What software is best for getting matching song levels ?
- Thread starter Landie
- Start date
sonusman
Banned
Oh no!!!
Sigh.....
Okay, I will try to be really nice....
I will suggest that you possibly open all your files in something like Goldwave (http://www.goldwave.com ). To save a lot of hassle, confusion, and explaining, just do a gain changed on the songs that are louder than the other songs. Meaning: turn down the loud songs to match the quieter songs. Then just resave them and burn your CD. Don't worry about compression, limiting, dithering, etc....just turn down the loud songs to match the level of the quiestest song that will be on the compilation of songs.
Does that help? Really, you are going to get a whole slew of BAD advice, and not to be offensive to you, but just by asking this very question, you are NOT prepared to engage in ANY other solution other than what I just prescribed above. Save yourself the hassles and just do it that way and be happy with the results. When you are ready for something more advanced, you can ask different questions. But the above will do EXACTLY what you want with the least amount of knowledge and understanding, and the demo version of Goldwave is fully functional, and only has a restriction on how many commands you can do per open session of the software. When you run out of commands for that session, it will allow you to save your work as it is, and all's you have to do is save it, close the program, re-open the program and your work that you saved, and continue on. To match levels for a whole CD worth of songs, you may have to reopen it twice at most.
Good luck.
Ed
Sigh.....
Okay, I will try to be really nice....
I will suggest that you possibly open all your files in something like Goldwave (http://www.goldwave.com ). To save a lot of hassle, confusion, and explaining, just do a gain changed on the songs that are louder than the other songs. Meaning: turn down the loud songs to match the quieter songs. Then just resave them and burn your CD. Don't worry about compression, limiting, dithering, etc....just turn down the loud songs to match the level of the quiestest song that will be on the compilation of songs.
Does that help? Really, you are going to get a whole slew of BAD advice, and not to be offensive to you, but just by asking this very question, you are NOT prepared to engage in ANY other solution other than what I just prescribed above. Save yourself the hassles and just do it that way and be happy with the results. When you are ready for something more advanced, you can ask different questions. But the above will do EXACTLY what you want with the least amount of knowledge and understanding, and the demo version of Goldwave is fully functional, and only has a restriction on how many commands you can do per open session of the software. When you run out of commands for that session, it will allow you to save your work as it is, and all's you have to do is save it, close the program, re-open the program and your work that you saved, and continue on. To match levels for a whole CD worth of songs, you may have to reopen it twice at most.
Good luck.
Ed
cominginsecond
Decentralized Media Mogul
OK, the guy says he's doing this to match levels on a demo. If he sends in a demo where all the songs are very quiet, which will be the end result of your advice, the club/label/whoever is going to throw it away nearly instantly. The first thing that screams out "piece of crap" demo for non-engineers is quiet levels. So, while your advice would probably be good if you wanted to preserve the sound of the mixes as much as possible, it is not good, in my opinion, for his stated purpose: a demo. Believe me, your average club booker is not going to think less of a really squashed mix (think about what the radio sounds like these days), but he/she would definitely not give a really quiet demo much of a chance at all.
I agree that it's easy for non-professionals to ruin their mixes by applying too much limiting and so on, but you gave some really bad advice to someone looking for a very specific bit of help: making his demo sound consistent.
BTW, on another thread I questioned your dislike of Larry Crane's engineering work. You never answered me. What is it about his work that you dislike? He's one of my favorites.
I agree that it's easy for non-professionals to ruin their mixes by applying too much limiting and so on, but you gave some really bad advice to someone looking for a very specific bit of help: making his demo sound consistent.
BTW, on another thread I questioned your dislike of Larry Crane's engineering work. You never answered me. What is it about his work that you dislike? He's one of my favorites.
crosstudio
New member
rather than simply turning down all the songs to the level of the lowest song, i would apply some directx peak limiting (Waves C4 and L1 come to mind or even DSP-fx's optimizer) to bring the lower songs up to a reasonable level, and then turn down the better engineered songs to that level.
Having said that, I think we all need to know and understand the difference between a CD that is ready for release and a demo to prove your artistic ability.
I have taken some really crappy (from an engineering standpoint) self produced demos to clubs and promotion organizers and had no problems getting gigs because they were listening to the songs and the ability of the band, and not the production value. having said that, i have had increased success with demos of greater quality, but there again my song-writing ability has also gotten better.
Having said that, I think we all need to know and understand the difference between a CD that is ready for release and a demo to prove your artistic ability.
I have taken some really crappy (from an engineering standpoint) self produced demos to clubs and promotion organizers and had no problems getting gigs because they were listening to the songs and the ability of the band, and not the production value. having said that, i have had increased success with demos of greater quality, but there again my song-writing ability has also gotten better.
sonusman
Banned
cominginsecond:
Oh boy! You like Larry Crane's work, you dispute what I am saying here, you offer NO other alternative to it, then you want me to explain to you why I don't like Larry Crane's work?
I think I will just let me words stand.
Sigh...............
crossstudio:
I could shoot you for opening up this can of worms damnit!!!
Predicted next questions:
1 - What is an L1?
2 - What does it do?
3 - What general setting should I start off with?
4 - I make everything louder, but the songs between themselves still sound unbalanced. What am I doing wrong?
5 - After I use the L1, the CD's when I play them on a stereo system sound totally flat and lifeless. What am I doing wrong?
Oh well. Let the questions start. We haven't had all the "volume matching" with plugin's questions for what? 2 weeks now?
Okay. sonusman feels VERY generous tonight Landie. Piss me off enough, I start talking!!!
Waves (http://www.waves.com) makes a nice littel diddy of a plugin called the L1 Ultra Maximizer (no shit, that is it's name!!!) But it or find a cracked version ( I officially do not endorse nor condone software pirating...I HAVE to throw that in you know....). Install it to your favorite .wav editing program like Wavelab or Sound Forge (actually, Waves plugins usually have their own installer program, so you just run that and your editor will find it next time you open it....)
Pull up your loudest song you have. Apply the L1 to it. The main control you will be dealing with is the INPUT control. How you use it is to LOWER the input control. By doing this, you RAISE the input on this unit. Cool eh? Nice and confusing, but not really.
Okay, what you want to be checking for it how much Gain Reduction is happening. I don't really recommend that you have any more than 6dB MAX gain reduction on the L1. Anything more than that and you start really killing transients in the music, and your resulting file will sound flat and lifeless. You can view the Gain Reduction via the Gain Reduction Meters on the right side of the plugin interface. There is a number that is displayed at the top of the meters that shows what the highest amount of gain reduction it did on the song. It is a good idea to "clear" that number every time you play the song when you are experiementing with Input settings because it doesn't clear itself. So say that you applied to much Gain Reduction on one pass of the song, but you made an adjustment, if you don't clear that "Peak Hold" number for the Gain Reduction Meters, you won't be able to tell if your new adjustment is within the parameters of what you want. So clear the Peak Hold every time you restart the song.
So, you have the first song as loud as you can go with it. Cool! You are the main mastering man now!!!! Apply the plugin to the .wav file and save a new version of the .wav file. DON'T overwrite the original .wav file because you may want to go back at some point and use some different settings and you wouldn't be able to if your overwrite the "non mastered" version of the mix right? (sorry, some people do silly things like this...so I thought I might at least cover this....if you already thought of that...please excuse....)
Open up another song. Raise the input again until you are getting around 4-6dB of Gain Reduction. Apply that to the .wav. Now, COMPARE your first "test .wav" file with the next one. Do they sound about the same volume? If not, then you need to make some decisions. If the new mix is still quieter than the first one you processed, you can try raising the input on the L1 some more. But, by doing this, you of course will have MORE GAIN REDUCTION than 4-6dB. It may or may not sound okay doing that. If it does, cool. Raise away you mastering phreak you!!! If it starts sounding kind of shitty with more Input Gain before you can get the second song as loud as the first, well, there is another problem. More than likely, the two mixes probably sound fundamentaly different in the frequency response. Well, you can go and try to fix that too!!! But, now we start getting into very dangerous ground!!! Yikes, you would be starting to do what REAL mastering engineers do. And since you don't want to do REAL MASTERING (as per your original post...stated there that is....), then we are just sort of matching levels up here, and getting a bit more gain out of mixes. So, you might have made the first mix too loud. Yes, the first mix COULD get that much louder for any number of reasons, but the second CAN'T. You may need to go back and not have the first mix quite so loud.
So, you do this same process with all the songs you want on the same CD. I recommend that you compare them all to the very first "loud" song you "mastered" (so to speak...). After you feel they are all about the same, you can compare them to each other. Even after big time professional mastering, songs on a CD are NOT going to all sound the same relative volume. And thank God for that!!! That would be fatiqueing to your ears to listen to. Oh wait!!! Crap, Everclear does that, so you COULD make them all loud as hell. ...... But, if you IMPROVED the relation to each song concerning volume between them, well then, you did good!!! So, at first, don't sweat trying to be Bob Ludwig and just get through the process. I am sure you will be back with MANY questions when you are though. Or maybe not. Who knows.
Again, I will warn you that "mastering" limiters (like the L1) are VERY easy to overuse on a mix. Most people do not have monitoring systems with nearly enough headroom to hear the bad artifacts, nor the experience to hear the tell tale signs of over compression/limiting. At first, you will be going "Gee whiz, that is cool" with this stuff. But, after a time, you will sober a bit, and realise that overusing these kinds of devices makes a mess out of your music. You lose dynamics, and in really bad case scenarios, the sonic integrity can be compromised for the worse.
I can tell you that if you are mixing your songs, you have a better opportunity to do the RIGHT things WHILE mixing them to assure that you don't have to overcompress/limit during mastering! A few things to look out for.
1 - Too much low mids in your overall mix. Kick drums and Bass guitars are the worse offenders, but keyboards can murder the low mids too! Keep an eye on your low mids while mixing.
2 - Keep in mind that your room, unless you had it designed to be acoustically balanced, will make you THINK you need more low end in your mixes, when if fact, the "just right" amount usually sounds like too little. There are many factors at play here. It is a good idea to periodically do a mix, and take it to another sound system to play it on so you can get an idea of how the mix sounds in the "real world" of people listening. Car stereo's work fine for this.
3 - You HAVE to learn HOW your studio monitors sound!!! Yes, they may be MOSTLY accurate, but usually not totally accurate, and being accurate isn't what is the most important thing that I am talking about. You have to know what a good sounding mix sounds like through studio monitors. Your mix HAS to sound good on consumer playback systems. Studio monitors are NOT consumer playback systems. Studio monitors allow you to hear what EXACTLY is going on in the sound. It may sound like garbage on your studio monitors to you, but great on consumer playback systems. Don't believe me? Try playing some professional CD's through your studio monitors. If THEY sound a bit odd too, you will then know what I mean. So, you need to learn HOW your monitors sound on a good mix. Listen to a LOT of good mixes on them so you can identify WHEN you have a good mix too.
Good luck.
Ed
Oh boy! You like Larry Crane's work, you dispute what I am saying here, you offer NO other alternative to it, then you want me to explain to you why I don't like Larry Crane's work?
I think I will just let me words stand.
Sigh...............
crossstudio:
I could shoot you for opening up this can of worms damnit!!!
Predicted next questions:
1 - What is an L1?
2 - What does it do?
3 - What general setting should I start off with?
4 - I make everything louder, but the songs between themselves still sound unbalanced. What am I doing wrong?
5 - After I use the L1, the CD's when I play them on a stereo system sound totally flat and lifeless. What am I doing wrong?
Oh well. Let the questions start. We haven't had all the "volume matching" with plugin's questions for what? 2 weeks now? Okay. sonusman feels VERY generous tonight Landie. Piss me off enough, I start talking!!!
Waves (http://www.waves.com) makes a nice littel diddy of a plugin called the L1 Ultra Maximizer (no shit, that is it's name!!!) But it or find a cracked version ( I officially do not endorse nor condone software pirating...I HAVE to throw that in you know....
). Install it to your favorite .wav editing program like Wavelab or Sound Forge (actually, Waves plugins usually have their own installer program, so you just run that and your editor will find it next time you open it....)Pull up your loudest song you have. Apply the L1 to it. The main control you will be dealing with is the INPUT control. How you use it is to LOWER the input control. By doing this, you RAISE the input on this unit. Cool eh? Nice and confusing, but not really.
Okay, what you want to be checking for it how much Gain Reduction is happening. I don't really recommend that you have any more than 6dB MAX gain reduction on the L1. Anything more than that and you start really killing transients in the music, and your resulting file will sound flat and lifeless. You can view the Gain Reduction via the Gain Reduction Meters on the right side of the plugin interface. There is a number that is displayed at the top of the meters that shows what the highest amount of gain reduction it did on the song. It is a good idea to "clear" that number every time you play the song when you are experiementing with Input settings because it doesn't clear itself. So say that you applied to much Gain Reduction on one pass of the song, but you made an adjustment, if you don't clear that "Peak Hold" number for the Gain Reduction Meters, you won't be able to tell if your new adjustment is within the parameters of what you want. So clear the Peak Hold every time you restart the song.
So, you have the first song as loud as you can go with it. Cool! You are the main mastering man now!!!!
Apply the plugin to the .wav file and save a new version of the .wav file. DON'T overwrite the original .wav file because you may want to go back at some point and use some different settings and you wouldn't be able to if your overwrite the "non mastered" version of the mix right? (sorry, some people do silly things like this...so I thought I might at least cover this....if you already thought of that...please excuse....)Open up another song. Raise the input again until you are getting around 4-6dB of Gain Reduction. Apply that to the .wav. Now, COMPARE your first "test .wav" file with the next one. Do they sound about the same volume? If not, then you need to make some decisions. If the new mix is still quieter than the first one you processed, you can try raising the input on the L1 some more. But, by doing this, you of course will have MORE GAIN REDUCTION than 4-6dB. It may or may not sound okay doing that. If it does, cool. Raise away you mastering phreak you!!! If it starts sounding kind of shitty with more Input Gain before you can get the second song as loud as the first, well, there is another problem. More than likely, the two mixes probably sound fundamentaly different in the frequency response. Well, you can go and try to fix that too!!! But, now we start getting into very dangerous ground!!! Yikes, you would be starting to do what REAL mastering engineers do. And since you don't want to do REAL MASTERING (as per your original post...stated there that is....), then we are just sort of matching levels up here, and getting a bit more gain out of mixes. So, you might have made the first mix too loud. Yes, the first mix COULD get that much louder for any number of reasons, but the second CAN'T. You may need to go back and not have the first mix quite so loud.
So, you do this same process with all the songs you want on the same CD. I recommend that you compare them all to the very first "loud" song you "mastered" (so to speak...). After you feel they are all about the same, you can compare them to each other. Even after big time professional mastering, songs on a CD are NOT going to all sound the same relative volume. And thank God for that!!! That would be fatiqueing to your ears to listen to. Oh wait!!! Crap, Everclear does that, so you COULD make them all loud as hell. ......
But, if you IMPROVED the relation to each song concerning volume between them, well then, you did good!!! So, at first, don't sweat trying to be Bob Ludwig and just get through the process. I am sure you will be back with MANY questions when you are though. Or maybe not. Who knows.Again, I will warn you that "mastering" limiters (like the L1) are VERY easy to overuse on a mix. Most people do not have monitoring systems with nearly enough headroom to hear the bad artifacts, nor the experience to hear the tell tale signs of over compression/limiting. At first, you will be going "Gee whiz, that is cool" with this stuff. But, after a time, you will sober a bit, and realise that overusing these kinds of devices makes a mess out of your music. You lose dynamics, and in really bad case scenarios, the sonic integrity can be compromised for the worse.
I can tell you that if you are mixing your songs, you have a better opportunity to do the RIGHT things WHILE mixing them to assure that you don't have to overcompress/limit during mastering! A few things to look out for.
1 - Too much low mids in your overall mix. Kick drums and Bass guitars are the worse offenders, but keyboards can murder the low mids too! Keep an eye on your low mids while mixing.
2 - Keep in mind that your room, unless you had it designed to be acoustically balanced, will make you THINK you need more low end in your mixes, when if fact, the "just right" amount usually sounds like too little. There are many factors at play here. It is a good idea to periodically do a mix, and take it to another sound system to play it on so you can get an idea of how the mix sounds in the "real world" of people listening. Car stereo's work fine for this.
3 - You HAVE to learn HOW your studio monitors sound!!! Yes, they may be MOSTLY accurate, but usually not totally accurate, and being accurate isn't what is the most important thing that I am talking about. You have to know what a good sounding mix sounds like through studio monitors. Your mix HAS to sound good on consumer playback systems. Studio monitors are NOT consumer playback systems. Studio monitors allow you to hear what EXACTLY is going on in the sound. It may sound like garbage on your studio monitors to you, but great on consumer playback systems. Don't believe me? Try playing some professional CD's through your studio monitors. If THEY sound a bit odd too, you will then know what I mean. So, you need to learn HOW your monitors sound on a good mix. Listen to a LOT of good mixes on them so you can identify WHEN you have a good mix too.
Good luck.
Ed
cominginsecond
Decentralized Media Mogul
When you said that Larry Crane's work sucked you didn't offer any explanation either. You just said "Man you gotta hear this guy!" One thing I've noticed about you Sonusman is that you're really condescending and kind of hypocritical. You criticize people for things you do yourself (e.g. You suggest that people post things in a more appropriate forum, but get pissed off when people suggest the same to you. I could dig up the threads now, but I have better things to do.)
The last thing I've noticed about you is you know what you're talking about, and, after the condescension, you're actually quite helpful.
Anyway, that's about it.
crosstudio
New member
the techincal knowledge is what i come to this forum for, the drama is the icing on the cake.
one of the reasons that (1) Multiband compressors and (2) peak limiters (i'm speaking of them as main inserts) are so important in digital mastering is because you can not oversaturate in digital. in analog you can pump the volume past the 0 point as long as it's only the quick transients that are really going over. in digital, those quick transients make cracks and pops, so the ultramaximer helps to get you to the average sound levels that we're used to without getting digital overs.
be careful to learn the difference between a quick transient and the sharp spike of a snare hit or a staccato guitar... like i am doing now.
sometimes, it's spelled crosstudio, but for the first 3-4 weeks after i get a new piece of gear, it's crapstudio
one of the reasons that (1) Multiband compressors and (2) peak limiters (i'm speaking of them as main inserts) are so important in digital mastering is because you can not oversaturate in digital. in analog you can pump the volume past the 0 point as long as it's only the quick transients that are really going over. in digital, those quick transients make cracks and pops, so the ultramaximer helps to get you to the average sound levels that we're used to without getting digital overs.
be careful to learn the difference between a quick transient and the sharp spike of a snare hit or a staccato guitar... like i am doing now.
sometimes, it's spelled crosstudio, but for the first 3-4 weeks after i get a new piece of gear, it's crapstudio