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Permalink Reply by Enemy Within on February 3, 2008 at 7:47pm

i'm talking about the overall volume level of a mastered recording, the end product, i know there must be quite a few opinions on this but some advice on this subject would be very welcome. thanks , darren.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Cousins on February 5, 2008 at 1:00pm

Push the limiter until you just start to hear some distortion, then turn it up another 6 dB. Ideally, your meters shouldn't be moving at all by this point, then you know you've got it right! ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Mark Cousins on February 5, 2008 at 1:27pm

Do they respond to studio fires caused by excessive peak limiting?

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Permalink Reply by Enemy Within on February 6, 2008 at 5:23pm

Hi, astral and mark thank you for your advice, just before christmas i had a go at mastering the eight tracks i am ready to put them on an album i'm working on, as this was my first attempt at mastering i read many features on the subject and quite a few in music tech on the fx needed to master a track eq, compression and limiting etc, i set to work using the fx in edit mode in adobe audition 1.5.
I have to say it's been one of the hardest things i've attempted, after many wasted discs and spending many hours listening to the tracks on every system i have, i came up with a sound i was very happy with, the eq brought the highs up really well and the compression put everything in it's right place, and to finish i added a minus 12db limiter with a gentle boost, the thing that bugs me still is, are the tracks loud enough as mp3's? On my hi fi and studio monitors they sound great and i'm very pleased with them, and after checking the other mp3's by other artists on my soundclick site they sound about the same apart from a few exceptions, but i can't help feeling they could be a bit louder, but i've tried being more heavy handed with the limiter in the past, but to my ears it just seems to ruin the dynamics of the track, can you guys help me and put my mind at ease over this?

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Permalink Reply by Mark Cousins on February 6, 2008 at 10:07pm

It's always hard (if not impossible) to be objective about your own music, which often leads to an overtly critical assessment of both musicality and loudness. Take a step back. Ask somebody who has ears you trust, and see what they say. It sounds to me like you've got the balance about right, though, given you don't want to kill the dynamics. Loudness is a nasty trap, especially when you consider how many 'quiet' records were released before 1993!

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Permalink Reply by Escape Velocity on March 18, 2008 at 1:35pm

Hi Darren,

Not sure if you use Sonar at all, but might be worth a look at seeing if you can get hold of Cakewalks Boost 11 mastering plugin. It's designed specifically to do the kinds of things you're talking about and seems to do it pretty seamlessly.

HTH

Jez

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Permalink Reply by jason gray on March 18, 2008 at 2:48pm

Boost 11
One of the main reasons i upgraded to sonar 7, even if i dont use sonar that much,as i dont at present, i still have these plugins/vst for use in ableton in my steinberg folder.

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Permalink Reply by Enemy Within on March 19, 2008 at 12:16am

HI everyone, I'm sorry It's taken me a while to reply to your comments, but I've had a few problems with posting replies on this site for some reason my p.c threw a wobbly everytime I tried to respond. Anyway I'd like thank you all for your help and advice on this subject, after going back and listening to my tracks and trying every type of mastering technique I could think of, including the brickwall type, which I think sounds awful, I decided to stick with the tracks I already had. I think everyone can learn something from the problems I experienced. The most valuable advice came from Mark Cousins, in his comments above, which were very helpful in pointing me in the right direction. I now have an album I'm very pleased with and I've uploaded four of the newly mastered tracks to my site, I've learned that mastering boils down to your own personal taste and simple common sense, thanks again, and all the best, Darren *ENEMY WITHIN*.

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Permalink Reply by wanabeme308 on March 24, 2008 at 6:08pm

In my experience, I always use VU/PPM Meter of the soundforge to limit the level. I think it's good to see by eyes the exactly equal, of course we also need to listen. I set VU/PPM scale in "logic" and try to tune the volume up, until this meter shows about 10 or a bit lower. I did check the result in many other studio, and consider it really works.

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Permalink Reply by EOSPete on April 1, 2008 at 8:44am

Hi Darren
This also depends on your chosen output media which I guess might be CD/MP3 player.
There is a growth in the sales of vinyl recently so a master for this is a different animal when it comes to dynamics.
Personally I go for the mix balance first, then EQ out as much low end as I think I can get away with either on the master buss or on the bass related channels. Then I will stick a buss compressor across to shave off the peaks and then use Cubase Maximizer. I find it interesting that FX such as delay and reverb in particular can affect apparant loudness. Drums mixed at the back of the mix but quite low can sound huge even though the loudness isnt there. Then again I am only learning the craft so I might no be doing this the most effective way possible.
I would find it useful to hear what other folks use as reference material when making volume/balance/EQ decisions.

Cheers
P

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