PS: I'm sure some will say "Oh! that's crazy and you should care about your dynamic range, Sadly it really makes a difference between what's loud and what's not to the end user"

I did a quick remaster to an old track, as a result of that I was able to get -6db to -4db of RMS, That's quite LOUD! plus the sound still acceptable

What you think guys, do you go crazy when you master your tracks ?
Please share your mastering chain if you've achieved loud tracks before (-2db RMS maybe)

What've achieved, I can add another DB if I want to:

Something loud I want you to listen to:

I told you it makes a difference!

Edit:

 

Last edited: Sep 21, 2016

Sounds good and thick. nice.
When i want to achieve a similar sound I treat every sound hardcore with comps and limiters, then use BUS compressors and saturators and finally M-S limiting. so at the end I'm ending up with like -5db RMS. If there is a lot of low end I easily goes like -3db RMS. Ive never released a that lifeless piece of signal tho

 

Turn up the Flo Rida track on your monitors and listen how much Depth and how smooth it is... it has alot of control to the sound you can krank it as loud as you want and it stil sounds good to the ear ;) Then turn yours up like that and listen how Harsh it is and not so pleasant to listen ;) its a good track but need work \m/ more control to the sound

 

MS limiting looks fun, i've never tried it before

 

Exactly that's why i'm asking how can i achieve that, i know who mastered his track is way experienced and they run it through real hardware real color, but i'm sure i can achieve this result wit decent experience.

+ when you bump the volume 2khz to 4khz always gets harsh

 

-9 to -8dB is the rms average of the track you shared above. What has you thinking it's around -4dB? What do you use for metering? In regard to loudness.. "perceived loudness" is what it's about. Boosting the rms level doesn't have as much to do with it as some folks think. Joints at -12dB are often perceived louder because you can play them at much higher levels before damping or blowing speaker systems. The heavier the low end the sooner you have to back off the dial. The difference between -6dB and -12dB is that -12db will be perceived far more loud if both are driven to their maximum in a playback system. Dynamics aren't the only thing lost when the rms level is too heavy in the spectrum.

 

Last edited: Sep 19, 2016

the secret is : the less tracks -> busses uusing the more powerful your trck will b sounding. 4 vca's ( drums-bass-synths-vocal ). SIMPLE

 

This ^

Working with pop especially, there is a reason none of the music is ever really complicated. The vocals are a powerful part of a pop song and need to stand out. So usually it's a few main instruments, piano, guitar etc... Much easier to mix and allow more control to make it louder without losing quality. The song you have is fairly broad in frequencies and sounds. It's hard to increase the overall level of sound without the perception of harsh sounds like the high end coming through. Flo Rida song is really really tame, practically just drum , synth, bass synth vocals, and all those sounds are tame, no hi hats, no high end, warm tone easy to crank up and nothing will really bother the audience as everything is tamed.The last chorus has more high end with a different layered synth but still really tame since the mixing level of it is sitting really well.

There is a reason if you listen to practically anything on the charts, the instrumentation is fairly similar. A&Rs and Label executives usually relay back to the producers and TELL them to change sounds, claps, snares, hi hats, synths etc... till it's 'pop'. Which can be crammed to a loud level and be easily audible and quality remains intact.

 

For some reason youtube compressed my track, it sounds weird compared to the raw .wav version that I have

 

Oh yes, that's right, but it'll be weird if I try to make my next production simple just for loudness sake

Watch this video, look what he added at minute 3.30, "Brainworx bx_refinement". I don't have this , he used it to remove the harshness from mid-range to high mids.

sounds cool to me do you know any trick or hack or wherever.

 

Yeah? Well even the Flo Rida track you find to be loud is averaging -10 to -9dB rms (take into consideration it's also been truncated for broadcast media and is using only about half the headroom available). But that's a good example of what I mentioned earlier about "perceived loudness". Your ears perceive it to be loud but rms wise it's not even peaking as high as your track is.

 

Loudest I ever push is around -8db rms. And thats using Fabfilter Pro-L or SPANs metering. I normally like to sit around -10. Seems like an acceptable place for loudness and attitude, but still lets the track have dynamics and movement.

I just started using Izone 7 though, and to get the same loudness, I have to push that until its meters are showing -5db rms. Something is different in its rms window or something.

God, if I was hitting -5rms with SPANs metering, the track would be just a pure distorted brick.

 

Wow, i must try iZotope then, btw I don't just the limiter to gain 10db or more, I usually start with a soft clip after that a limiter

 

I see alot of good advice in this post... BTW you said bout the hardware is true... its the cold hard truth of digital processing is its harder to avoid the harshness. and like you said in the 2-4 k area you can slap a eq on it and then boost and out comes the grainy brital hell that we all hear. And most times you loose more than you gain somtimes in the box... and even with real gear if the source isnt good. Alot of good gear takes away that harshness just from the signal passing thru it... thats why its used ;) Good smooth powerful sound is mostly achieved from the start... like in Rock music >>> witch is mostly what i do its recorded that way from the get go ;). If its in the Box choice of sounds then careful selection of them is Key. I use gear wen i record guitars and ill tell you why... if i just slap a mic on a guitar rig and record it thru a cheap preamp to disk AND I HAVE DONE IT then fight the hell out of it wen it come time to mix the song with Eq to make it set good is pure hell ;) what i do is always record a DI track for starters but i use a mic to EQ to Compressor to a good pre.... I do this cause the Q and comp i use smooths the sound THE HARSHNESS from the start... Heres what i would suggest and some here might disagree with me and thats ok but Get Acustica Nebula if you dont already have it ;) Download Henry Olonga "All You Can Eat" bundle its free on his site and read thru the manual it takes time to learn all whats in it. BUT the way he has it layed out is pure Genius its easy to navigate u pick some sound you feel is harsh go thru his preamps and colors presets and you will see how wonderful good gear can be;) His presets are my favorite in the box tool for this problem... an if not im using my gear ;) takes time to go thru all his presets and most dont have the patience to do so but if you give it time u will find what works so you can go right to it wen you need to ... if you have the patience to read this book i just layed out here go for it HAHA \m/

 

I'm digging this beat. Totally feel what you mean about the cool amped up vibe when you crank a limiter. Unfortunately everything kind of pumps in and out when you do that due to the nature of limiting. There are some things you can do to emphasize the good sounding amped up elements pre master that would beef things up (like parallel compression on the lead panning synths, and bass). If you only want to focus on the mastering aspect you can use a multi band compressor and some eq to give higher frequencies clarity and fine tune the midrange definition to start with. I'd keep a clean limiter on the end of your mastering chain as well but only crank it up right before you start getting the unwanted "pumpy compressor" issue. I'd keep a little of that soft clip before the limiter also

 

Why ?

his presets ain't free anymore

 

http://www.waves.com/plugins/scheps...ndrew-scheps-mixing-scheps-parallel-particles it looks like this tool cool be handy

 

I guess Q-clone by waves would do the job ?

 

Yeah what I trying to say was that pop music is easier to ram loud like that Flo Rida song because of the simple instrumentation. However for music like the one you created, doing what that guy does in that video with brainworx etc... getting rid of the harshness will help a lot. I guess when I was a kid I used to ram the treble up thinking it sounds better because it's brighter. Now I've grown up and have experience within music production and mixing I've realised it's about unity. Making sure everything is fairly tame as everyone has different audio outputs, from speakers, cinema systems to earphones. If they want more treble, they can boost their own EQ. So I always try reference tracks now. I check the EQ graph on a popular and successful song similar to the one I'm creating and then try matching it. usually it's a nice slop near the high end going down.

 

Oh and by the way.. about the harshness. That's gonna be the normal in the box tone. It's a task to use in the box tools to make it sound smoother too. You gotta get you a good amplifier to get "that sound". Just like a car amp will make what you hear even out of stock speakers far more pristine, studio amps are a total enhancement to the sound of the audio you're working with right off top. It's more important than what bus comps folks choose and all that other stuff, but studio heads don't talk about it much because they don't want people to focus on the fact these are the "toaster ovens" that make everything sound good. It's the Same reason everything sounds better on the radio.. they aren't remastering everyone's music on the fly.. of course not.