I have 2 songs eqed and mixed together for a mashup. Everything sounds alright. In Ableton I put on the limiter with a ceiling of 0.3. For the individual tracks I toned down the levels. I am wondering how I can make the master channel balance out the levels so that the volume is as close to as 0 db as possible? Right now my mashup sounds pretty low. Some parts sound louder than others. I've read things about light compression and limiting but I am not 100% sure how to use those in the context of mastering mashups. Any advice? Thanks.

 

Ok so are these two songs ones that you produced or just two commercially released songs that you're mashing together?

n either case, if you have some parts that are louder and others that are softer then you should start by using some volume automation. I'll list a few steps you can follow and I think they should help you out

1) Start by putting a utility plugin on the master channel before any other plugin. The listen the mashup all the way through while turning the automation line for the utility plugin higher or lower as you see fit to smooth out the volumes. If you need to use volume automation on the individual tracks then do that as well.

2) Make sure the two songs have similar EQ curves. This is really important, especially when it comes to the low frequencies. So since you probably have the two mashed songs on separate channels (do it if they're not already), then EQ them so they sound similar in terms of frequency balance. Use a spectrum analyzer to help you out. If one of the songs has more low frequencies than the other, then you need to make some EQ adjustments to tame those frequencies. Do not boost the lows, just tame them on the one that has more of them.

3) After you've matched the EQ balance on both tracks, and did your automation, you can use some compression. Again, go through and listen to the mashup from start to finish while adjusting your compressor settings to tame any loud parts and even out levels. Medium/slow compression setting work well here and a ratio of 2-3 will probably work.

4) Limiting to bring everything up

Of course there are probably lots of other ways you can go about doing this but I think this would be the most logical way to do it. You might need to use other things like multi band compression or maybe even a shared reverb to make the two songs more coherent. So play around with it.

 

(EDM) Extreme Distortion Madeeasy


By the way who termed it EDM?