Howdy folks, this is the 2nd demo of my cover of Blue Monday by New Order

I think it sounds a lot better than the first one, but tell me what you think yourselves

Here's the 2nd demo, the first demo should be the track underneath it on my soundcloud site

Cheers

https://soundcloud.com/kearnsykearns/blue-monday-demo-2

 

Nice, but too well-mannered and no dynamics .... be a radical, maaan, kick those compressors & limiters off the master bus already.

 

Cheers dude

How do i get the master level not to peak without a limiter, any ideas?

That's why i put the waves L2 on the master you see so it doesn't go in the red

 

You're probably mixing too hot. Try giving your individual tracks more headroom, either by turning down all the faders to a new default of say -10dB (instead of 0db) or, which I find more easy, by putting a trim plug as the first of everything on all your inserts.

An example. Say you have 4 tracks a,b,c,d which go into your master. If you put a trim plug on all 4 of them and set the trim at -10dB, and then in addition turn the volume faders on the tracks down to -5dB you'll have approx. 15db headroom on each track before it ever hits 0dB. Even if you move the track faders up, to make things louder, you'll still have 10dB headroom (if you don't go beyond 0dB and if you're watching the levels of effects on the insert). If you do it like that, the overall level going into the master track will be much lower and there's no need for limiting. Once you got your levels down, you need to bring the level on your monitors up to make up for the lost volume

In a nutshell, turn the faders down (or use trim) and the monitor up. Keep in mind though, that when switching to a project which has everything at 0dB that your monitors ARE NOW MUCH LOUDER. Deafness or other structural damage might ensue.

I started doing it that way because while I was still using IR-Reverbs I kept running into problems with distortion. By giving myself plenty more headroom, nothing ever overloads. In fact some plugins sound much better, particularly those models of analog gear.

If you look through some of the threads on Gearslutz about tracking audio you have people there recommending to go all the way down to -18dB, and if I remember correctly one of the people from Waves (I think it was in thread about the Kramer Tape) stated that their models of vintage analog gear are designed to work best at -18dB . Which would make sense as 0db VU in analog is equal to -18dB in digital. Indeed, if you look at the VU meter calibration in the Kramer Tape, it's set to 18dB headroom by default. If you want a mathematical explanation, I think Bob Katz gives one in one of his videos about the loudness war on YouTube. Math is not my strong point.


Try it, you might like it and if not well just do it the way that is most pleasing to you.

If you're in need of a trim plugin, I'm using the free FreeG by Sonalksis

Code:

www.sonalksis.com/freeg.htm

If you want to use it for trim use the little knob labeled 'Trim', not the fader.

 

Let me add a bit more:

Ideally for it all to work properly you should calibrate your monitors.

This video explains it all very clearly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQZfVSm35us

It'll teach you to calibrate your monitors to 79dB. Which is the norm for small-room studio work in the film industry. If you want to get into the Bob Katz K-14 system, that uses 83db SPL as reference. But 83dB all day long is probably a bit fatiguing.

But the point is if you have your monitors calibrated to a specific level which is already pretty high you don't run into the trap of making things louder and louder. You'll make them go quieter instead. Your reference point is different and because of that you turn your faders down instead of up. The whole idea of mixing hot is obsolete. It comes from the analog world. If you have analog gear you run into problems with noise if you're too quiet, or you might want to hit a certain sweet spot at which some analog gear comes to live. In a computer noise really isn't an issue (certainly not if you're working with 24-bit files and only go to -18dB, or -20dB) and plug-ins rarely have sweet spots (some of the newer analog gear software emulations might be different, though).

Another advantage of calibrated monitoring levels is that over time you will be able to make more informed decisions about what you're doing with a mix, simply because the output from the monitors is always exactly the same. So if you play your favorite music over a calibrated system and then work on your own mix over the same, you can estimate much better if you're going where you want to be going.

Does that all make sense?

 

Hmmm, sort of, i think i got the basics, learn to mix at lower volumes, then it's a learning curve from there on in


Many thanks for the advice though, much appreciated