Its crap!

this is an extremem example, but...it shows ther basics of what happens when you engage in the loudness wars. Its also what happens when you have too "busy" of a mix...lots of tracks, lots of tracks...you have to compress to bring the volume up. Compare that to a single instrument, allowed to SWING beautifully from the very bottom to the very top, gently curving...its much more beautiful of sound, and infinitely more interesting of a sound file.

its what makes a "balladeer" with no other instrument than just his darn grand piano sound so durned interesting...all the headroom just about, is devoted to the swing of just one instrument.

I believe the article ended with the idea put out: buck the trend...less instruments, less compression driven volume...buck the trend and make a song file thats beautiful and sonically interesting...not just loud.

they said to not worry at all about how loud your CD is as compared to a commercial one, a mastering house with special equipment and proper technique can make it louder without losing a lot of quality...

so, if you need it louder, buy a bigger amp. Let that meter SWING! lmao...
 
Just a little commentary on SEDstars post - the difference is in when the CD was mastered, not when it was printed. You can find a lot of recently-"remastered" versions of 80 CDs out there, and those are likely to be compressed to modern standards. In fact, that would be an intersting way to make the comparison - get the original and the remaster.
 
LfO/SEDstar - Just a thought - If the actual master tape tracks were compressed within 1db of complete tape saturation (if the engineers at the recording studio were going for louder=better) then there'd be no dynamics left to play with. So the 'remastered' CDs would sound pretty much the same as the original LPs....except maybe with an extended bottom end as there's no needle jumping to worry about with excessively low frequencies.
I guess it would depend on whether the max volume was applied in the recording or mastering studio.

Borsat, when I'm bouncing down I tend to leave a lot of dynamics in the mix (when you look at the waveform it has peaks and troughs) so that the mastering engineer can sprinkle their magic dust over the mix and make it sound better. It also is more pleasant to the ear, as SEDstar pointed out. If people want to listen up loud, I'll just crank the volume.

A little limiting or light compression will help clamp the highest peaks and allow you to raise the overall level of the mix. But compression is best done on individual tracks/instruments in the mixing stage, rather than the mixdown stage. Trying to limit a mix with lots of dynamics to make it louder will result in a pumping effect - seems to work for euro techno, but not for this little black duck! ;)

Dags
 
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