matching levels across an album

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nowtime
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matching levels across an album

Post by nowtime » Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:31 am

When readying tracks for distribution and printing what is the best way to raise or lower the final render so that perceived volume of all tracks are balanced?

At the moment I am using Ozone 7 standalone, but also have Studio One 3 available. I want to set a ceiling of -.7dB and dither and be done. For fun, I have set up the album in a Live set and adjusted the clip gains for each song in order to have matched perceived levels. I would love to be able to type in the gain change from this exercise into my Ozone setup but am not familiar enough with signal chain to figure out how I can achieve my aims.

Really curious what is the standard in mastering studios. Certainly this is not usually done in the mixing stage. I guess I'm not understanding the relationship of the ceiling setting, the main output fader and the level of the final dithered downsampled file.

Shift Gorden
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Re: matching levels across an album

Post by Shift Gorden » Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:44 pm

Hey man - this is the Dark Art of Mastering!

This is something Tarakith and the gang will be able to weigh-in on for sure.

Are you wanting to match the vibe of all your tracks, too - i.e. glue them together so they all sound cohesive? That's one of the huge (personal) challenges of mastering. Setting levels is one thing, but matching the vibe is another!

As far as your question, from what I understand Studio One is where it's at for multitrack mastering. I know quite a few folk who have bought that DAW just for its mastering ability. I *think* ultimately you'll have to try to match each track individually in terms of level paying attention to metering.

So...I think you're doing it right in Ableton, mate, by matching everything....I am a little out of my depth here!

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Re: matching levels across an album

Post by Tarekith » Thu Aug 31, 2017 2:38 pm

I'm not totally understanding your question I'm afraid. Normally during the mastering phase I just match the volume of the tracks by ear, adjusting how hard I hit the final limiter usually. If you're not trusting your ears for this, then using a meter that reads LUFS values can be a semi-accurate way to do it with just metering too.
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nowtime
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Re: matching levels across an album

Post by nowtime » Fri Sep 01, 2017 12:17 am

So you are using the threshold level as your volume adjustment? And that is not problematic in regards to overly-squashing some of the peaks?

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Re: matching levels across an album

Post by Pitch Black » Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:24 am

nowtime wrote:So you are using the threshold level as your volume adjustment? And that is not problematic in regards to overly-squashing some of the peaks?
No, because you make these adjustments relative to the level of your "loudest" track. That is to say, on an album listening experience you want the "loud" songs to sound loud and the "quiet" songs to sound quiet BUT still hold together as a continuous listening experience, without having to make the listener reach for the volume knob.

So in mastering you set the maximum volume of your loudest/most intense track by - as Tarekith said - adjusting how much final limiting you apply to that track. This defines the overall peak perceived volume of your album. In other words this is where you put a stake in the ground and say "this is the tradeoff between loudness vs dynamics vs low-end levels that I'm prepared to make." Then you adjust the perceived loudness, or amount of limiting, on all the other tracks until you end up with a compromise that flows as a continuous listening experience.

Once the track order is set, you might often make an adjustment to the volume of just a song's intro because of the song it happens to follow on the album, along with very careful attention to gapping between tracks to make for the smoothest possible listening experience.
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nowtime
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Re: matching levels across an album

Post by nowtime » Mon Sep 04, 2017 7:26 am

Pitch Black wrote:
So in mastering you set the maximum volume of your loudest/most intense track by - as Tarekith said - adjusting how much final limiting you apply to that track. This defines the overall peak perceived volume of your album. In other words this is where you put a stake in the ground and say "this is the tradeoff between loudness vs dynamics vs low-end levels that I'm prepared to make." Then you adjust the perceived loudness, or amount of limiting, on all the other tracks until you end up with a compromise that flows as a continuous listening experience.
OK, I finally get it. That was the piece I was missing. Thanks all!

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