Dear Anyone.

Been writing music for quite a long time but I still suck at the secrets of mixing - be nice! Hokay.

A bit of one of my waveforms....



And a bit of an expertly mixed waveform....



Now mine's as LOUD as his, in other words you don't need to adjust the volume control to hear either, but his is fuller/richer which I guess is because it's fatter. I've got a limiter on my out buss - it's called Frontier. But I have zero technical idea how come he's getting a blue brick without clipping and I'm only getting a skinny shoelace, despite mine being as audible as his.

Am I right in saying the richness in his (broadly speaking, I know there's prob. a load of mixing tricks going on there but just generally!) is because it's a fatter waveform? And technically - HOW'S he getting his waveform so much bigger:? What's he DOING to it to make it that size, with or without clipping?: I can't even hit the BALLPARK of that size of waveform without clipping like a hairdresser on steroids and it's ANNOYIING!! (If I get closer to it, sizewise, everything totally ludicrously clips. If I get rid of all the clipping, mine goes back to being skinny shoelace even though you can still hear it without changing the volume.)

Yup - I know it's simple to youze guyz - go gentle on the idiots in your midst!

Yours hopefully

Chris.

 

Hey Chris, welcome. Will you post audio files for those waveform views?

 

If those 2 waveforms are equally loud, it must be due to some compensation somewhere in the output chain.
The "fatness" is the amplitude of the wave, and if the scale is the same in both pics (db scale, usually), there should be a big difference in loudness.

What program are the waveforms taken from, and show the scale when possible.
And yes, audio files would be interesting.

 

Without hearing the examples it is only guessing.
Are the tracks equally in length? Like DoubleTake said, there should be a big difference if the relations of the two waveforms are identical.
What kind of music is it? Like orchestral stuff? Without hearing anything you'll get more questions than answers I think.

 

The first waveform looks very quiet, it needs a peak limiter to be around -6 LUFS to -14 (YOUTUBE)

 

Not sure what program you're using but for instance in Cakewalk the waveform image can be freely scaled independent from the file's actual volume, quite handy if you want to see what's going on with a low volume wave file. Most likely it can also be freely scaled in your DAW as well.

 

Yes, and that's why I mentioned about the scale....
I was wondering if he had zoomed the db scale out on his own file. That could explain the loudness of the 2 being the same, while visually looking so different.

 

Ah, good you mention this. Seriously, it's not a matter of genius or idiot but of beginning or being advanced.

No effin' way these two parts have even a similar RMS (LUFS isn't so easy to see ).

That process is called normalizing. I can't see any limiting or clipping in the second file, so it's just compression and normalizing, that's all.

 

I think it's Clip Gain. You can make the waveform fill as much of the visual (and audible) space as you want. People often use this so while gain staging they can get all their channel faders back to unity, with each channel the approximately correct loudness. But they have that sliver looking wave cranked somewhere next and then wonder why they get distortion from changing something so much.
They will think some anemic looking waveform is loud enough (in their mix) when they listen to it, because it probably is by the time they hear it. If you never switch the mixer back to pre-fade metering, you can not see why you have to push a channel so far to get it loud enough.

 

++zoom the waveform, ctrl+mousewheel or from the side bar or something, there should be a zoom option.

 

it's like getting a ton of gain reduction from a high ratio compressor, and then using makeup gain to bring it back. it would sound better if you did nothing to it. it's going to sound the same output loudness because the limiter will also be doing "more work".
the original post describes audible changes. zoom level does not change the sound of audio.

 

(lack of) dynamics, distortion shelving off peaks, there's lot to trick into louder perceived music, hard to tell from random screenshots