Ableton Forum

Hi there!

As soon as I started making electronic beats, I was aware of the dangers of the combination of unexperienced ears (mine) & the unskilled use of compressors and limiters ... used in a rash & 'uncontrolled' way, these can do a lot of harm, as most of you know.

Lately, I've been posting some of my tracks on SoundCloud, and a good friend of mine suggested to treat my tracks with a limiter adjusted to a very mild setting in order to 'sparkle' / louden things up a bit, since I always leave about 6db headroom in my final mixdowns. Since my tracks on SoundCloud are relatively 'quiet' in comparison to other guy's music, I wanted to ask you:

What's your advice concerning the careful use of a limiter during the final mixdown?

In case anyone is interested, my user name on SoundCloud is 'patrickbanken', and you'll find a few house / techno tracks as well as a few DJ sets (everything from rare groove to dub & old school wildstyle mixes).

Please feel free to share your thoughts!

Thanks in advance,

pbanken

I think you answered your own question.

You are purposely leaving about 6db of headroom but your tracks are too quiet.

So stop doing that?

Honestly I think what you want to do should be all that's needed when people "master" their own tracks. A little bit of limiting hitting only the peaks of the tunes by about 3dB.

Thanks for your replies!

To Tarekith: Indeed, as you and many others more experienced than me in the field of mixdowns and mastering hace pointed out, every musician should consider mastering her / his stuff by herself very, very careful ... Since I also have a healthy respect for all things related to compression & limiting, I opend this post.

To tempus3r: Good point in a way, but I'd like to ask again: What would your advise be when carefully approaching the use of a limiter? Perhaps someone could write a very brief 'beginner's guide to limiting'?

Thanks again, pbanken

pbanken wrote:a good friend of mine suggested to treat my tracks with a limiter adjusted to a very mild setting in order to 'sparkle' / louden things up a bit, since I always leave about 6db headroom in my final mixdowns.

I had a dream the other night that I was body painting a very unclothed Heidi Klum. My choice of tools included a hammer, but I didn't use it.

[e] What gives me peace of mind when considering using a limiter: Identify where a limiter kicks in during a track, identify which components of the mix are colliding to create a rogue transient, and then fixing that instead. A limiter is like a broken clock, it's right once or twice a day, but it's also wrong most of the time.

saving 6dB of headroom is a good habit, especially if you ever need to remaster a song later.

But like tempus3r says, for publishing a mp3, save another mixdown that hits 0dB (or close) and don't be afraid of a little limiting/compression.

And by a little, Tarekith says only on the peaks... you can actually see the waveform in live's Compressor and tell if it is only hitting the flat slope on the peaks, and otherwise stays on the 45-degree sloped portion of the graph. If not, raise the cutoff level.

I know this has been debated to no end on other threads in the General forum but...

I think -6db is way too low.

If i get a mix to master from a band, and it sounds really good, and maybe only needs a slight tweak of an eq or something, the last thing i want to do is apply 5db of gain to get it and appropriate level.

I'm NOT talking about needing to smash the shit out of it to 0db ala the "loudness wars", but most bands I've worked with will at least want to see it around -1db. 5db of compression and makeup gain to do that is way to destructive and unnecessary. I subscribe to the less is more theory of mastering.

So , I ask bands to provide "pre-masters" at -3db. Enough headroom for me to process it as needed but not so much that tons of processing will be required.

i think it depends on if you are talking about a 16 bit file (too low) versus a 24bit audio file (where 6dB of headroom is plenty plenty "loud")

laird wrote:i think it depends on if you are talking about a 16 bit file (too low) versus a 24bit audio file (where 6dB of headroom is plenty plenty "loud")

Great point. I always assume people are working in and talking about 16bit/44.1