What you just said sounds more like you're flexing, rather than pointing me to a direction.

- "I don't know how to avoid frequency masking"
- "Well, you just need to know about tonal balance and how to properly use an EQ. My mixes sound very clear with barely any plugins or little effort. And to be honest nowadays it's kinda easy"

I know how to use a multiband compressor and I get why you mentioned it.

Not complaining of course, just maybe asking for a more elaborated answer that can hopefully help me. Cheers mate!

 

This was TOTALLY worth it! I learned a lot so thank you very much :D

 

And why tf do you need to be Louder?

Goal should be making the music/mix sound as Good as possible,
in any and all Qualitative aspects..

But excessively compressing/limiting the stems and master, degrading the sound quality and dynamic range,
only to reach an Arbitrary Number that represents loudness is just silly..

Bigger/louder doesn't mean better, it never did.

I'd focus on making things better instead, musically and technically,
and then loudness will have no importance..


But ofc yeah, by all means, if you want a higher "loudness number",
just Compress and Limit every track like FACK, and Compress and Limit the Master bus like FACK,
and see the sound quality diminish as the LUFS meter raises..

Why not concatenate a series of 5 1176 compressors, and then 5 limiters,
all set to different attack/release timings, and each one pushing thing to the limit of getting fried?

If Loudness is the goal,
why not generate a Noise file where all possible freqs sound at once at Max Loudness..?
Just make it all be 1's, no 0's..


I get it that a certain level of Loudness may be desirable,
but it shouldn't get to the point where it's inversely proportional to sound Quality..
or more important than the Music itself..

 

Because there are a lot of people out there that do not know how to use a volume knob, not to mention knowing what the difference between dynamics and loudness is first of all.
Maybe one could finally make a youtube tutorial about this.

 

I want to sound louder because eveyone else is sounding louder while sounding good. I also think I need to be competitive as a mixing/mastering engineer.

I agree with you, sound quality shouldn't be sacrificed, but I think that with today's limiters & clippers, loudness should be easier to achieve than before

I'm just trying to find out what I'm doing wrong based on everyone else's comments.

 

Loudness comes from the mix. Control dynamics on every track. The aim is to make the crest factor as small as possible on every track while still sounding good i.e. killing peaks that do not add to the musicality. Why can't you do this on the master? because the peaks sum together and then the limiter grabs the peak + whatever's underneath it so you're doing way more gain reduction, killing the energy of whatever's underneath and that's before you get to limiting the meat and potatoes of what you actually want to limit. Now you're hitting -10LUFS and your master sounds shit, overcompressed but it's still too quiet. If you control dynamics per track, those peaks won't sum, and with 1-3db of limiting you can hit -6LUFS easy. My loudest track hit -3. How do you control dynamics on every track? Depends on the genre and sound. If it's a soft ballad, some slow compression to tame the peaks on every track, some volume automation etc. But you won't hit -6 xD. Very modern pop/EDM? Clip every track except for extremely sensitive stuff like vocals, which you limit. Then do the same to every group. Then do the same to your master. If you do a little at each step you can get loud AF pretty transparently without sounding like shit. This is kinda the clip-2-zero method, but Baphometrix's course linked above gets a bit too in-depth/prescriptive and away from the core message for me personally, and it's really really hard to trust him when his music is ass (< my opinion).

 

Besides of Comp/Limit,
I guess you could make sure to Filter every single track like Hell.

When you apply a Cut you're taking away energy from those freqs, right?
So if you Filter each element as snugly/tightly as possible, it will all be Cleaner,
and there will be less of those unnecessary freqs, and thus make your mix be less full of that irrelevant content,
which could represent an energy buildup that makes the track Clip, or the LUFS reading not be as small as others..

So yeah, maybe tighten the Filtering,
make sure only the necessary stuff is going thru, and apply Generous Cuts in terms of db/o,
maybe Not Brickwalling it (as it could have negative phase consequences), but Tight stuff like 24-48 db/octave fo sho..

 

Besides there's the classic..

 

hi, do not ever listen to trolls who says = loudness is bad you shouldn't … and never try to answer them.
they cant understand music is art and artist should make the decisions...

beside everything that you should do and shouldn't do for getting loud, i have a tip that can help you in producing AND mixing :

loudness has no meaning whiteout quietness.

its very simple, but important.

 

I mostly master my tracks 11LUFS/-9RMS & never squash the peaks to much with a limiter!! i might use an upward compressor or a multiband to bring out certain things in the track! But mainly using your ears to see what pushes the track.Some producers keep chasing the loudness war!!& look at the wav file to see if its big enough!! but then end up squashing the lot to much.

 

You can use Stereo Tool. This makes everything very dense.
But since every broadcast station uses those kind of tools it doesn't make sense anyways.
But these people who request loudness, do not know about this of course. That's why they are mostly not really successful because they care about things that do not matter.

 

The Clip to Zero strategy series video that was shared its the answer you are looking for

 

I love his comments in the 'DJs Want Loud Masters' vid.

 

I love that video, every time I see someone arguing about being necessary to be loud in order to be accepted by DJs I send them that video.

Also, is sad to see this "Loudness Competition" concern, because if its all about the Competition, then you all already lost against this guy:

Now, I really recommend you to check theses links below and learn that the music is what really matters, besides, there is no point to make loud stuff if the streaming platforms will take your volume down automatticaly, losing all the headroom you could have used to get more impact in the music.
- A youtube playlist of some videos about the topic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVedY68UCmx9aQTkuq9hPOhhrcWclkmjT
- Articles about Loudness and Dynamic Range: https://productionadvice.co.uk/
- https://www.digido.com/portfolio-item/level-practices-part-2/
- https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/ca-academy/dynamic-range-no-quiet-no-loud-r643/

 

Last edited: Apr 26, 2022

The sum of combined transients can make a limiter work at way too much gain reduction. This will sound more squashed than other loud tracks.
Avoid these weird peaks, using al sorts of techniques, and try clip-to-zero on all group busses. Then the gain reduction on the master limiter won't react as much, giving the possibility of a louder track.

 

Yea Loudness is mostly comming from the mix. If i only have the Mix to work with i would use my Neve Orbit 5057 and push the level really hard (Up to "lack of Dynamic Range" starts to occur and dial back level a bit) and use the -6db output and reduce 2db with trim knob so wont clip my AD converters and leave enough headroom. It will on a very natural way reduce peaks, harsness and rounds-off transients without audible distortion, as most limiters or clippers will do with same levels. Somehow the Neve Orbit Is capable of letting excessive levels/peaks/transients "flowing away" very natural without actual limiting/compression. its an awesome tool to have for Mastering even its build for Analog Summing.

But fairly you have to like the Saturation and 3d Staging and Depth added by the console/transformers being really pushed as that also will happen so its not suitable for everyone changing the mix. Then i would use regular limiters again but because the peaks/transients are reduced very naturally it can work out pretty well. But best solution ofcourse is deal with peaks and transients in the Mix already! Or work harder on Perceived loudness! So at least it sounds as loud as others even levels show its not as loud. Sometimes i master a track up to -5LUFs and still sounds low in level as its too clean and boring!. Dense and saturate up the mix properly and "preferably in stages with different plugins" can help loads Too!

Cheers

 

Maybe use a little more subtle saturation than a fucking clipper? Especially because you do it by default lol
"Why are my mixes sounding so squashed, I route a clipper into two limiters help guys"

 

Do you have samples for comparison? I can say that for the past dozen years I used Waves L2 and never had a problem (comparably loud deep house for the traxsource / beatport DJ world). Mixing softly, tracking at -18 peaks, so summing to approx -10 ish master peak, before I knew much about LUFS and before streaming and Bob Katz changed the game, a good loudness tool on the master (such as the L2, set to attenuate anywhere between 2 to maybe 7 dB depending how aggressive was aimed for. Replaced the Waves with the Fabfilter, never had a problem matching comparable loudness, if anything can really push it ever harder now than the Waves if you want, but turns out I really don't want to anymore. Sorry that was entirely unhelpful because I genuinely don't know where your issue would be - possibly is it the nature of your material that tends towards squashedness before it even reaches the maximizer, and thus the maximizer is a step too far? I would honestly advise anyone that if the mix is clean, gain staging is nicely soft throughout, and then you use a great modern loudness plug at the final stage, it's rare that you need to get much more scientific than setting attenuation anywhere in the range between modesty and aggression. Maybe you can ease off some of the compression in the tracking / groups so everything is pleasanty dynamic right up to the end - then see how much smashing to add with the Pro L?