Ableton Forum

chrk wrote:

d-track wrote:you get an unlimited band (!) compressor and also better eq-s than live has and a more friendly enviorinment for mixing + dither options.

Wouldn' know about the latter, but ReaComp, ReaXcomp and ReaEQ come with the free ReaPlugs-pack. I've never run into any issues using them in Live.

H20nly wrote:Thanks guys. Very nice thread. I've been needing one of these. I'm Lounged out for a bit.

good luck Contra. There's some really good advice in here...

one thing that I don't remember seeing mentioned. you can run your meters high in the red on your tracks (without them actually clipping) as long as you keep your master track under control. that probably won't help too much with what you're getting at here, but if there's an element that you've had to turn other tracks down for, sometimes you can get a little extra boost this way. i'm not sure what you're using in the way of samples/hits but if they're coming from multiple sources this can be a life saver.

[nis] wrote:

Grappadura wrote:
but what if you just drive the master into red?

This will cause clipping on the DACs of your soundcard / audio interface. The master track or any track which is routed to an external output should never go into the red.

Individual channels which are routed internally can be driven hot, because floating point calculations are not restricted to 0 dB. There's a safety limit at +60 dB, though. Anything beyond +60 dB will clip (in Live).

Best,
Nico

UKRuss wrote:If you really can't afford external mastering and are forced to do it yourself, focus on the mix so that you retain around -3db to -6db headroom, render as a 24bit stereo file.

Import the stereo file into a new live set and use Lives native plugs to 'master' it yourself. Live now has a multiband compressor and EQ8 is pretty transparent anc can work well as a mastering EQ for this type of job. Then bang the limiter on the end of your chain set the ceiling to just under 0db, say -0.1dbfs or -0.2 dbfs and crank the input to get your loudness.

Import one of your favourite pro track into another track in the same set and bypass the mastering chain of FX, set the master meter to read RMS rather than Peak and get a feel for where this typeof track sets on average meter readings. Re-engage your mastering chain and your own track and adjust the limiter to match the RMS area you identified for your genre.

If you can splash out some cash, try a different limiter such as Voxengo's Elephant or T-Racks singles.

There is a deal on at the moment for the shell, metering and classic EQ on T-Racks. The metering is worth the price alone as it has everything you need in one window.

With a tad of practice you can get pretty close to your fav tracks loudness just using the RMS comparison and adecent limiter. If you need to tweak EQs to match you pro track EQ8 will do the trick and for any compression needs on the stereo file, Lives multiband compressor will see you right.

once you're happy, render while dithering to 16bit.