Ableton Forum

Hi there, I'm using Ableton live 11 standard, creating darkish electro-pop (I guess...)
Sadly, the rendered versions of my tracks seem to lose a lot of volume and depth in the process.
I already checked them with mono-effect, they still sound fine (unrendered). The mastering audio effects such as 'make it loud' do help but still if in some dream-universe my tracks were to be played in one Playlist with Sevdaliza or Chelsea Wolfe, a listener would have to turn up volume on my tracks and then be blown away with loudness as the next track starts... any suggestions?

This is a mix/master issue and not specifically a render issue. The dither algorithm may impact perceived loudness a bit i.e. POWr 2 and 3 doing some noise shaping, but the bulk of the loudness is being achieved via your mix/master.

If you want a louder master chain without actually optimizing your mix, try this: Before your final limiter, put an instance of the Glue compressor set to not compress at all with max threshold, max ratio, slowest attack, and shortest release time. This gets the actual compression stage out of the way. Then turn on soft clipping and boost your output. Don't stop boosting until right before it starts to sound distorted. Your master fader RMS might end up near -6 or -4 dB at loudest part of song, which is really loud, but it will still sound fairly clean and not be in the red. As a bonus precaution, set the final limiter's ceiling to -.5.

Controlled clipping is the secret to modern loud mixes, and Glue is basically a secret weapon. Soft clipping sounds a bit "better" than just pushing your limiter imo, since it feels like it keeps your hf transients (because they're being distorted slightly!).