Why does my music doesn't sounds as loud as other music?

[psyfi]

You track will never be as load as a professionally mastered track without it being professionally mastered well not be as load and still sound good anyway. Many people will offer a first track free mastering service so you can check their quality out but if you don't want to spend out then play around with it your self but in most cases artists mastering their own tracks lack the perspective to do the job as well as it could be done.
You could set up a basic one size fits all mastering chain but save master copies of your tunes un-mastered and use this simple chain for tunes you want to upload to sound cloud and what not just to get the level up there.

[InfinityUnit]

Woah, this has been a busy night!!!

Thanks for your confusing and conflicting advices

Nah I'm just kidding.

Well let me answer to Kruddler about the normalization process. The thing is that when I built my song, I was very careful to set the levels right. If I wanted that track to be that quiet and / or that other track to be that loud... Well that's what I wanted! Right? Now why would I screw up this carefully planned mix by doing this normalization process. There are places in music where normalization is unthinkable : in classical music for instance... Now I do electronic music, but my point remains... I think scutheotaku made a nice explanation is the issue with normalization. Especially with the noise level issue, I've had those kind of problem in the past...

So far, using compressor, I've made my song much better. From the first export to the last one, I've tried 3 kinds of compression setting and it went better every time... The only things that bugs me is that my last attempt was as far as I could go without (I felt) doing damage to the song and it still wouldn't match those levels of "professional" music (and probably professionally mastered...) Pretty close, but not quite there...

So maybe the solution is a better plugin??? Anyhow this a whole specialty in music making and I will have to really get into it in order to achieve good results...

Thanks everyone

P.

[Hermanus]

I often say this but here it is:

Leave your master level at 0db [be sure every track's levels are well done for not making master to go red]
Then go to audio effect rack Mastering and choose Vintage Mastering 2

In its macro knobs I always raise Hi to 1.5db and rarely adding some low [no more than 3db]

Voilà magic boost without destroying your work


cheers

[Rave]

Check out the link in my sig. For 15 dollars your track can be transformed to beatport standard. We can even get your track on beatport . We are specialists in House Music.

[pepezabala]

if your mix is good, but silent, and you can't turn up the master because then spikes go into the red, then it is totally legitimate to use a compressor/limiter on the master.

But first check what causes the spikes, maybe it's some stuff that you can turn down in the mix and then turn up the master volume.

If it still sounds too silent, then use the limiter in live to get the overal volume higher. Export it a couple of times with different settings from subtle to heavy limiting, then compare them, best option is to have someone else switch between the different versions and you decide which one is best without looking at the screen or knowing which version is being played.

If your favorite mix turns out to sound less loud than other music, then live with it.

Also make sure to listen to it on different speakers (monitor, headphone, computerspeakers, boombox, car stereo etc).

[InfinityUnit]

I will upload to soundcloud the 2 version. the before and after, so maybe this will give you guys a better idea...

[InfinityUnit]

are there others ways of posting the song... Soundcloud's compression made a nice mess of the file... This file is not a good example of what it really sounds like...

[InfinityUnit]

I have to go to work so I'll probably do that by tonight... later...

[antarktika]

Izotope's Ozone 4 are the answers you are looking for

no,

crank up the volume on your amplifier when you are listening to the song.

enjoy

Yeah, and if you do a self-published release, just put a readme file in the download that says "make sure when playing my tracks alongside other songs that you increase the volume significantly, and make sure that as the last track is ending, you reduce the volume before any mastered track comes on, otherwise it will blow out your speakers and possibly your hearing". Brilliant advice!

[lethal_pizzle]

Now why would I screw up this carefully planned mix by doing this normalization process.

Because the normalization process won't screw up your carefully planned mix that much.
It won't alter the dynamic range. The compression you added did though.

[Hermanus]

Yeah, and if you do a self-published release, just put a readme file in the download that says "make sure when playing my tracks alongside other songs that you increase the volume significantly, and make sure that as the last track is ending, you reduce the volume before any mastered track comes on, otherwise it will blow out your speakers and possibly your hearing". Brilliant advice!

Without forgotting the famous: "I will not take responsability for your speakers' damage."
Have fun

[InfinityUnit]

Hi again,

Finally I'm kind of pleased with the last version of my song. It sounds almost as good as the other music in my library. In fact in most cases the level is very close to being the same... On rare occasions with some artists, it will not sounds as good... Artists which, I presume, had a very expensive mastering job done...

What I felt the mastering did for my song is to add a lot of clarity to it. On top of being louder, It now sounds more crisp... Maybe I'm imagining things but my ears tell me that...

I beg to differ about normalization with the people who think it's good... My experience, though short, has nonetheless showed me that every time I used normalization, I screwed up my song and made it bland and drab, losing all the subtle intonations I was able to achieve with my mix... Again why normalize and let a computer decide the levels when my ears are far better suited to do the job!?!

Posting the song will not be possible for now, as I have reached my traffic limit with my ISP. Also, the way it sounds in soundcloud was down right scary!!! I will have to find another way to share... eventually...

"Rave" I will consider your offer. Although I honestly don't know is this song is Beatport material... I have a little doubt in myself... I'm still a newbie

Thanks everyone

p.

[psyfi]

Here are some good examples of the difference between mastered and un-mastered material http://soundcloud.com/colin-oood/colin- ... ering-demo
I can personally recommend Colin's services his rates are reasonable and he's dedicated to the job. He mastered my last few releases.

[flowdesigner]

Izotope's Ozone 4 are the answers you are looking for

no,

crank up the volume on your amplifier when you are listening to the song.

enjoy

Yeah, and if you do a self-published release, just put a readme file in the download that says "make sure when playing my tracks alongside other songs that you increase the volume significantly, and make sure that as the last track is ending, you reduce the volume before any mastered track comes on, otherwise it will blow out your speakers and possibly your hearing". Brilliant advice!

edit:
Yeah, and if you do a self-published release, just put a readme file in the download that says "make sure when playing my tracks alongside other beatport top 50 deadmouse electrohouse maximimized dubstep crap that you increase the volume significantly, and make sure that as the last track is ending, you reduce the volume before any mastered track comes on, otherwise it will blow out your speakers and possibly your hearing". Brilliant advice![/quote]

Dont expect the dj to actually listen to your music before playing it in a dj set!

[Tarekith]

Finally I'm kind of pleased with the last version of my song. It sounds almost as good as the other music in my library. In fact in most cases the level is very close to being the same... On rare occasions with some artists, it will not sounds as good... Artists which, I presume, had a very expensive mastering job done...

>>> If you can get it even close and you're happy with the sound, that's a good thing. Like you said, the bigger artists out there are having their mastering done by professionals, and it's going to be very hard to achieve that sort of loudness without a lot of negative side-effects unless you have more experience. <<<

What I felt the mastering did for my song is to add a lot of clarity to it. On top of being louder, It now sounds more crisp... Maybe I'm imagining things but my ears tell me that...

>>> Be careful here, as a lot of times people think this initially, but after giving their ears a break for few days all too often that crispness can suddenly be perceived as harshness too. Also, when you make things louder in general, a psycho-acoustic phenomenon known as the "Fletcher-Munson" effect can alter your perceptions of tonal balance. <<<

I beg to differ about normalization with the people who think it's good... My experience, though short, has nonetheless showed me that every time I used normalization, I screwed up my song and made it bland and drab, losing all the subtle intonations I was able to achieve with my mix... Again why normalize and let a computer decide the levels when my ears are far better suited to do the job!?!

>>> Then you're doing something wrong, or don't understand what normalization does. All normalizing does is take your mixdown, look for the highest peak, and raise the entire level of the file until that highest peak is now at 0dBFS. It does not in any way, shape, or form alter your mixdown, the balance between instruments, or tonal content of your song. It's the most transparent way physically possible to raise the volume of the song so that it's using all of the range that digital audio provides. <<<

Posting the song will not be possible for now, as I have reached my traffic limit with my ISP. Also, the way it sounds in soundcloud was down right scary!!! I will have to find another way to share... eventually...

>>> Yeah, unfortunately Soundcloud down-converts everything to 128kbps for streaming, and sometimes this can really be noticeable. One reason to always make your songs downloadable, so that people can get the exact same quality that you uploaded at. <<<