im practing mastering tracks and am working on a friends mix, in the intro there is a part that is much quieter in his mix than the master because the limiter is grabbing it and bringing it up. is this a situation where i would automate the gain on the limiter down during the intro then bring it up during the drums and bass part? (electronic song) are there other ways to stop that from happening? or does it just come down to automating it away, or maybe its a sign im limiting too much.

 

It's kinda that you're limiting too much, but it's more complex than that.
It seems that the mix is indecisive, if it wants loudness or dynamic range, and doesn't really strike balance either.
You can't fix it at mastering. Your friend needs to commit to something.

 

no such thing as limiting too much in the loudness war. lol. yeah, automation is way the to go. Technically the limiting process didn't bring up the quiet part, it reduce the dynamic range between the loud and quieter part, so the quiet part isn't obviously quieter anymore. It's common to do a 1db gain automation in between those if the track called for hard limiting. You can either automate the added gain on limiter or just add gain plugin and automate the overall track volume and then add a limiter with 0 added gain but with Brickwall TP limiting. I prefer the latter because I always use 2 limiter plugins, one for maximizing, one for brickwall TP.

There are other complicated ways to solve it which is time consuming, don't be that guy. ME needs to be smart and efficient, might as well practice that too. LOL.

 

Last edited: May 19, 2024

i'll automate some stuff! the track just drops out every once in a while to a synth thats really sharp and metallic and if its really loud its just too much. its a cool song and he has a unique style so i'm not trying to get in the way of his arrangements, cooler than my shit lol

 

I do not think I have ever automated a Limiter, that I can remember. I'm not saying you can't, or shouldn't. It's just not what I would do. More likely, I would just use volume automation on the intro to bring it down to the louder part.

 

Maybe I'm crazy, but if you don't bring up the volume of the entire track, all you're doing is creating more dynamic range instead of increasing loudness. That would be the same as dropping a limiter and just lowering the ceiling instead. If you want loudness, you need to bring everything up, and if you think the intro is too loud, just lower your volume. I'm pretty sure the rest of the track will still sound loud enough.

 

I don't think you're crazy and you're spot on about that. The best part about OP's question is he did judge things based on how it sounds (or feel), which is IMO should always be prioritized, there's always a downside to stuff like that, but ME's job is always about finding balance in between all that.