Some tracks have horrendous clipping. There's a Tiesto song on the latest Trancemaster which is horribly distorted through extreme limiting. I always just skip past that song.

Inaudible clipping is fine, but the gritty stuff shows up now and then on "professional" releases. If it shows up often enough, some people may actually start thinking that a bit of "grittiness/distortion" is tolerable/normal. So use your ears, and be very aware of what that undesirable noise sounds like - if you can hear it, you've pushed the limiter/compressor too hard. And, as MrJiveBoJingles said, you don't have to go anywhere near clipping to destroy a song with inappropriate compression. Compressors can do terrible things to sounds even at low levels.

Perhaps in the future we'll all be listening to what effectively amount to square waves - just solid, full-volume distortion from start to finish. We can finally dispense with "music", since producers can just feed noise in to produce the loud end result.

Or at some point enough people care about dynamics and lack of distortion, in which case a number of today's songs will simply vanish. You can't simply remove the damage from an overcompressed/ overlimited song.

quote:

Originally posted by dannib You should only be using these techniques if you know EXACTLY what you want to achieve.

I would go so far as to say that if you would even consider asking someone else about whether or not it's the right thing to do, then you definitely should not be doing it. If you really know what you're doing, then you already have the answer, and if you don't, then KISS.

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DONT compare your tracks to other tracks in terms of loudness.
It will make you desperate and frustrated in terms of mastering, because these tracks has been carefully EQed, compressed and processed for maximum loudness.
And i think that many tracks being released these days actually sounded alot better before mastering, because the louder you got the more dynamics you need to sacrifice.
There are many tracks that sounds great when heavy limited and compressed but there are so many that would benefit with a lower volume to them.

I`d say that the more peaks you have in your track the worse it will sound when mastered to a high volume level.

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Last edited by Subtle on Feb-14-2009 at 05:55

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle DONT compare your tracks to other tracks in terms of loudness. It will make you desperate and frustrated in terms of mastering, because these tracks has been carefully EQed, compressed and processed for maximum loudness. And i think that many tracks being released these days actually sounded alot better before mastering, because the louder you got the more dynamics you need to sacrifice. There are many tracks that sounds great when heavy limited and compressed but there are so many that would benefit with a lower volume to them. I`d say that the more peaks you have in your track the worse it will sound when mastered to a high volume level.

I always compare my tracks against tracks of a similar style that I like. Its part of mastering for me. For a long time I was very shy about limiting and tried to only touch the limiter once or twice in any song. But I've since realised that clipping a single sample every time the kick hits is not neccesarily a bad thing, and as long as you can't hear it, its probably OK.

I generally get my tracks as loud as professional tracks now, without too much limiting or clipping. Its not that hard, just practise.

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quote:

Sending a track in to be mastwred is basicly asking someone else to fix the problems you were to lazy to resolve when you were producing the track

Sorry but that is absolute nonsense.

Ok Ok, they don't send them to be mastered ONLy to fix them, they also send them to be mastered so that they can destroy any and all dynamic range in order get it retardedly as loud as possible, so that later someone can turn the volume down/compress it more, and ruin it further.

Its better to force the user to turn the volume up, then force them to turn it down and compress the track. Alot less damage is done if you do the former.

I try to release tracks that peak at around -8db without compression at all on any channel.

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quote:

Originally posted by cronodevir Ok Ok, they don't send them to be mastered ONLy to fix them, they also send them to be mastered so that they can destroy any and all dynamic range in order get it retardedly as loud as possible, so that later someone can turn the volume down/compress it more, and ruin it further. Its better to force the user to turn the volume up, then force them to turn it down and compress the track. Alot less damage is done if you do the former.

+1

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quote:

Originally posted by cronodevir I try to release tracks that peak at around -8db without compression at all on any channel.

Why the heck would you release tracks that peak at -8dB? Even if you don't want to use any compression, why wouldn't you just normalize them so that they peak at 0?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a final product that peaks at 0dB, and tracks that peak at that level can be entirely without distortion and clipping.

Because the end-user volume knob is a compressor, and turning it up does less damage than turning it down.

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quote:

Originally posted by cronodevir Because the end-user volume knob is a compressor, and turning it up does less damage than turning it down.

Wtf are you talking about? Normal amp and speakers don't compress the audio, they just play it.

quote:

Originally posted by cronodevir Because the end-user volume knob is a compressor, and turning it up does less damage than turning it down.

Eh?

Speak to any mastering engineer worth their salt and you will find that they want the track a fraction below 0db - I have never heard of anyone submitting a track at -8db, and it would be a really stupid way to work as that's nearly 3 times quieter than the finished mastered result would be.

Mastering should have NOTHING to do with fixing individual mix level problems, apart from when producers/mix engineers are shit at mixing and mastering engineers have to multiband compress particular frequencies because they didn't get it right in the mix stage. Mastering is there to compliment the overall mix - to add that sparkle and finish, not to fix bad engineering.

Come on people these are the basics here:

No individual track should clip (unless the clipped sound is what your trying to achieve). If it does clip, it is distorting and will have an even worse effect on the overall balance of the mix.

The track to be mastered should be as close to 0db as possible (possibly with a tiny bit i.e. 1 or 2 db of headroom if preferred by the mastering/dub engineer).

As for classical music not being compressed enough? That's the whole point. One thing incredibly refreshing about listening to well recorded classical music is the dynamic range and lack of compression. The range of volumes between orchestral elements and the diversity of range combined with melody IS classical music.

No, Many spakers apply a limiter to control the volume. Reguardless to that, changing the volume anyways effects the dynamics of the sound. Most music i lsiten to on my PC requires me to turn it way the fuck down for it to be at a reasonable level. While at the same time, games, youtube, and any other app with sound is pretty level. And my music I make at that average level.

There is no reason for it to be loud. Google "the louduness war". Give me a good reason 0db is better than -2db or -8db? [ i hear -2db alot]

I don't master my tracks. I do everything myself before production is done, once I render the .wav and .mp3..its done. No more work will be done to it. I don't always do -8 I usualy do between -8 and -4, average level is like -10 or so. That is my preference. Again, music doesn't have to be blasting loud.

I'm not saying mastering is only for fixing stuff, but that is one of the main reasons most of the time ive seen something get mastered, either it needed fixing, or it needed to be louder, so they asked the engineer to do it that way.

What DJ RANN said about classical music:

+17823564 That is why I don't make my music max loudness. Classical music ive heard sometimes peaks at like -2 but with an average of -15, loudness and quietness need to be molded nciely, not jsut have everything on fullblast. Yours pads shouldn't get louder because you are doing a breakdown for instance.

Also note, my original comments are full of sarcasm. I wasn't serious or absolute.

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