Volume.

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Zachyboy4

New member
im noticing that most of what i make is coming up at a slightly lower volume then the songs i would compare my songs to. i would like to get that extra little kick with out clipping or lowering quality OR getting too loud. i want to get the sweet spot.

im sure there is an easy fix that im just too ignorant to see. but i love the advice i get from these forums.
 
Mastering limiter. Lowers the peaks which allows the average level to be raised without clipping. Try not to get sucked into the volume wars.
 
Zachyboy4 said:
im noticing that most of what i make is coming up at a slightly lower volume then the songs i would compare my songs to. i would like to get that extra little kick with out clipping or lowering quality OR getting too loud.
Click to expand...

Here's how I do it:

Peak Slammer Review

Note that you can do the same thing manually in a stereo editor program.

--Ethan
 
Thanks for the tip on Peak Slammer, Ethan!

I've been doing manual peak adjustment like you describe in your article, for a long time now. It's time consuming, but it allowed me to raise my levels without touching any other part of the sound file except the desired peaks that had exceeded a certain limit.
I would do that process in several passes...starting first with the most obvious peaks, and then as they were lowered, I would then do another round or two lowering to the next level, based on how things were going in the mix.
One thing though, it got to a point where the obvious peaks where fixed, and now I had more and more smaller peaks...if you get what I mean...so with each pass it took longer and longer to do all the peaks! :)
That Peak Slammer will certainly cut the process down to nothing!

I found that if I did my manual peak adjustments to individual tracks in the DAW...then when I mixed OTB, I could apply ligtht analog/outboard compression on some of the individual tracks just to further "gel" things....but without the need to crush them.

The Peak Slammer will be a lot of time saved. Doing manual peak adjustment to 20-30 tracks was KILLING ME!!!! :D

On thing though...I just went to the Scrollworks website and it looked like a Medical related website...then I saw the Peak Slamer under their products. Boy what an odd place to find digital audio tools! How the heck did you stumble onto Peak Slammer, and why isn't it more better known as it appears to be a great tool.

Oh...I don't get the part in your article where you say it only acts on the bounded range between zero crossings...?
Does it do that automaticllay...finds the highest peaks...then finds their zero corssing start/end points....then lowers the peaks by desired amount...???
I hope you don't have to set the ranges/zero crossings for peaks manually...'cuz that won't save any time.....
 
OK...I just read their notes...so it looks like Peak Slammer finds the zero crossings automatically...no need to manully set any ranges.

Cool.

I just downloaded it and will give it spin. :)

Oh...in your review, you say it works from Win95 to XP...but on their website they make no mention of XP or W2K for that matter (which is what I'm using now, soon to be on XP with my DAW)......?
I guess I should be OK since it's a DirectX plugin basically...right?
 
I don't recall how I found out about PS originally, it was years ago. As you can see their main gig is medical software. I think they used to have a site or main page years ago just for PS. I use it with Windows XP, and I ASSume it will work fine with new versions. Or just ask them. :D

--Ethan
 
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