Loudness (without the war)

Bezzer

OK, little question for the wise.

I often get comments on here that my mixes are too quiet.  Now I usually mix to about -3db and then use a couple of multiband limiters to push the overall mix to around -0.3db.

What am I missing here?  Why are my mixes effectively so quiet?

Curious of Bristol.

Cirrus

It's all relative. Some mixes sound louder than others for the same measured peak or average levels. Lots of different reasons for it, but basically if you've got really loud peaks like snare hits popping well over the level of the more steady stuff like bass and vocals, to get your mix loud enough* you'll really have to crush the peaks to the point that it sounds bad.

The same goes for frequency imbalances.

Also, if you've got lots of frequency masking going on, then there's signal eating up headroom that you're not even really hearing when you listen to the mix.


So really, you've got to listen to your mix against some references you like and work out where you're going wrong!


*loud enough is a relative term

Bezzer

So it probably is an EQ thing to some extent ... it only occurred to me as I always thought they were loud enough, certainly as loud as I felt I wanted them.  Just something I've heard often.

I'll have a play with a few old mixes and see what I can do.  Thank you!

stratman3142

I just use an excellent master limiter called Voxengo Elephant on the master track. I keep the master track level at 0dB and set the output level of the master limiter to about -0.5dB. Then I push up the gain of the master limiter to achieve the desired sound/loudness.

spark240

Basic Limiter normally does it for me...

Stuckfast

To match the levels of most commercial mixes, you'll probably need to push the limiter so that it's doing a couple of dB gain reduction or more, depending on the track and the genre.

One thing that people often overlook is that the overall timbre of a track makes a huge difference to its perceived loudness. Our ears are most sensitive to audio in the 1-5kHz region so if you have too much bass and not enough mid-range, the mix will sound quiet even if it's peaking.

Branshen

Do you high pass your the tracks that are not meant to take up space in the bass? i.e. guitars, pianos, vocals, all drums except bass drum etc. 

Bezzer

I do yes, well not always the piano if I'm using the full range which isn't uncommon.  But not drastically, just enough to get out of the way.

poopot

I grabbed this recently (was on offer for $29!)
really good!

https://www.waves.com/plugins/abbey-road-tg-mastering-chain?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIg7Dvp-qm4AIVRojVCh07zA-ZEAAYASAAEgK5NPD_BwE

mrleon83

I think it's perceived loudness you're probably looking for, I use IK Multimedia's Meter (the old version, it's a bit simpler to understand than the new one)... What I find is that having more of the upper range (1.5-5k) in the mix increases the perceived loudness, I'm pretty sure this is because the lower frequencies build up in a different way so all that energy reduces the overall loudness.. also, I'm generally able to get a lot better signal by cutting everything below 30hz on the master bus before adding the effects... and it doesn't seems to take anything away from the sound of the mix

I'm no pro, just feeling my way as I go .. just my humble opinions and lessons learnt :-)

Snap

@Bezzer I have the same issues. I think my problems with loudness are due to too much bottom end going on, and too much frequency hoggin on drums. I have started to faff with various EQ settings to lop off the bottom and top, so I (in theory) get more headroom for overall gain on the master. It must be this, cos when I use the limiter aggressively I get ducking on the master track as it kicks in.

As if I know what I am on about really...….

Childish humour - when I typed in "ducking" it first appeared as "dicking", how that made me chortle.....

Bezzer

Snap said:

@Bezzer I have the same issues. I think my problems with loudness are due to too much bottom end going on, and too much frequency hoggin on drums

I don't think that one applies in my case, mainly because they also say "where is the bloody bass and subs?" ha ha ...

With the ducking (your auto correct hasn't been as filthily reprogrammed as mine clearly ) I hate that too, its why I don't use one "pumping" limiter but rather two running more gently ... tends to reduce that for me a bit.   But then my mixes are so quiet how could I tell!  ha ha

Cirrus

Talking about saturation is almost an audio production meme at this point, but it can work in your favour.

By deliberately applying distortion, you can turn amplitude energy into spectral energy. By which I mean, The distortion lops off the peaks which = lower signal levels, but replaces them with harmonics that = higher frequency energy/ excitement. Used correctly, you can use it to get the perception of volume and punch without actually needing to push faders quite as high.

In the old days nobody needed to think explicitly about saturation, because analogue gear did it without you really noticing - transformer stages from the mic to the preamp and through the desk to a tape machine, all subtly turned clean transients into subtle harmonic distortion.

In the world of digital we get everything given back to us cleanly, so if we want to enjoy the practical advantages of saturation, it's something we need to consciously decide to add to our productions.

Personally, I've been on a bit of a mission the last few months to get better at using distortion artistically in a way that improves punch and clarity in mixes. Recently I've been quite happy with waves NLS & my DAW's (Harrison Mixbus 32c) built in "tape emulation"  for subtle transient control, and other plugins such as Soundtoys' Decapitator & Black Rooster's V-pre 73 for more obvious dirt, as well as some mix techniques like sneaking in band-limited parallel heavy compression to add density and thickness to the mix, in order to increase the average volume of the mix and get punch without needing the transients to ride so high over the average signal level.

Then, at the mastering stage (and again, I am an amateur here), I've been finding that clipping can actually be less damaging to the mix than limiting alone. I've had good results using two instances of Voxengo Elephant. The first just hard clips, and I set it so it shaves off a couple of db from the very loudest snare hits in songs - so the clipping actually only lasts a millisecond or so and is essentially transparent, because in lopping off those 2db it adds a little burst of distortion that keeps those transients sounding lively - then the next instance is a limited that then can be set a bit louder without it crushing things as badly when those snares hit... because remember that with a limiter, when it knocks 3db down on a loud snare hit it's crushing everything under that snare hit in the mix too, and that's where the damage is heard.

Then, as @mrleon83 ; said, having a meter so you know what's going on is a really good idea. I have to admit I like the new IK one, as it has a lufs meter which is a handy gauge to perceived loudness, and it gives you some form of yardstick. Read up on LUFS - integrated, short term, what level Spotify & YouTube etc normalise things to... it's quite informative.


Last weekend I faux-mastered an album I've produced for a friend, and after some experimentation I decided that I'd aim for around -7.5 lufs (short term, so the average perceived loudness over a few seconds) on the loudest parts of songs. That gave whole tracks that averaged between -12 and -10lufs integrated (the overall average loudness of the entire track) and which were relatively competitive with commercially released albums, though not as hot as ones which IMO have been made loud to the point of ruining them (classic examples: Californication, Death Magnetic, Hot Fuss).


Some of the mixes on the album were easy to get to -7.5lufs at the loudest points. Some ended up going louder than -7 lufs without any sensation of things getting squashed. Others sounded like they were pumping and getting messy sounding at quieter than -8lufs. It was all down to the quality of the mix, and I ended up having to go back into some mixes to change things like where the bass guitar had most energy, the mix bus compression, how loud the kick was and where it fell etc.

Snap

@cirrus I love all that, thanks a bunch. Dead interesting and really useful! Ace,

Bezzer

@cirrus ditto what @Snap said, really useful stuff.  Saturation is something I've been using on vocals for a while but I'll be honest I hadn't considered it across all instruments ... silly really. Talking to my singing teacher last night about it, specifically how it was so evident on old recordings just down to the tech.

Interesting things to ponder, thank you.

PolarityMan

Especially on older recordings I think it glues together the harmonies really nicely too.

Stuckfast

It's evident on *some* old recordings -- Motown records for instance -- but it's not inevitable in analogue recordings. Good engineers working with good equipment could achieve very clean sound if they wanted to. High-quality valve gear in particular was capable of being amazingly transparent, much more so than the first wave of transistor equipment.

Cirrus

Stuckfast said:

It's evident on *some* old recordings -- Motown records for instance -- but it's not inevitable in analogue recordings. Good engineers working with good equipment could achieve very clean sound if they wanted to. High-quality valve gear in particular was capable of being amazingly transparent, much more so than the first wave of transistor equipment.

Oh, I don't disagree. Especially in the early days of solid state, they were claiming greater clean dynamic range but in practice, valve gear performed better because, while it had a higher noise floor, you could raise the signal level far beyond the onset of distortion before things started to sound subjectively bad, even if the measured distortion was quite high. And that's part of what I think is going on with cleaner sounding old records. It's not that there isn't distortion - there is. It's that it's good sounding distortion that works with the signal to improve clarity and excitement, because our ears enjoy those kind of harmonics.


It can be very subtle, too. Take a drum kit recording where the snare's hit hard and peaks at -6dBfs. You can easily shave 4dB off the peak of a good sounding drum recording with saturation to almost no sonic detriment, and possibly to some subtle artistic subjective improvement. Now you've got 4dB more headroom, it can be that much louder and won't make a mix pump as much if you compress or limit it.

Stuckfast

It's true that valve gear sometimes distorts in a more musical way than solid-state equipment, but it doesn't necessarily distort more, and it may well have a *lower* noise floor. There are valve mic preamps with noise performance that is within 1dB of the theoretical limit. Check out some of Tim de Paravicini's designs for example.

rico

If only our singer could see this thread. When we were getting our EP mastered he just kept wanting it louder even though the engineer strongly advised against it. 

LastMantra

A bit of parallel comp?