Ableton Forum

NO... I put a limiter for safety... but it's turned off in some point...
a slight eqing on the master is a must in the end...(before mastering)

i always drop ozone 4 on the master. i use a soft knee compression setting and then adjust eq and gains on each track as i go. maybe not the right thing to do on the master but it sounds good to me and doesn't really compress the shit out of everything. i'll let it go into the red a little when mixing.

No.

I put a limiter on the master to prevent myself from overcompressing instruments. Of course I always compare and bypass, etc... but I like to consider the fact that the mastering engineer will probably compress my mix a lot, so I tweak my compressing accordingly. example: a ratio of 1.2:1 might not seem like a lot by itself, you might be tempted to push it more, but after mastering a ratio of 3:1 might be too much. But I always turn it of before bouncing the final mixdown it's a perception thing, I don't actually want to limit my mix before sending it to mastering, that's simply stupid.

Some really pro mix engineers use this technique also.

using a limiter for peak limiting is different to putting a limiter on for slamming volume maximizing.

It's not uncommon to have a peak limiter on the master buss just to tame the odd peak, which should have headroom anyway if going to mastering of a MINIMUM of 3dB and preferably more (most pro MEs on Gearslutz prefer -5 to -6 dBs as the peak on the master buss). If you leave less than 3 dBs headroom, it is much harder to get the best possible sound, although some MEs will still take mixes up to 0dbFS but usually warn the client that it's not optimal.

It's better practice not to use a peak limiter on the master buss, but get your tracks under control so that you leave headroom *i.e. minus several dBs from 0dbFS as a peak* and for tracks with super fast transients, such as drums tracks, you might consider putting a peak limiter on the drum buss instead.

no, not when writing. Not a good idea if ya wanna know exactly what your sounds are doing.

leedsquietman wrote:
PS - I never compress the 2 buss until I have finished all the writing/tracking and mixing and then, only a touch (2dBs max) for a little glue, if I was having the music mastered by a 3rd party, I would probably leave it off altogether.

I voted yes !!
do you hear me world, I said it, I said I voted yes!

Actually I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the OP's question.
I slap a compressor on at the same point, and in the same way, that I try my track through a tiny little 3 inch portable speaker. What I mean is, I use a compressor in this way to see what might happen in the worst case scenario.
Also, it can highlight odd issues you might have easily missed otherwise - in the same way that a sub unit alerts you to a rogue frequency, applying (temporary) compression can artificially pick out things that were buried just waiting for precisely the wrong sonic circumstances to leap out of the mix and shout "look at me, I'm a badly edited cymbal release!! "

A lot of people like to make music for the best case reproduction scenario, which is one strategy.
I have noticed that the world is in fact less than ideal, and people's music playback is probably the least ideal of all.
I have a fetish for making my music sound at least tolerable on the widest range of systems, and for this reason I try it with a ruinous EQ and through hideous compression, just to see what will happen. If it survives through that, well then I consider it done.

right, you can set fire to me now.

Angstrom wrote:I have noticed that the world is in fact less than ideal, and people's music playback is probably the least ideal of all.
I have a fetish for making my music sound at least tolerable on the widest range of systems, and for this reason I try it with a ruinous EQ and through hideous compression, just to see what will happen. If it survives through that, well then I consider it done.

right, you can set fire to me now.

I find one of these quite handy for seeing how a mix sounds on a 'crap' system:



Its a little ipod speaker system that costs about $10

yep, this is what I use.
It's really great.
and by "great" I mean, appropriately shit

We all do what works for us. I think that typically for a noob, it's better to avoid it, but that's just my opinion.

I use my JVC boombox with extra sub bass button, an average Pioneer home theatre with and without sub, car stereo, mp3 player with crappy buds and my monitors to reference mixes. It's deffo not a bad idea to have some low grade consumer crap around to test with, as mant people will be listening through gear of that quality.

Blasphemous!

The answer is yes and no.

I always start with a "clean" master therefore NO. But then, I never do the whole mastering process completely in the end... I always "develop" it with the song, therefore YES.

Can't really tell you what is right or wrong here because you might get excellent results on either way. But I was once told to do all the mastering with "fresh ears" and that is a 100% good thing in my experience. Therefore never process the master too early. At the same time nobody will ever notice if you have SOME compression on the master channel even when you start. But I would never heavily brickwall the master when working on the single instruments.

Some people here will tell you that compression on the master bus is a bad thing anyhow, but that's another story (and not your question I guess).

Ill slap one on and periodically check to hear what the mix sounds like slammed - meaning, how it relates to 95% of electronic music out there today. can't see anything wrong with that. then also, when i render out drafts and stuff, ill make one crushed and one with minimal compression to listen to on other sources. I wouldn't really try to mix with it on. I wouldn't consider myself a really good mixer though.

pepezabala wrote: music never was better than today. There is only too much boring dance music on the internet. but in general, there is quite some good music going on, globally.

You are absolutely right! The thing is, there is such a huge quantity of music being made these days that you have to search that bit harder for the good stuff.
And there is loads of good stuff.

Neil.