Loud Music Before Master

[matt1230]

I have finished a couple projects now that I feel happy with. I have done lots and lots of reading on mastering. I realise that it is better to have a professional master your tracks but for the time being it is something i would like to do myself. These arent going to be released by any labels they are just for play in a club or parties. I also realise that the track should sound good before the master because mastering processing is to add polished touchs and enhance the track not correct it, or only to a certain extent but it is better to correct it in the mix.

The track I have being working on i am pleased with at the minute with no processing on the master apart from its average volume is alot lower than commercial tracks. I have my low end bussed to a audio channel and compressed etc. Along with other buses doing the same sort of thing with eq and compression.

I think for the sound I am after I should be getting my track as loud as possible before applying any mastering and then just apply maybe a small amount of compression for glueing and minimal amounts of gain reduction through limiting.

I am struggling getting a loud compressed sound before mastering plugs. I can get to that volume through pushing the master hard but then this destroys my mixdown.

Does what i say make sense? Can anyone give me any help on getting my track as loud as possible before the master chain. maybe i should be busing certain elements and limiting before they carry to the amster i dont no what would be the best way to do things?

Any help would be great, and without rambling on further lets get into a discussion!

[macmurphy]

i tend to get mix peaking around -6db on the master output before exporting and applying any loudness maximisation during mastering.
if you export a mix with virtually no headroom then you don't leave yourself much leeway to control dynamics later.
always get the best, most staggeringly beautiful mix you can possibly manage first and worry about loudness later

[netwarrior]

-6 db is good- doing same

[Tarekith]

I guess I'm not understanding why you want it loud before you master it. At it's most basic level, self-mastering is really only about address the volume issue, so I don't see the point or advantage of trying to do it elsewhere in the process. I mean, if you get a mixdown that's as loud as a commercial release (or even close to it), why do you need to do anything else anyway?

[leedsquietman]

-6dB is good for peaks, but what you also need to concentrate on is the average (RMS) level of a mix too. If you're peak levels are -6dB but your RMS level is -10 dB that will still sound compressed as all hell and lacking in dynamics and punchiness, with a dynamic range (or crest factor) of 4dB only - even the worst overcompressed loud albums like Metallica's 'Death Magnetic' have a 5dB dynamic range.

Unfortunately Live gives you no provisions to measure RMS. Voxengo's free SPAN plugin can give you this information, as can using a dedicated audio tool like Soundforge/Peak/Wavelab with it's detailed audio statistics.

[cofane]

So, it looks like -6db is the consensus here. My question is, let's say your mixing and arranging your project. The project has 25 tracks, you begin loosing yourself in the music... oops! the output fader is actually peaking at about -2db now. How do you bring the volume back down so it's peaking around -6dB? what's the "best" way?

[Tarekith]

If you have Live 8, click on the header for one of the tracks, then press CMD+A (or CTRL+A for windows) to select all track headers. Now if you drag one fader down, they all come down by the same amount.

Just keep in mind that -6dBFS is only a rough guide, not a hard and fast rule. As long as you're close to that, good enough, you don't need to spend hours getting it all to be peaking at exactly -6.

[leedsquietman]

+1

Most mastering houses will take things as hot as peaking at -3dBFS, however, the more headroom you leave (i.e. peak at -6dbFS leaves 3dB more headroom, which is a significant amount), the more they will be able to work their magic and not destroy the dynamics of the track, while being able to raise the gain level and make other adjustments to get it in the ballpark of commercial releases.

One of THE best features in Live 8 is the select all and raise or lower the faders. After I did the beta and decided to hang fire on Live 8, it was *along with group tracks* the feature I missed the most reverting to Live 7. Reaper also has this feature and it's a really great feature.

If your music is peaking at -6dBFS make sure that your individual channels are peaking quite a bit lower than this too, it's only the MASTER channel you want to be peaking around -6dbFS - and if you're sending the mix off to be mastered elsewhere go light with the limiters and buss group compression, or at least check with the mastering engineer (or make one version with this ON and one OFF).

[fx23]

forgive my ignorance but that something i never could catch and like some expert to explain me

why do we speak about peaking at -6dbfs, for me what is really important is the dynamic range in content,mean the difference between low and high level if the mix is quasi flat that mean virtually
nothing peaking at -6 or -3, if the mix has high dynamic range also better reach nearly 0 to get the maximum firstgen bit scale no? my mind comparing with pictures make me think that way,
we do want to have the maximum rez, bitdepth and levels all among the process, so why wouldn't
that be the same law for sound. what does that mean better peak at -6 than -3? to my
mind the ideal peaking is just before intersample 0dbfs peaking for maximum loudness/rez no?
personnally i find ive got best result mixing 'hot' (without clipping of course), then slowly
lame peaks. i now it's said the wrong way, but i could never make my mind over that consensus theory,
id like to understand...mmm
it would be like desaturate an image to allow later readd some, better have full colors at source no?

it the case you tell to reduce a -2 peak to -6 peak by lowering all tracks, doesn't that just reduce resolution?
is that really better to give room for eq Vs apply the same amout of gain reduction on full scale?

[Pitch Black]

Agreed. I leave full dynamic range in. I am not a heavy user of master-bus compression, so if I peak to below 0db N.B. With still a healthy dynamic range, IMHO that wouldn't preclude any mastering choices would it? That's my dynamic range... that's my maximum peak with a db / db and a half to spare (no clipping), I haven't closed off any avenues to the mastering engineer, have I?


Though I have submitted a remix to label once that stipulated that submitted masters were not to exceed -1db... but I think that was an encouragement for people not to overcook their final unmastered tracks.

[Tarekith]

it the case you tell to reduce a -2 peak to -6 peak by lowering all tracks, doesn't that just reduce resolution?

Yes, but it's less than one bit if you're referring to a 24bit file as is typical for a mixdown. Each bit of resolution equals roughly 6dB (at 24bit), so aiming for -6dB leaves you plenty of headroom and still leaves you plenty of resolution considering the final product will likely be a 16bit wav. If you can 100% ensure that your file is not clipping, then sure, go ahead and render as close to 0dBFS as you want for the maximum resolution. Kind of a moot point as the noise floor and dithering applied later on are already eating into that to some extent, and not a single piece of music today is even taking advantage of the 96dB dynamic range capable (in theory) by a 16bit wav file ready to burn to CD.

This is why I said that -6dB is not a hard and fast rule or target, only a rough guideline to aim for to make sure you're not accidentally clipping the master, while still retaining a decent amount of resolution. If it's -2dB and you're positive it's not clipping, so be it, that's fine too. The biggest issue I see with people thinking they can go higher, is that they're using modulation plug ins or similar that don't always oscillate the same way each time they play back the track. Say a chorus plug in for instance. If you play back the song once and it's -0.5dBFS, you might assume you're safe and the song is not clipping. But perhaps the next time the phase of the chorus is different and coincides with a peak in the song and it clips the one time you render. In all honesty, still probably not a real audible problem to clip briefly, but to be safe we recommend aiming for a lower peak value so it's not even an issue.

The -6dBFS guideline is just something to use while doing the mixdown to keep things at a safe, yet productive level. There's more than enough wiggle room either way where you're really not sacrificing any audio quality. Even at -12dBFS (at 24bit) you're still capable of a dynamic range of approximately 132dB, which is still more than the 96dB offered by a 16bit wave file.

From a mastering engineer standpoint, we don't care if it's -6, -12, -20dbFS to be honest. It doesn't affect how we work, or what options are available to us. The real issues are:

- Too high of a peak and you might be clipping if you don't check afterwards.

- Too low of a peak and you're not taking advantage of the maximum resolution possible in your system. Not a huge deal in most cases, but considering how easy it is to raise all the faders, why not?

It's admittedly splitting hairs most of the time, but I think -6dBFS is a good compromise to aim for, as long as you don;t think you HAVE to be at exactly that value to be "right".

[leedsquietman]

*edit when I first was writing this Tarekith hadn't yet posted above, so sorry if this duplicates a lot of what he said*

The advice above was for if you are getting someone else (professional) to master. If you're mastering yourself, or just throwing some buss compression and limiting on the master buss as a demo master to show a client how it might sound at a louder level, then this is different.

So if you are mixing with a view to having it pro mastered, you should leave some headroom, the more the better - the mastering engineer is going to have a better room, better equipment and can achieve better results with their experience if you leave him/her some room to work. They will have better solutions for buss compressing and volume maximizing than you. In 24 bit mode, you have so much headroom you could send your mix out for mastering at a peak level of -12dB or lower and it would not suffer any noise penalty.

Only if you're mixing for 16 bit with it's reduced headroom should you aim to hand off a mix to a mastering engineer close to 0dbFS.

In 24 bit, it's better to turn down the gain and if you have 12dB of headroom, aim for -6dB peak, -18dB or less RMS etc. These are pretty good figures to aim for but you could go a bit higher, or quite a bit lower and it would be no skin off the mastering engineer's nose.

I already explained that it's far less than optimal to have a peak master level at -6dB if your average RMS level is only -11 or -12dB etc, the dynamic range will be compromised, no different to handing off a mix at 0dbFS and an RMS level of -6 or -7dB.

The problem with 0dbFS is that you cannot go higher than the ceiling, so if you want your mix to be comparable to commercial levels and have the gain raised on your mix, then as soon as you start raising the gain, you are limiting immediately as your already at the ceiling. Meaning the mastering engineer cannot optimize certain processes they use to retain punch and dynamics while raising the level of the mix. It's a bit like adding salt into soup. If you undersalt, you can just add a bit more. If you oversalt, you can't take it back. So it's a good habit to mix at lower gain levels rather than too hot if you are handing off to mastering.

All of this of course is referring to the mastering engineer as a professional with a great room and monitoring environment and gear and lots of experience, not some chancer with a cracked copy of Waves and some $200 near fields !!!

Bob Katz's excellent book 'Mastering Audio : The Art And The Science (2nd edition)' is a great reference on this but be warned, it's not light reading for noobs !

[fx23]

thanks for that clear explain, that totally make sense, that what i felt but i do appreciate
the reminder that things can vary and it could be venry dangerous going to high vs the final
amount of qualitative perceived reduction, well that's just fix ourself a limit we can respect;
good to know that up to -6 that's not that much perceived i think ill keep on making the cowbow
up to -3

[leedsquietman]

-3dBFS peak is usually OK for most (decent) mastering engineers to make a positive impact and not destroy the the dynamics of the song, especially for genres like pop, rnb, dance orientated electronic music, metal etc. The Mastering Engineer would let you know if they needed it a bit less hot, so if they say nowt then you're OK.

If you were producing some singer songwriter acoustic folk, or some old style blues or jazz or especially soundtrack or classical music, you would be requested to leave more headroom (especially the last 2), but anything else and you're probably OK.

[fx23]

y make very loud low dynamic amateur psytrance so no worries

betwen i still don't catch

why lets say a full -1db mix on wich the masterman will apply a gain lowering with hy quality material should sound worse than a reduced , but room ready -6 mix? if he applies a 5db reducing results are about the same, and tehorically slighly better in first case
no?