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Limiting The Final Mix
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| future_newbie |
Ok, imagine this scenario. You've spent days or weeks working on a track, tweaking each single knob on a compressor, adjusting minutely everything from dynamics, equalization, volume, reverb etc.
At that point arrives the moment of the limiter and BAM! Even the most transparent of them is going to up everything mentioned above. All the transients you've sculpted carefully, all the release times you adjusted will end up unbalanced.
Please, tell me: is there a way to obtain a competitive loudness without affecting the character of your mix?
Any gain reduction on the mastering stage translates negatively to my ears.
HAAAALP. |
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| Looney4Clooney |
| Domt use a limiter on the master to make things louder. |
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| Lucidity |
The more unneccessary frequencies you carve out of each sound, the louder you will be able to put all of the sounds, if you limit on the master, it should only be to catch the peaks usually. Most cases, it should only be 1-2db of limiting, unless it is an effect you are going for. However, if your mix is decent and you wanna try to push it a little, my favorite limiter is the one from Slate, the Fx-G i think it is called. Its pretty transparent and when you push it a little it can have kind of a nice gluing effect if not over used. But yea, to get your mix louder, biggest thing is eq'ing right. There are some vst's that allow you to mimic the effect of loudspeakers on your headphones, I can't think of the one i use right now but when it comes to me I will post back. They aren't perfect and many will say they don't work but I think it is still a decent a/b and whenever I mix with it and then listen back on speakers it does seem better than if I didn't use it.
Edit: the part of my response about headphones was meant to be for the other thread with the guy asking about mixing in headphones. I read both threads and got confused about which one I was replying in lol. I'm replying from my cell at the beach :/ |
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| optik |
its one of those annoying things about the genre we're in.
general advice about mastering and mixing music is that you shouldn't need to limit a lot to get the track to sound loud.. ut this isn't general music - it's dance music, and if you like it or not, loudness has a psychoacoustic effect that makes things sound better. so if your track is too quiet, when the dj's audition it on fatdrop, they pass as it doesn't sound as good as the previous (loud) tracks they've listened to.
so in dance music, you have to get it loud.
but - in essence the advice is correct, you shouldn't need too much limiter, as most of the level can be found in the mix through careful EQing and avoiding overlapping frequencies (and cutting the stuff that isn't perceived)
I tend to mix to a limiter in the last phases of a track, rather than just apply it to the final mix. Once I have all the musical stuff done, I get into the mixing and equing, and then before it's finished I add a buss compressor and an overall eq, and then a multi band limiter (as I find it gives me more control and helps me maintain bass drive)
hope this helps - PS I've never managed to get as loud as the competition without squashing the out of what were once very dynamic tracks.. but unfortunately it's what you've got to do.
Armin keeps on saying he'd rather have unsquashed tracks, but to get your track heard by armin (and most of the other names), it has to go through his people first, and I'm not sure they have the same feelings as him! |
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| Raphie |
| As L4C is saying, leave the limiters make up gain alone. |
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| future_newbie |
| quote: | Originally posted by Looney4Clooney
Domt use a limiter on the master to make things louder. |
Can you be more specific Mr. George Clooney?
| quote: | Originally posted by Raphie
As L4C is saying, leave the limiters make up gain alone. |
Can you be more specific Mr. Raphael Nadal? |
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| beamrider |
work better the overall frequency spectrum and your limiter in the master will be working better in fact limiting a few DBs without affecting the character of your mix
This is done in the mixing stage using wise EQ.
Also you can try multiband limiting, and don't forget to use analyzers to have visual idea of the spcetrum and the RMS value. |
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| DJRYAN™ |
| my last project I put a limiter on the master.. just so everything would sound nice and packaged.. then I listened to it.. I like the anomalies in without it.. Makes the differences in volume much more appealing to the track.. imo.. just gotta mix it better if you want it to sound good throughout... |
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| derail |
As others have said, most of the loudness comes from the mix, not the master limiter.
However, the vast vast majority of the songs you're probably comparing your songs to have had some limiting applied. There's a reason that all those producers use a limiter, there's a reason you won't get a short simple "here's how to get it that loud without a limiter" response. The more you work on mixing the closer you'll get. Perhaps in 20 years you'll have figured it out.
In the meantime, if you're anti-limiter, your songs won't be "competitively loud" and you're going to have to be okay with that.
Having said all that, if your thinking is that a master limiter instantly destroys songs, what are you listening to, in terms of music? The vast majority of music has been through a limiter, so what are you listening to? Which "competitive level" songs are you listening to which haven't been limited? |
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| optik |
Derail is right
it's easy to spot the ones that haven't been limited - the latest daft punk album springs to mind - but it's not a good example in the context of loudness: one could argue that the songs are so good on the album that they are played no matter how loud they are. I would argue the songs are played because they are on a daft punk album.. and they are good.
I'm no fan of the loudness war, but it's a reality, and as a result producers have to work within it's parameters and deliver tracks that are not only loud, but sound great.
and just to compound things - it's hardest to achieve with music that is complex like trance. Making house and techno loud and sweet is easy |
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| Raphie |
Loudness is not an end goal by itself.
in order to get a loud DYNAMIC mix, learn to mix better
when you limit, you have an input gain knob (you know, the knob that makes it all louder)
There is a sweetspot where you can see in the limiter how much limiting is going on. As a rule of thumb limiting should NEVER exceed a few overshoots every once and a while of 1 to 1.5db MAXIMUM.
If you see >2dB reduction going on all the time you are already seriously damaging your mix.
If you see like >4dB of limiting all the time, you are seriously raping your mix.
If you are surprised that above alters the sound of your mix, then it's time to go back to school and learn the basics, no one dials in a few dB of limiting and gets away with the same sound as the mix.
1. Fix it in the mix, the mix WITHOUT a limiter should sound like your end in mind.
2. limit just to prevent the odd overshoot, not to increase volume
3. want to increase volume, go to 1. |
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| DJRYAN™ |
| Most of my loudness comes from things letting off.. I have a tendency to want to put a limiter on it.. Now I just go back and re EQ and try to run some volume automations.. |
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