yeah, i agree to john, henrik and micheal,
slider if you really want to learn something, LISTEN there is no magic that's how it goes, or this is what you have to use in general, very nicely pointed out from john, EXPERIENCE of many, many, many, many years is the key.

EVERY MIX / TRACK is DIFFERENT, why do you think that there are only a "few" mastering engineers out there???

it's about learning to listen, and then knowing what and how to apply,
out of experimentation, experience, and long years of practise, no golden rule... nearly all technical gear, no matter if soft or hardware, can make thinks a bit louder and louder and louder.... till your def.
a.

The mastering engineers' secret to optimum percieved loudnes

Slider wrote:
We get it you know it all.
Now let someone who actually knows what they're doing answer.

Ok, I didn't know wheter you're really ready for this, but here comes the secret answert for perfect super-loud mastering. And the great thing is, you don't even need those super-expensive toys mastering engineers have in their studios to distract the clients (like Eddie did to you) while they do the super-secret mastering schtick.

First, let us assume you have your tracks available as one left and one right track in one or two PCM-coded files of any depth and rate.

Step one: Convert from L/R to M/S. Bring down the S content (by doing "delete" or "insert silence" or "normalize to -inf." in your editor). Convert from M/S to L/R.

Step two: Bandpass to 2k-5k. With this, you limit the energy in your music to the frequency range where the human hear is most sensitive. This not only helps you get apparent loudness, it also helps you to ruin the ears of your listeners. A lot of DJs also work along these lines!

Step Three: Normalize

Step Four: Use a brickwall limiter (actually, L2 would be ok) to limit your track. The goal here is to compensate for musicians and/or arrangers who actually built soft/loud parts and dynamics into the song. Be sure to use a short release time so you're near redline almost constantly. Thresholds of -12dB are fairly normal at this stage. Again: the trick is to set the release time really short (in the 40ms range), and be sure to turn any dithering/noiseshaping things off to not compromise the integrity of the signal in the -90dB and below range!

Step Five: Clip. Most of the stuff we have now is contained in sine waves. If you calculate the power (or energy) of your audio signal (which is similair to what the RMS value tells you), you will find that if you integrate over a sine function, you retain a 1/SQRT(2) factor. relative to optimum power efficiency. To compensate for this, you drive your signal heavily into the redline, so you get (nearly) square waves, which have the best power efficiency there is. Some "vintage" people use analog gear for this, I'd recommend a pair of ZVEX Super-Duper-Two-In-One with both stages turned on and both gain dials (the left and right ones) cranked. Of course, use the master volume in combination with the gain of your tube DI to avoid clipping your A/D converters!

The result, and I can guarantee this, will be considerably louder than everything else you've heard before (except perhaps for some tracks by Merzbow, who realize this process as part of composing their material). Your RMS values will come close to the 0dB marker. It will sound extremely loud on almost any kind of playback equipment like MP3 players with cheap 'phones, kitchen radios, car HiFi...you name it. The only playback device it won't sound loud on would be a stand-alone subwoofer. And by the way, you can even be sure it's safe to make a record (as in vinyl) from this master!

All the best,

Rainer

Yep, that'll get it loud all right... :lol:

I have talked (plenty) about this before. I make loud records also. But I can tell you I personally do no added anything to make the record louder. It's a combination of the right gain staging and EQ.

I have seen other engineers put a limiter after they are done and just up the volume. Whatever works for you.

Some clients just want louder louder louder. As the engineer you sometimes get stuck. Now I get people asking after I've mastered it if I could make it louder about once a year. Last week I did a record, singer songwriter kind of thing, very cool vibe. He told me he loved the sound but it wasn't as loud as a particlular record he liked. I have the record also, it's great, but louder than it should be and I can hear the cymbals turn to hash at point.
I told him I make your record the same level but that will start to do the same thing. Luckily he said no, I love the sound.
Some clients say they don't care I want it louder. I tell them what the trade off is. It's their record, If making it a little louder makes them happy that's what I will do.

The L2 gets a bad rap sometimes. It's a fine tool. Probably the most abused, misused tool of the last couple years.

Re: The mastering engineers' secret to optimum percieved lou

moinho wrote: (all)

Is this a joke?

Slider,

The main tools of mastering are the same primary tools used in mixing: eq, compression, and limiting (or in some cases, clipping). It really is how we impliment them, and more often, in my opinion, the subtlety with which we use them to achieve our end results.

I have never used a multi-band compressor for the purpose of boosting program levels...and won't. The reasons for this are ridiculously obvious to anyone with a discriminating set of ears.

I am one of the few Mastering Engineers out there who prefer the L3 multi to the L2 for most limiting applications. If tweaked properly, I feel it provides more transparent results for me than the L2...sometimes that means a great deal of tweaking.

I tend to master the tracks to the final volume that works best for the track...and that's almost always followed up (in today's market, but not always) by a request from the artist/label/producer for "more volume please". At which point...I usually just push the limiter a bit harder if it isn't that much farther. If I need to push it really hard, I'll probably throw an additional comp stage (or eq and comp stages) on before the limiter. Before such a request comes in though, I'm confident that I've managed to get the track as loud as possible without any negative side-affect. In other words, it's as good as possible, period...if they request anything further in the way of volume, it will necessarily mean a tradeoff in the quality of the product. However, the customer is always right, and if they want more volume, they'll get it...as much as I hate to do it.

None of this though, not an ounce of it really, touches on any of the far more important aspects of mastering in my opinion...if it was only about volume, all of us ME's would have been out of work long ago.

Cheers,
Chris