Ableton Forum

invol wrote:

Alex Y wrote:Hello guys,

Ok so I just finished my album, and I was hoping that there is an easy way to level multiple tracks up to the same volume. Same goes to eq'ing, I mean I got them all pretty much close, but is there is a way I can make them all sound in the same range?

Really hope someone helps!

Thanx!

EQ is key, but the question you ask is a lot more complicated than you might think. Volume is not a useful term at all - see links below. You are really talking about Equal Loudness, which includes many subjective characteristics of perception and variables of monitoring system. Assuming you have great speakers in a well designed acoustic space, it still take time to get good at "leveling" - especially for it to translate across multiple systems.

Here is a good start.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

Then here - Chapter 5 from Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
http://www.focalpress.com/uploadedFiles ... 376_cs.pdf

Then here: Bob Katz Article on K-System http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDo ... m?docID=65

This is also a very interesting article by John Chowning -
http://profs.sci.univr.it/~dafx/Final-P ... owning.pdf

Good luck and have fun : )

Cheers,
Brian

^^^^^

As always, Tarekith's stuff is worth a read.

I'm also in the process of finishing up an album at present and working through getting everything just so, including the levels.

I've done pretty much all of it within the mix itself, tweaking the levels and ensuring there's no clipping above 0db. I've used the odd compressor here and there, though only gently, just to lift parts like soft piano playing and the like to fit in nicely.

However, I've set-up a version of the Analogue Warmth mastering string in the master channel of each track which uses some very mild saturation, gentle compressor and a tiny amount of EQ (only varying by a max of 2db +/- finished off with a limiter. I keep the saturation and EQ the same on all tracks, just to give them a touch of 'signature sound' and then vary the compressor threshold and ratio so I get the odd peak at around 2db, and then use the limiter set at -0.2db with the attack and release reasonably high as my stuff is more downtempo and evolving. That's the technical side of it.

I then listen to the tracks on the PC, stereo and iPod, either with speakers or headphones, to hear how it sounds in various environments, if any little tweaks are needed then I can do them back in the mix leaving the master string alone. The end result is hopefully something that sounds good, clean, even, and recognisably mine

To sum up, the basics are EQ, compression and limiting. Don't be afraid to use the spectrum analyser aswell, might hint at points where you need to tweak the EQ.

Short answer to the OP: Don't master your songs as you mix them, or worse, as you're creating them. A little light compression with a slow attack on the master bus will glue things nicely. After you've mixed and exported all your tracks, bring them all into a new, mastering session. Master them all together. That is how you will achieve unity and balance between them.

Samaritan Sound wrote:Short answer to the OP: Don't master your songs as you mix them, or worse, as you're creating them. A little light compression with a slow attack on the master bus will glue things nicely. After you've mixed and exported all your tracks, bring them all into a new, mastering session. Master them all together. That is how you will achieve unity and balance between them.

This^. Just did this on a few tracks and it's probably best way to do it.