If you "know for a fact" that you don't need to hire a mastering engineer, you need to learn to master yourself.

I seriously don't recommend learning on tracks that you're intimately familiar with.

But if you want to get it "loud" (not "good" - just "loud") you can just ram it into a limiter until it starts to fall apart. You certainly wouldn't be the first.

Doing it for yourself for demo purposes and such isn't too big a deal. If it's something for public release, IMHO, you shouldn't take the chance. I don't even master my own mixes. It's totally self-defeating.

But if "loud" is what you're after, try a limiter and see what happens.

What are some general settings for the "brickwall" limiting I keep reading about?

A brickwall limiter doesn't generally have general settings.

If you have to ask how to get a mix loud (and good sounding) then you probably do need a mastering engineer.

I understand I could use a mastering engineer, but since I am not making money off my music...I am just trying to understand what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.

JSRockit wrote: I understand I could use a mastering engineer, but since I am not making money off my music...I am just trying to understand what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.

You may have done nothing wrong and your mix is at its max volumewise, that's it. If you want to bring at the next level (pro level) and commercially competitive then you have to go at a Mastering facility and the ME there will take itto the next level with his tools and the most important; his/her Experience.

Best,

Rich

Trillium, the problem is that the last CD I made was so much louder...and I haven't done anything different. I'm baffled. This isn't low like a little lower than a professional CD...this is alot lower to the point of it being useless.

Make sure the "source" for your Bounce to Disk matches up with your master fader?

I don't know what else you could be doing wrong without seeing the session, but I'm guessing it's just a simple oversight - happens to all of us. Maybe book an hour, take it to a studio, spend the $50-$100, and be done with it.

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: you probably do need a mastering engineer.

I'll say it again... exactamundo! 8)

you can't expect a master magician to reveal his bag of tricks for nuthin' :wink:

jerry tubb wrote:

I'll say it again... exactamundo! Cool

you can't expect a master magician to reveal his bag of tricks for nuthin' Wink

Damn Right !!!

What bag of tricks?

That One.

Just ram it through an L3 multi maximiser (lots of others do),you'll get a crap sound but it will be loud and possibly painfull to anyones ears who listens.

mixandmaster, what was that u said about matching the bounce sourse with the master fader?? someone explain PLEASE!!??

Maybe if you are turning the mix or track buses down so that they are not clipping then there are some kind of transient peaks that are causing the percieved low volume. If this is the case, find out which track (or tracks) that are causing the peaks and put a limiter on it (them). That way you can bring the song level up. This is just a shot in the dark since noone here can actually see what is causing this without actually having the project in hand.

Some research is in order here!

If going to a mastering house is just simply not in your budget and you need to master your own stuff (I'm cringing just thinking about mastering a mix by the same person, same room, same equipment), then AT LEAST do the research and read up on mastering. There is no "magic formula" for mastering and you're not gonna find it here. There are plenty of net resources out there. As many other have done, I recommend you read Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio". (go to http://www.digido.com to order. There are some really good articles there as well). Just keep in mind how people listen to the music. First impressions are everything and if the fidelity and consitency on the CD is garbage, then as far as most listeners are concerned, the songs on the CD are garbage as well. This is part of the value add of a good ME, such as the ones in this forum. Maybe if you ask nicely, one of them would be so kind as to give you a free sample of one of your songs so you can hear the difference for yourself. Just my two cents.

It's called dynamic range and it's not a bad thing when used correctly.

That's truly the answer to your question. You're probably getting peaks due to transients that are quite loud - often several dB louder than your normal program material.

The limiter or compressor is used to tame those peaks. The good side is, if used correctly, this can bring your program material to levels that are more appropriate and don't have you reaching for your volume knob.

The bad thing is - if you use it incorrectly and "squash" the hell out of the signal, that "dynamic range" is no longer existent. Now the track is boring and loud - kind of like women. :twisted: (Don't get me wrong, they're great when they're quiet!! - BTW, I'm only typing this cuz my wife is nowhere near me...)

Now, here's the lowdown on mastering engineers.

It is truly a combination of art and science. One can have all the technical knowledge in the world, but without serious music background, you won't be able to master crap. The inverse is also true.

The categories of ME's (Mastering Engineers) on this site run the proverbial gammut. You've got the "big boys" or the ones who truly do nothing all day but master big albums.

Then, you've got the amatuer ME's. And of course, there's the novices.

Personally, I lump myself into the amatuer category for a few reasons.

First, I don't have the equipment the "big boys" have.
Second, I don't have the experience the "big boys" have.
Third, I don't have their clients either.

However, I do have a good ear (classically trained musician performing for over 24 years) and some pretty damned good equipment too.

I've been offering this to tons of people and I don't understand why they're ignoring me or downright turning me down -- but here's my offer -

Send me the track in .Wav or .AIFF (MP3 would be okay, but not preferred) and I will work on it. I will then return it to you and with your permission, post the original and the master on the forum here and explain exactly what I did. (Not trying to give away the "tricks of the trade" though).

Why am I offering this? Frankly, I would like to build my mastering chops and I don't want to try to master my own stuff (that's a sure fire disaster!)

My only request is that later in life, I may desire to list the band as one of my mastering clients.

J. 8-)

o wow that sounds great. how should i go about getting it to you?

I'll contact you off-line (or on-line, I guess)

logangrime@gmail.com

Hey Guys!!!

I just wanted to give an update here -

Logan sent me the clip, unfortunately, we could only do MP3, but as a simple project, it should suffice.

Here's what I've found so far -

The mix is already quite well compressed. I don't mean "overly" compressed, the compression isn't actually half bad.

The RMS level stays between -20 and -22 dBFS. Regular peaks only ever reach as high as maybe -6 dBFS but many are below that.

The snare, which is a great sounding snare, is WAAAYYY too loud. It doesn't sit in the mix at all, rather it punches through and provides the level peaking that was discussed previously.

My game plan so far is to attempt a slight notch filter to attack the snare's transient. Then, apply a compression with a high threshold (high as in, -6 or -8 dB, not -30 etc.) and a slower attack time (since the snare will have already been attacked) roughly in the 50 to 100 ms time frame and a medium sustain.

Trying to avoid cascading of dynamics processors, I will try to use this as the basis for my limiting as well as some judicious gain riding.

I'm afraid bringing the output RMS to higher than -15 dBFS or so results in some heavy pumping and breathing, so it just doesn't make sense to do it. The song is plenty loud at that amplitude, so no more should be required.

Insight or guidance anyone???

Thanks!

J 8-)

Hi Jeremy,
IMO, the thing to do is to fix the mix. He runs PT, so it's piece of
cake to get the snare down and bring the overall level up.

I agree - the best possible solution is to fix the mix. My goal here is to do what I can with what I have - assuming it's impossible to fix the mix.

I'm working with a specific agenda to "practice" mastering. In many situations, that's simply not possible to send it back and say "fix it."

Thanks though!

J.

Sounds good. The only other thing I could think (though it may be a pain) is to individually select and pull down the transient peaks. This will allow you to push the whole mix up. On soundforge for example, I select only the spike, and normalize (ie. compress) using the peak selection set to say -2 dbfs etc.. Then you can push it farther and not affect as much of the mix with compression. Just a thought.
Best of luck.

Justin

Cucco wrote: attempt a slight notch filter to attack the snare's transient.

notch filters in mastering, mmmmmm..... this medicine is usually worse than the symptom. Better, I feel, to solve this problem with level solutions, not frequency.

Why do you feel notch filters are bad? They're used all the time - a narrow Q (down to one note or so) with a cut of around 5-8 dB. This isn't a bad thing that I know of... Remember, I'm merely trying to lessen the snare attack. While compression does a moderate job of squashing the snare, I'm afraid too much snare is there to combat with dynamics, that is, without adversly affecting the rest of the mix...

J.

Apply your notch such that the offending snare is controlled. Now listen to everything except the snare. Does everything still hold together or has the heavy phase shifting of the notch skewed things?

Ah, well I guess I should have specified that I have and am using linear phase eq's. In the plug-in variety, I have the FFT filter from Sequoia, Waves Linear Phase, Timeworks linear phase. In the hardware, I am borrowing a friends Weiss to see how I like it.

However, the filtering that I'm using so far for this project is an "in the box" one - the Timeworks. It sounds rather nice for a plug.

J.

Cucco wrote: ..am using linear phase eq's..."in the box"

Most of the linear phase eq's I have auditioned leave a greater sonic fingerprint than the regular version. Just because an eq is labeled "linear phase" does not give it a free pass. Possibly your program material will respond to such processing, but I would still be cautious.

Depending on how the snare sounds, you should be able to take it down to where you want it in stages.

Unless the snare is very narrow, i'm not sure a notch would be very usefull. You may take the snare down but you could also create a big hole.

Is the mix fat, thin, or bumpy?

Hey Mike!

Thanks for the input. I would call the mix bumpy. Very full low end (below 60Hz), scooped low mids, agressive upper mids - not much going on between the 2k and 5k range and then cymbals above that.

The only concept behing the notch was to find the initial transient of the snare (which I used a FFT analyzer to determine as closely as possible) and then let the compressor do the rest from there.

However, I've tried a couple different approaches to the snare and I'm leaning further and further away from the notch version. So far, here's what I've done in the newer version -

Compression -

Threshold: -9 dB (again, only a few of the peaks reach into this region and all of the snare attacks go beyond this)

Ratio: 5:1 - though this is on the high side, it's not really squashing much of the signal itself, just the snare. My goal was to get the gain reduction meter to dance with the snare attack - with the above 2 settings, I've acheived that.

Attack: 5 ms - very quick, but the snare transient is goal number 1

Release:125 ms - also very quick, but as I mentioned the piece is already quite well compressed. I'm not aiming at fattening kicks, etc.

I have also EQed out a touch of the low end as it appears to be too much and boosted the lower mids to bring them up to the rest of the piece. None of the EQ curves are very large and the Qs are quite wide.

One pet peeve of mine is fades - in this case, the fades were already complete and were actually quite good, so I won't gripe about them. Of course, my preference is always to have them brought to me without fades so that I can put them in.

I hope by the weekend, I should be able to post both versions - the rough and the mastered. (It wouldn't normally take me near that long, but with moving the studio and then being out of town for the next 2 days...)

All I ask is that people be gentle - I've been doing classical and jazz mastering for quite some time, but rock mastering is a new venture for me (and I have a fragile ego... :oops: ). I'm aware that there are some great MEs out there on this board, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of fledglings like myself, and while I understand that many of you would have done things differently, that's the nature of this business. If there were one cut and dry way to master, everyone could do it.

Thanks!

Jeremy

Well, despite all my best efforts, I simply can't get the snare track tamed. I'm needing to request a re-track.

Oh well, I thought I could...live and learn...

J.

Okay, so I did what I could without the remix. I'm not 100% happy with it, but overall, I got the level much higher without suffering the normal square wave appearance (and sound).

The snare is still a tad powerful and in a couple cases where the kick goes crazy there's a bit of pumping and breathing. (Something I tried to and to a degree was successful at fixing by zeroing in on those sections and elongating the release time past the 25 ms release time that I used most everywhere else).

Here's the original -
(Dead Link Removed)

Here's the rework -
(Dead Link Removed)

and here's a pic of the two waves side by side.

(Dead Link Removed)

Please feel free to comment - be gentle - remember, I'm sticking my neck out for everyone to chop on it.

If you wanna say that it sucks, fine - but please tell me why and what I could have done differently.

The mods that I made were simple:

EQ (WaveArts small cuts with broad Qs at around 220 Hz and 330 Hz)
Limiter (Wave Arts - high threshold to catch the snare since the rest was quite compressed to begin with - enough makeup gain to bring the K14 volume to a comfortable but *present* or forward volume.)
Stereo enhancement (Sequoia - mainly to spread out the snare a bit to make it less concentrated in the phantom center and hopefully diffuse it a tad.)

Minor gain riding and a slower release during kick-heavy sections.

Thanks!

J.

(BTW - the Wave Arts stuff is new to me. I had the following options for compression/limiter -

ART ProVLA
Waves L2/L3
Sequoia Limiter (Advanced Dynamics)
Langevin ELOP

and the following for EQ -

Waves Linear Phase
Timeworks Linear Phase
Weiss EQ-1 MK2
Sequoia EQ

One of the developers from Wave Arts had contacted me a few weeks ago for me to do a write up and be a beta tester. I reluctantly tried the plugs b/c I usually avoid most plugs. (Nothing against plugs - many are fantastic - it's just that I really like the tactile feel of a knob and getting the feedback of twisting it until I get what I want.)

I have to say - I am pretty damned impressed with these tools! I'll be writing a full review of them soon, but so far, color me happy. There are a few minor issues (which I will point out as a beta tester) but at a fraction a cost of the Waves stuff and IMO, far superiour, they're quite worth it!

I'll keep you guys posted on the review.

Thanks!

Jeremy (y)

Jeremy,
definate improvement all around. seems to lean a bit too much for me in the highend and upper mids, leaving a bit of a hole in the lower mids. I probably would have chosen a different eq. Compression seems good on first listen. there is some room to shave off the snare more, don't worry about what the waveform looks like. A little limiter can tuck the puppy in a bit.

Thanks Michael!

I agree - especially in the 600-1000 Hz range, it's a bit forward (particularly at the point where the lead guitar enters with its agressive solo line). I guess I could say it was a conscientious decision to leave it that way, but it would probably be more accurate to say that it was a conscientious omission of a fix/edit.

I'll tinker more for my edification and for logamos' benefit, but for consistency, I'll leave the clip as posted for more comments.

Thanks a million!

J.

(PS - if you have more critical comments, I can take them, but for the harshest stuff, PM or e-mail me. I am, afterall, trying to learn to better my skills - I can't do that without criticism.)