Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

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gorillamode200
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Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by gorillamode200 » Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:26 am

Hi guys. I know these will come off as easy questions, but I tried Googling it and searching for answers but I have not found any clear solutions.

I am making a DJ mix on Ableton.

1. Some of the audio quality of the songs I put in the mix is noticeably worse than when I would listen to it on a media player or something. I notice this more on "louder" songs. I am using Limiters on each track so maybe it is causing loss of audio quality? How do I fix this issue and have lossless audio quality in my mixes?

2. Some songs in the mix are different in loudness volume. Is there a way to ensure that each track in the mix has the same/equal loudness volume without having to adjust it by just ear?

Please feel free to link me to another thread that has already asked this question.

Tarekith
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Re: Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by Tarekith » Mon Jan 30, 2023 5:38 pm

1. Check to see what warp mode you're using for each song, in general Complex Pro is a good option for complete tracks. I would definitely NOT use a limiter on each track, as those songs have likely already been limited heavily in mastering and it will just make things sound like mush to add more limiting.

2. You can use a LUFS meter, but honestly that's a pretty slow process since you need to play the whole song to get an accurate reading. If you have a Mac there's a batch processing program called Myriad that will let you set the volume of all songs to the same LUFS value for you, but it can be pricey and not the easiest thing to figure out if you're new to all this.

I normally just do it by ear and adjust the clip volume for each track to compensate. That's how DJs have done mixes for decades, really isn't that hard to get things relatively close that way.
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dbenway
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Re: Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by dbenway » Sat Mar 02, 2024 9:52 pm

Something of a necrobump here - I can see that this question gets asked from time to time but this seems to be the latest thread on it.

I DJ'd on Live for a while years ago before going back to vinyl because I wasn't planning on playing out enough to justify the work needed to keep a set up to date. But since I got a Push 3 I've started getting back into it and having a great time. If nothing else, it's a great way to explore what's possible and how to build sets for use on the Push.

I had been using a loudness meter out of the Plugin Alliance bundle and setting clip gain manually, but just moved on to using the Hornet normaliser plugin which seems a bit quicker and more direct - run an analysis on the loudest part of the track, adjust the clip gain accordingly and then check. However, I kinda just barrelled on in there and set a bunch of tracks using the -12db dBFS setting but am feeling like some of the soul and disco stuff I like to throw in does seem a little bit quieter than modern electronic stuff. I guess this is just a fact of life, I started experimenting with LUFS short term at about -25db and I'm really not sure that I'm ending up with settings that are significantly different so I'm thinking of just sticking with the dBFS setting instead.

Just wondering are there any views or best practices on this, particularly in terms of what kind of targets to aim at for tracks that are going to be mixed. I guess I could probably batch process the files in RX either if that would give more consistent results, but in terms of the time taken to prep the file I don't really mind if it takes a couple of minutes. I do also find that everything sounds a lot better at -12 dBFS in terms of summing and hitting effects, I'm a little bit reluctant to go much beyond that even if the LUFS meter tells me to.

Obviously I'll still be primarily using my faders to balance and have set up my template with a little bit of wriggle room above unity in case some of the quieter files need a push, but from experience once you do that it's hard in the moment to have the discipline not to also push the louder files so that solution isn't enough in itself.

While I'm at it, interested in what people are using on their master bus if anything. I've got a very mild smile Channel EQ, a touch of saturation for consistency and glue, into a limiter set so it hardly tickles when files are pushed over unity, mainly there in case I go too wild with an echo feedback loop I've set up, also applies +5db gain which takes things back to about unity on the master. Still very much in the process of honing things, but in general seems to sound pretty decent on my monitors.

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Re: Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by Tarekith » Sun Mar 03, 2024 12:07 am

Personally I only use LUFS metering to get me close initially for this kind of thing. Set it to -12LUFS or whatever you want, but then fine tune the clip gain for each song by ear. Like you said, some tunes just sound louder or quieter than you would expect given how everything is set to the same LUFS. Nothing wrong with taking a second to go through after batch processing the LUFS setting and giving each track a quick listen, then adjust up or down if needed.
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dbenway
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Re: Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by dbenway » Wed Mar 06, 2024 12:06 am

Thanks - yeah, this is what I'm finding - if you're dealing with files from a bunch of different sources and eras you just have to spend the time setting them up, no other way around it. Both in terms of setting a reasonable level and checking warping to avoid quantising the groove out of everything - doesn't bother me, I love all the music I'm choosing for this so listening to tracks twice or three times over while tweaking this stuff is pretty much a bonus. I think the main thing I'm finding difficult is not getting myself into loudness wars between tracks when giving some stuff a bit more scope to push where needed that I don't end up just turning everything up.

Funny enough I got a bunch of flak for saying this on Reddit - probably my mistake for being on Reddit in the first place - from guys who reckoned all you need to do is drop the file in, set one marker at the start and one at the end, and done. I guess if everything's fresh off Beatport that might work - each to their own, I suppose.

But mainly posting to say how impressed I am with the new Roar device on the master. Because I've got a bunch of fairly varied files in terms of bandcamp/rips new/old I actively want my master to have a sound so as to provide a bit of consistency and glue. Swapped out the 11 saturator for Roar this evening and I think it's sounding great, haven't really figured out the finer points of the plugin yet but even just the tape saturation preset at about 15% is doing exactly what I'd been looking for.

dbenway
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Re: Song audio quality and ensuring same loudness volume of each song in a continuous DJ mix

Post by dbenway » Mon Mar 11, 2024 12:56 pm

Related question - from looking into this I’m pretty sure the answer to is no, but does anyone know is there a way of controlling the auto-warp function for long samples? I’ve been putting together a DJ set with a lot of disco and soul and while in a lot of ways the default warping is very impressive, in many cases it tends to quantise the life out of material by insisting on putting a warp marker on every bar.

It’s not a huge deal to go in and do it manually which is always my approach when I used to DJ regularly with Ableton, but it does seem like just having the auto-warp mechanism put in fewer markers is an acceptable compromise in terms of efficiency vs. results. One every four bars seems to be about the sweet spot for me on most tracks with live drummers, at least as a starting point. And I guess it’s easier to auto-warp and then go in and delete the unhelpful markers than do it manually from scratch.

But just wondering is there some way of telling Ableton to do it this way or maybe a possible max solution to delete every second marker in a clip?

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