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Clipping your tracks on purpose when mastering? (pg. 2)
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| wrzonance |
| quote: | Originally posted by gr8ape
a lot of unawareness in this thread
clipping the master gives you more headroom its just a fact |
Ah! I'm not talking about NORMAL "clipping." I'm talking about abusive clipping.
Every time I master one of my tunes I bring that threshold down so my limiter is doing about 3-5 db of gain reduction. But I try not to do more than that. My outrage stems not from normal mastering techniques, but from the abusive ones!
| quote: | Originally posted by gr8ape
clipping the master gives you more headroom its just a fact |
Oh and just to clarify. When you clip your master you're actually REMOVING headroom. Whatever headroom that was there, is now squashed into oblivion.
Headroom = you have more "room" to be louder
Mastered "clipped" track = all headroom is gone-- you have a compressed and limited mix
You are right that you are averaging out the signal so the headroom now becomes the same. If you turn the song up too loud EVERYTHING clips, if you turn up a song without a lot of limiting, maybe a few instances of the track will clip. |
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| johncannons1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by gr8ape
clipping the master gives you more headroom its just a fact |
i dont know much about mastering but reading alot of threads about it leads me to believe the opposite of that. . .
wouldnt NOT clipping the master give you more headroom. . .
isnt that the fact.. |
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| dannib |
Most of the tracks on beatport are a joke. They are basically unlistenable for me. I get ear fatigue usually after playing only one track. Its gone beyond silly now. I reckon (as someone else pointed out) that the beatport player should automatically match the volume of different tracks. You should also have the option to purchase a version of the track that hasn't been completely ruined due to insane amounts of overcompression!
| quote: | | my limiter is doing about 3-5 db of gain reduction |
For me, that is a hell of alot of limiting. On a well mixed track i usually limit by around 1-2db max. Thats just catching stray peaks such as crash cymbals etc. The rest is done at mixdown. The stuff you get on beatport just looks like a huge square wave. The breakdwons are as loud as the main drop. i mean wtf? |
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| kitphillips |
| quote: | Originally posted by wrzonance
Ah! I'm not talking about NORMAL "clipping." I'm talking about abusive clipping.
Every time I master one of my tunes I bring that threshold down so my limiter is doing about 3-5 db of gain reduction. But I try not to do more than that. My outrage stems not from normal mastering techniques, but from the abusive ones! |
Thats a LOAD of limiting. Would qualify as abusive mastering to me. Just my opinion.
I think you're all listening to music. Trance is particularly bad in this respect. Deep house/techno/tech house is mastered relatively appropriately I think.
I'm running a compressor with no more than 2 DB of gain reduction now and a limiter with no more than 3 dB on a transient every 32 bars. I'm not paying too much attention if the tracks clipping. pretty much not worried unless its over 1 dB or its quite regular (more than once every 16-32 bars) Probably be better off using a soft clipper though because of ear fatigue. Diginut's right about that.
Clipping a track a little bit isn't always abusive. Whats abusive is a constantly high RMS. Bringing the peaks down a BIT or clipping them isn't painful generally IMO. You have to remember that a DAW will register a clip if only a single sample goes into clipping. This certainly won't be detectable by the human ear, if you regularly have more than 3 samples clipping theres a problem. But you should be using all the headroom you possibly can when your track is peaking - but not all the time, you need to retain dynamics. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
I'll re-post the little bit I wrote about RMS in here since it seems relevant...
| quote: | Originally posted by Lucidity
So what is a good rms value to have? I know it will be different for every track or what would be a bad rms value? I have been wondering this for a while. |
There's no single answer to this, it just depends on the style. The RMS will also vary according to what percentage of the song includes the kick and bass, since those will be the loudest elements. If you have a song where the kick and bass never let up, it will have a higher RMS value as a whole.
But if you look at the RMS just in the sections that include kick and bass, anything louder than about -8 or -9 dB starts to irritate me, personally. It starts to sound noisy and wrong after a while. I listen to a lot of trance and techno tunes now and they're squashed down to like -6 or -5 dB when everything is going. IMO loud (high RMS) tunes are only superficially attractive, they tickle my ears and get my interest at first by being loud, but eventually they annoy me with their lack of space even if the music itself is nice. That's just my opinion, though, others may like their tunes more squashed or just not mind. It really comes down to taste in the end, and I may even like a squashed track if the music is great enough to overcome the irritating mastering job.
Here are a few examples of tunes that sound nice to me:
http://jbj.raceriv.com/sounds/other/acidbathmix.mp3 (RMS: -14 dB)
http://jbj.raceriv.com/sounds/other/psysol.mp3 (RMS: -13 dB)
http://jbj.raceriv.com/sounds/other/Halcyon+On+On.mp3 (RMS: -9 dB)
Some might say these are too quiet, but maybe they should just turn up their stereos or stop destroying their hearing with ultra-loud noisy mastering?
;) |
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| Cryogen |
The Loudness War is a triumph of one-upmanship over sense. Death Magnetic being one of the worst examples with even the mastering engineer, Ted Jensen having to make public statements distancing himself from it after Metallica sent it to him already brick-walled.
Dumb :eyespop: |
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| wrzonance |
| quote: | Originally posted by kitphillips
Thats a LOAD of limiting. Would qualify as abusive mastering to me. Just my opinion. |
You are very correct!
I was pretty buzzed last night and I did not make myself clear.
My AVERAGE gain reduction maxes at 1db-2db (even 2db is a little much for average gain reduction imo)
My PEAK gain reduction maxes at 3-5db (depends on how far along the mix is. in a crap mix, my peaks hit 5db, in a okay mix they're more around 3db)
Sorry for not being more specific. |
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| -FSP- |
i can understand why dance music with it's synthetic sounds would need that compressed sound. i think it's silly for everything else. I just like a little breathing room (it's understandable that some guys dont' want too much), even in dance music. I just don't like hearing "huge blocks" for a lack of a better term.
i personally don't like how everything must be loud. I'll just turn my volume up if i want too k thanks. |
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| orTofønChiLd |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
i can understand why dance music with it's synthetic sounds would need that compressed sound. i think it's silly for everything else. I just like a little breathing room (it's understandable that some guys dont' want too much), even in dance music. I just don't like hearing "huge blocks" for a lack of a better term.
i personally don't like how everything must be loud. I'll just turn my volume up if i want too k thanks. |
+1 |
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| wrzonance |
| quote: | Originally posted by -FSP-
i personally don't like how everything must be loud. I'll just turn my volume up if i want too k thanks. |
| quote: | Originally posted by wrzonance
If you want your music to sound louder. Turn up the volume knob.
Mastering engineers: Give us back our volume knob.
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+2! |
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| Stephen Wiley |
I actually might, for once, be able to offer some decent advice (instead of asking countless questions)
One thing that has continued to catch my attention is mastering of full tracks. Mainly because I have DJ'd for over 10 years and have always wondered how and why tracks could sound so much different from an engineering perspective. Things actually seemed more variable back in the vinyl days. You could really tell a bad master from a good one, and as all you old schoolers know, cramming multiple tracks to 1 side of a vinyl never helped.
Beyond knowing what compressors, EQ's, limiters, etc. do, I have not learned "mastering" of tracks from any other source besides trial and error. I told myself from the beginning I wasn't going to read and write down notes from others etc. I think it's one of the big problems with today's approach to music. Nobody wants to do things their way. They just want to copy somebody elses approach because they may perceive it as the gospel because that certain person is where they'd like to be, etc.
With that being said, it is no secret that the "war of loudness" is out of hand. The result is a bunch of highly, highly compressed tracks. I find it funny because we have such great technological advances and more knowledge now yet we wipe it all away with over compressing tracks. I mean really, you're not getting any benefits of doing things in 24 bits and 32 bits if your track has what I call a very low "average dB %"
I am certainly no pro by any means, and I would be lying if I said I didn't try to get my tracks to be as loud as they can, but I think the one approach I take that is not taken enough is letting a track breath (not over compressing it) - A track in my opinion is made by its breaks. Even the minor shifts on the 16th and 32nd. When you start taking away the energy from those, and even from the big break downs, then you sucking the lifeblood straight out of the track.
I think todays engineers need to actually look back a decade and listen to how tracks were mastered in Trance 10 years ago. In particular the digital releases that were NOT remastered. A solid vinyl rip is plenty good as well. Look at those wave forms versus today's stuff.
To me it seems we have taken a step back in mastering versus taking a step forward. It would be irresponsible to point out that today you have way too many wannabe's like me that give todays music a bad name, and back in the day you had true engineering guru's at the wheels usually. I still think it's rather sad though considering the technology we have and the results we see.
It takes 3 minutes to load up a chain with an EQ, Compressor, and Limiter and just max everything with zero regard for the wave form and get it as loud as you can. I might be dumb, but it seems that is the backbone of all mastering these days. That includes both the mastering of full tracks all the way down to post-FX samples.
Do people even care about fundamental frequencies anymore? Do people even care about cutting before boosting? Do people even bother to make sure their EQ changes are done properly so the sound doesn't lose its harmony. (same cut/boost up 1 octave and down 1 octave)
I see these websites offering great mastering services for a cheap price that tout all this great gear. (http://www.thecuttingsuite.co.uk/default/) I can't speak about this particular company, but it seems everybody I have come across thinks its impossible to avoid compression. I'd be lying if I didn't say compression is a must, but the mind-set (even mine) has been tainted across the board.
For the record, I use t-racks 3, ozone izotope, and aams.
The first thing I do is run the track through the electronic preset with AAMS (I've tried some of the others, Electronic seems to be the best for.....you guessed it, Electronic music). AAMS is a lengthy 20 minute ordeal that requires my entire PC (I have to close every application before it will get the job done), but it's amazing at bringing up the "average dB %" - Immediately after AAMS, I've got a much more dynamic track on my hands. In my opinion I think this is the most important step of the whole process, and it's automated!!! (Just my opinion)
Next I take it into Ozone to do any EQing that I know t-racks will struggle with. This is where I do the majority of my EQing.
Finally, into t-racks it goes. Believe it or not, I do not have a single saved patch from t-racks. I know many will disagree, but I think it is somewhat reckless to have a standard mastering chain as tracks are highly variable and call for extremely unique approaches.
I use the standard EQ, Compressor, and Limiter in t-racks almost always. I'll spare talking about the others to save this post from becoming a novel (it already is!)
t-racks is obviously where most of the work takes place because I'm dealing with multiple FX and I do a lot of trial and error. Earlier I was complaining about compression, so I'm kinda being a hypocrit here, but the initial AAMS processing has given me a higher "average dB %" which allows me to go easy on the compression. (This is much more true in single channels/samples)
Anyway, it's pretty cut and dry from here on out. I try to identify my fundamental frequencies and deal with those, and compress as needed along with limitation as needed. Ultimate goal is to get it as loud as possible while keeping a large "average dB %"
The results vary widely right now but I think things will get better. For those who care my references are Yamaha HS80M and AKG's 701's.
All Olympik Releases have been mastered by me, and so far so good, I think. Since I never get into mastering discussions or read about it I don't really have anything to compare against but I can say I have had only 1 artist who wanted some things change, so I *THINK* it's going ok.
And finally, 95% of "Mastering" needs to be done at the production level. Mastering of a track is just like applying a little glue to your final art project. The only reason to not care much about mastering at the production level is if you plan to send all the stems to a mixing house, which is a dying approach. I'd suggest being a good engineer along with composer :)
Hope this helps? |
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| wrzonance |
I become obsessive compulsive when mixing my songs. I always mix to the point where... when I throw on the mastering chain, only little bit of limiting needs to be applied.
Start with a good mix, and mastering becomes "easy"
Start with a bad max, and mastering turns your song to dog.
| quote: | Originally posted by Stephen Wiley
Do people even care about fundamental frequencies anymore? Do people even care about cutting before boosting?
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Agreed. No one seems to listen to me when I tell them to cut before boost. If you like a particular frequency in your sound, find what you don't like about your pad/lead, and cut that out, THEN boost the overall volume. It's a much better approach.
The classic example is the "rock curve" on home stereos and car stereos. It basically boosts the low frequencies and the high frequencies to emphasize THUMP and SPARKLE!!
Why not just cut out the midrange and boost the overall volume? It's much less destructive and accomplishes the same thing. It actually might be doing that in the box, but who ing knows in actuality. It certainly doesn't look like that on the car stereo's little graph. |
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