heyguys!
generally I compose deep-house or neighboring ...
but recently I started to do something more electro-Swedish House sounds..

in this field is impressive as kingdoms "Loudness War"!!!

I'd like to understand, what are "the gotchas"?


is a fact exclusive of compression and limiting?
mixing or mastering?

there are some video\document to delve into what?

Thanks

 

Yes i know my comment will not help a lot but there's good tutorials on sonic academy for that genre... but that's not what i want to say.

That's what i want to told u : what a strange idea to leave deep house for swedish house ? that's crazy want money finally ? i'm kidding good luck with your understanding ;)

 

The loudness war involves overcompression of music destroying all dynamics in the process.

 

Thanks Xsze, ll check

im aware of this!!!
but unfortunately, today, who play louder, much more likely to "sell" and "emerge"

although it "destroys" the music, always a great curiosity about this type of processes

 

How to get your music loud:

1. Parallel compression
2. Saturation
3. Clipping
4. Limiting

Of course, it won't contain much dynamics anymore, but most people who want it as loud as commercial music don't care that much about dynamics.

 

buddy, you're late for this game of loudness, these new EBU regulations will put loudness to its knees, if I understood correctly. You may bring your track loudness beyond impossible, radios, tv and soon followed by mp3 devices, phones, clubs etc will bring it down to -23 LUFS, all tracks will sound at the same level. With the difference that your track will sound shit compared to nicely dynamic songs.
I maybe wrong about this, fell free to correct.

 

Bob Katz has his own solution for this called the K-scale, google it. Also keep in mind, a dynamic mix played loud generally sounds much better than a loud mix played loud with no dynamic range. Swedish house is not a genre by the way but I know what you mean . There are too many different variables to give you a simple answer. Clarity, balance and arrangement are more important than loudness and all take more time to get right. Literally anyone can make a loud track yet few people understand how to use their reverb. Just be honest with yourself and learn more about what you do not understand. DMP tutorials are always a great starting point, I think sonic academy is terrible and teach bad habbits to new producers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA-2tYkMxJk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU88c0f5-h0

 

That's not always true. SOS explained why. Of course you shouldn't overcompress it, but compression in general can also expand the dynamic range.

 

It's called an expander .

 

Yeah but then it's acting as an expander not a compressor. An expander increases the dynamic range while a compressor does the opposite. It says so on the tin.

 

For me personally, let's say enough evidence is if you compare Depeche Mode "Violator" album, to the any of their 21 century releases. What I really hate is the amount of distortion in the new ones and they don't sound neither pleasant nor relaxing any more.

K-14 is god. No matter the genre. Loads of albums from the 70s and 80s actually conform to K-14 standard. I would just like everyone to avoid the bad sounding distortion that comes from overlimiting. Distort what you want to hell if it sounds nice for the track, and I love distortion too, btw., but keep it at a nice level. Your mix will also sound better in the end and it's easier to mix that way when everything is levelled to -18dB RMS like the analogue consoles are. That kind of virtual analogue console mixing gives you roughly K-14 mix in the end. Perfect. Such mixes are also better material for loud mixing in fact... anyway, I'm all for nicely distorted sounds and tracks when it sounds like the artist intended them to. But keep it K-14 at least. It's also future proof, because at some time this loudness madness will end and your tracks will sound like the shit they are when there's no dynamics left in them at all. Even the most loudest song should have at least 6-10dB of dynamics in them, and what they're doing today to the songs is just preposterous. All this overlimitered shit sounds like it's been put through a Marshall amplifier.

I don't "get" that SOS article at all. How much money did they get for it? Especially Paul White? Losers. I've got my ears and they work perfectly, thank you, and all I hear is bad shit for the last more than a decade. The last CD I bought was in 2001 from Orbital. Then I decided it's not worth buying CDs because they started sounding like shit. I said to myself that I'm going to buy the next CD when the production of music comes to its senses and drop the level to something more like it was in the 90s.

Cheers!

P.S. Just a reminder what K-14 is: most of the track should peak at 0dB VU and RMS peaks to +4VU at choruses, roughly. That gets you 6dB of dynamics at choruses. You should use a K-14 meter but any VU meter can do to do it like they used to it for decades before the madness settled in.

 

Violator was a masterpiece, that's the music and the production I grew up on. I won't even tell you how old I was when I bought that album.

Bob Katz's system is awesome. He even popped in on Gearslutz to talk a little bit about it and give some advice. Great guy. *yes*

I second what SineWave said, I don't get that SOS article either because I have this thing called hearing. I believe NuGen even did a video where they look at the new Chili Peppers album in this context.

 

Violator is a masterpiece of music and production, yes. I'm glad you agree Catalyst! I like to listen to that album really loud because it sounds soooo nice. Gosh, now I'm in the mood for it. I should play it. LOL

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhZdL4JlnxI
:dancing: :dancing:

 

There are literally tons of ways to get your music loud. The trick however, is to make it loud, but sounding good at the same time, this is the is what makes a good producer. There needs to be a balance between dynamics and loudness and it can be tough sometimes. The thing is when you produce for loudness, you have to compose, arrange, sound design, mix and master specifically for loudness. This invloves paying attention to details for each individual instrument and group in the song way before you even get to mastering. So some tips to get you started:

1-Plan out your instruments and use octaves to keep the instruments separate. Use higher notes on higher octave instruments and this will reduce muddiness and clashing of frequencies. Give each instrument a place in the frequency spectrum and use EQ's to carve out space for each of them... less frequency clash = louder, clearer mix.
2-Low cut EVERYTHING, even the kick and the bass if you need to, any low end that does not need to be there should be gone, this will save tons of headroom in the end, and will make a much clearer, tighter, cleaner sounding mix.
3-Use compression to control the dynamics of individual tracks, experiment with different types of compression (peak, rms, parallel, limiting). Use limiters on individual tracks if there are one or two crazy peaks and pay close attention to whether or not the limiter drastically affects the sound, you should only be shaving off a couple of peaks with it, not killing the instrument.
4-Multiband compression on instrument groups, this is another great way to control dynamics and save even more headroom

My point is, there are a ton of things you can do to make your songs loud, but alot of times you notice that even if you've pushed your limiter to the max, your waveform is a solid block, yet the song sounds like a muddy mess and is not loud at all. That's because like I mentioned before, if you're going for loudness, you have to set your workflow to match that target.

 

fuad as usual a stellar response, thanks for always sharing with us.

I really try to separate by octave but I find I like leads an octave below Middle C because I'm into the sound of it more and that's where I usually designate for my bass. I've also noticed other artists doing it in their MIDI and I can't tell if that's just because they didn't know any better or because they chose to do it. Then there's also the spread across the pitch register of any pads and strings to worry about and they a lot of the time also interfere. What can I say? Producing is hard work, there's always so many variables to consider. *yes*

 

That's so true, there's no one right way to produce, mix or master, there are hundreds of different ways, that's why everyone has a unique sound.

 

One of those things I learned from Fuad's videos. I prevents a weak drop or buildup after the break.

 

what is clipping??


thanks for the answers guys , especially Fuad

in many tutorials the use of LIMITER is frequent,

many even also 3-4 limiter on the same track, riding on overdrive, saturation, comp .. is this normal?

 

By making use of a software clipper.

Like Stillwell Event Horizon +, or Gvst Clipper, or LVCaudio Clipshifter.