How can I reach -9 'till -8 RMS "clean sound"

**Darmawan** · 01-21-2005, 09:06 PM

:? I usually work with my wavelab (with inserted plugins: 1.Waves PQ10, 2. Waves C1 SC at sometimes 119 Hz, for bass compression, 3. Lin MB for Mid and Upper freq Compression if necessary, 4. Lin Eq for tweaking before limiter, 5. Steinberg Loudness Maximizer, 6. Steinberg Resample for downrate to 44.1, and last, 7. L3 multimaximizer to compesate level and dithering process. I found that, if I already have "a sound" before levelling at step 5 and so on, I felt hard to reach -9 'till -8 RMS "clean sound", I always have "distorted sound". I don't have analog gear. Can anybody give suggest to me? Sorry for my bad english.

**Michael Fossenkemper** · 01-21-2005, 09:49 PM

Well, I would say either you are doing to much with the wrong things, or the track is such that it's just not going to get to this level. -9 or -8 rms is not really saying anything about how loud the master is. just how much it's moving a meter. If it's a very dense mix that doesn't let up, you may never get there nor would you want to listen to it if you did. Plus i've never been able to get good quality high level output from plugins that i can from high end outboard. So I would abandon the level goal and just make it sound good and reasonably loud. I personally wouldn't use 2 limiters. If you treat the mix properly before the limiter, one should be enough. And why are you compensating for dither? If your dither is making that much of a difference that you don't want, then choose a different less damaging one. In general, my guess is you are working too hard on the mix. I would zero everything out and start over, simpler, less plugs. get it to sound good. If your level is not there then really sit and listen to why it's not there. maybe you are smashing the low end too much. More low end = more rms.

**Massive Mastering** · 01-21-2005, 10:07 PM

Good God... -8dBRMS... What the hell is going on?!?

Not that I don't get "forced" to crank out some seriously loud stuff, but it damn well better have the potential to get that loud (i.e. be one hell of an amazing sounding recording with every single duck in a row from the very first step).

And yeah, getting those levels with plugs... They just don't have that kind of headroom.

I'm starting to lose faith about the end of the volume war...

**Darmawan** · 01-21-2005, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by Michael Fossenkemper

I personally wouldn't use 2 limiters. If you treat the mix properly before the limiter, one should be enough. And why are you compensating for dither? If your dither is making that much of a difference that you don't want, then choose a different less damaging one.

Thanks for your answer,
I use 2 limiter, because sometimes with Steinberg LM, I don't get enough level (only average -12 'till -11 dbrms "clean sound"), so I compesate this with L3 to achieve -10 dbrms before the mix sound distorted. In My country the average commercial cd level = -9 'till -8 dbrms.
I need to dither with L3 because the raw material is 24 bit and the final is 16 bit.

**beachhunt** · 01-22-2005, 01:57 AM

Originally Posted by Darmawan

In My country the average commercial cd level = -9 'till -8 dbrms.

You might want to check - Is that level including clipping? In the US, some pop CDs are mashed enough to reach -6dBRMS (and they still sell! amazing... in 10 years, only a handful of people will be able to hear themselves speak, and they'll probably all be MEs), but they were probably at -10 to -12, then just pushed up into hard clipping until the foam shook off of the walls. I'm not suggesting that clipping is necessarily a good idea (many will tell you repeatedly that it's not), but that is one way some CDs get their RMS up.

HB

**Ammitsboel** · 01-22-2005, 03:02 AM