How do I master my tracks as loud as commercial EDM tracks?

[Nokenoku]

I'm an EDM producer and was wondering if any of you knew how professionals master their track so loud.

It's not hard to get a really loud master ... it's hard to do it in a way, that it still sounds "ok" in the end.
(And in a lot of cases, even popular music fails at this.)

I'd always recommend to not overdo it with the loudness as I don't see the point, but if you really want a good and loud master, you need:
- a good mix
- multiband compression
- a good limiter

... and a lot of skill to really set things up right.
Especially with a multiband-compressor on the master you can do real magic ... but you can also easily destroy your mix.



That said:

Extremely "loud" mastered music only makes sense for headphones in noisy environments (train, bus, etc.).
It does not make sense for listening at home, and it does not make sense in the club.

[Robin Strand]

Btw Robin. I listened to your track "Immense" and it sounds really good. Can't really hear what you're having problems with the loudness, sounds pretty loud to me!

Yes , Robin should advice you instead !
His music and sound is of a much higher level than yours ....even the soundcloud audience agrees !

Hey thanks guys! Yeah I have done this myself for a couple of years, and knew how to master decently but still couldn't achieve the pro level. But I guess if you want it at a pro level you need expensive equipment and real audio engineers :p

[Robin Strand]

I'm an EDM producer and was wondering if any of you knew how professionals master their track so loud.

It's not hard to get a really loud master ... it's hard to do it in a way, that it still sounds "ok" in the end.
(And in a lot of cases, even popular music fails at this.)

I'd always recommend to not overdo it with the loudness as I don't see the point, but if you really want a good and loud master, you need:
- a good mix
- multiband compression
- a good limiter

... and a lot of skill to really set things up right.
Especially with a multiband-compressor on the master you can do real magic ... but you can also easily destroy your mix.



That said:

Extremely "loud" mastered music only makes sense for headphones in noisy environments (train, bus, etc.).
It does not make sense for listening at home, and it does not make sense in the club.

yeah thats true, I'm looking to send my tracks to labels so they might want a nice loud professional mix for demo's, to see if you're worth it you know ?

[Tricky-Loops]

I'm looking to send my tracks to labels so they might want a nice loud professional mix for demo's, to see if you're worth it you know ?

If they listen to it at all, they'll listen to the music style, arrangement and production quality, not if it's 2 dB less loud than other tracks...

[TIMT]

Let this phrase sink in

If your track is not loud to begin with it will never be loud and no amount of limiting,compression,multiband compression,saturation will fix that


TIMT

[TIMT]

I'm looking to send my tracks to labels so they might want a nice loud professional mix for demo's, to see if you're worth it you know ?

If they listen to it at all, they'll listen to the music style, arrangement and production quality, not if it's 2 dB less loud than other tracks...

That´s sadly not entirely true. i was working with someone recently who was rejected by a huge EDM label on the basis of his master but the thing had no potential to be loud to begin with and it´s not like dickhead-y A&R´s understand that let alone grasp the concept






TIMT

[Nokenoku]

But I guess if you want it at a pro level you need expensive equipment ...

Not really.
With a few hundret Euros you're good to go.

[Tricky-Loops]

I'm looking to send my tracks to labels so they might want a nice loud professional mix for demo's, to see if you're worth it you know ?

If they listen to it at all, they'll listen to the music style, arrangement and production quality, not if it's 2 dB less loud than other tracks...

That´s sadly not entirely true. i was working with someone recently who was rejected by a huge EDM label on the basis of his master but the thing had no potential to be loud to begin with and it´s not like dickhead-y A&R´s understand that let alone grasp the concept
TIMT

Did they write "We have to reject it because it's not loud enough" or couldn't they have other reasons for rejecting?

[Blue-eyed Blonde Ape]

I forgot to mention a really great trick, all pros do it like this.
You take a snapshot of your loaded waveform, load it in photoshop, select rectangle selection tool and select all your waveform with it, then right click that selection and choose "fill with color" or something like that and select what color you want, usually it's white, but if some other color fits your style better then go ahead choose the one you like.
You see all those amateurs, they load their waveforms in photoshop, then choose a paint tool and paint all that by hand, losers.... Here with my trick you will be doing perfect square masters in no time.

Cheers,
High as a kite Acid Monkey.

BTW all tracks sound the same, at first I thought that I clicked on the same but a little bit different version, because people started to diss here each other and argue who's a more pro, so I checked OP's tracks to get an idea what it's all about.
So choose consistent color for your tracks don't go all rainbow, gradient and stuff on your tracks with that trick.

[TIMT]

I'm looking to send my tracks to labels so they might want a nice loud professional mix for demo's, to see if you're worth it you know ?

If they listen to it at all, they'll listen to the music style, arrangement and production quality, not if it's 2 dB less loud than other tracks...

That´s sadly not entirely true. i was working with someone recently who was rejected by a huge EDM label on the basis of his master but the thing had no potential to be loud to begin with and it´s not like dickhead-y A&R´s understand that let alone grasp the concept
TIMT

Did they write "We have to reject it because it's not loud enough" or couldn't they have other reasons for rejecting?

The reply was its not "big enough" but he was specifically talking about the volume cause he said when he turned it up it sounded "bigger" (super fail)....................




TIMT

[4damind]

If you have a good and well balanced mix, you can have a loud master without artifacts or a over-compressed sound. 90% of the deal for a good and loud track must be done at mixing stage.
Anyway, it should be in the typical range so we speak about DR 7 to 10 for EDM (most of the stuff I've heard is about DR 7).

There are some small tricks often used... Work with Stems (groups) and compress the complete group but not for achieving a big gain reduction more with long release times so the compressor works more as a leveler. It's more to "glue" the sounds together and for a more consistent level of similar sounds.
Some people love to use maximizers to achieve loudness without limiting ("loudness because of distortion"). Sonnox Inflator or UAD Precision Maximizer are some of this better known tools. With moderate settings this tools can give a bit more "edge" and loudness. But it should not be overdone and is only a small part of the complete game.

[Davias]

By looking to your already squashed track I would say in your case just normalize it and it will be way much louder.

If you want a loud track in general use one of the few best 'transparents' limiters, or a clipper and just crank the level up into it.

If now there is too much distortion after cranking up the volume (because a clipper can quickly introduce distortion if overdone or with bad settings, OR a bad or average limiter can't limit that much without distording and/or pumping/eating transients), then u have to mix it loud from the start has others pointed out... To compensate for your average limiter. By using compression, limiting, clipping, tape saturation and other stuff to tame your tracks, your busses... before reaching the final limiter/clipper. Or you can chain several clippers/limiters on your master to emulate a good limiter by itself...

My recommendations for good transparent limiters : Invisible Limiter, Pro-L, Limiter n°6 (free but harder to use), Maximus (very hard to use !).

Elephant or t-racks brickwall are oldies but can sound nice, as well as Ozone... But I got better/faster/punchier results with the other mentioned above.

Barricade I don't recommend for electro because it eats too much transients. Or maybe I just can't use it. For rock or other Barricade is fine...

Clipshifter may worth a look too because it's attack release setting are making it an hybrid clipper/limiter. With oversampling and so on I guess it can be tweaked to achieve very nice results.

[qa2pir]

dunno if this has been said already but some repetition can't hurt:

first of all, try mixing with a limiter applied to your master bus (or whatever it's called). the psychological advantage of this practice should be obvious; you'll build your track around the prospect of loudness rather than trying to squash it into a mold after the fact. ideally this should prompt you to rely on the interplay of sounds for dynamics, reducing the need for sheer total amplitude variation.

second, try maximizing amplitude in the range where human hearing is most sensitive. for loudness purposes, i've often made the error of having too much bass in my mixes, eating large quantities of headroom relative to perceived volume. this has been due to various issues - primarily overmixing of intrinsically disparate aural elements coupled with poor listening habits, causing me to overcompensate for lack of clarity, dynamics and force by boosting the sub bass in my EDM tracks. use your ears! now your mixes are probably not as terrible as some of my murky, stunted ones have been, but it's immensely important for anyone to stay focused on the actual audio rather than getting lost in technical abstractions which your output can't transmit to the listener anyway. oops i digress. my point is, high-mid-range frequencies, roughly in the human voice spectrum (easy google for exact information), are perceived as louder at the same physical amplitude so if your goal is to have a loud output, do experiment with setting the levels higher for channels with a lot of mid-range content (typically leads) and perhaps slightly boosting the entire mix there with a wide Q. the latter probably isn't advisable from an engineer point of view but we're lazy aren't we? [awkward silence]

third, there is a psychoacoustical association of distortion/saturation/clipping with loudness. now distortion isn't the same as high frequency content, although they are related. what you want for loudness is mid-range sounds driven to an at least subliminally noticable (yet of course subtle if we're talking strictly mixing solutions with respect to transparency and fidelity rather than sound design or arrangement) distortion of some kind, bringing forth or adding high-order harmonics and - however slightly - approximating a square wave. electric guitars is an extreme example. for more moderate ones i recommend the writings and productions of Kim LaJoie, who was an active member here some time ago and perhaps still is. if i recall correctly that guy even used digital clipping on his entire mixes. probably takes lots of experience to master. proceed with caution. btw he's a great inspiration, kinda like the heston blumenthal of audio with his clear-minded rational approach.

hope that helps! btw i'm a loser cellardweller with no pro releases so take my word with some salt.

[qa2pir]

In my experience it is the mix that is loud and not the master.
Mix your track loud from the start and it will be easier to achieve a competitive master.

Pay attention to your mids and make sure your kick is peaking the mix.

The opposite is true !
Your mix should be peaking around -6 DB and make sure you're kick is NOT too loud so that the rest of the track can't breathe !

The answer to OP's question is to spend about $100 and use the same mastering house that your favorite label / producer is using.
It's that simple.

there is no reason to have the mix lower than some infinitesimal step from 0 dbfs in a software environment.

stop spreading myths and dogma.

[DJ Warmonger]

Soem clarification to the above post:

People who do mastering on request ask for mixes peaking at -6dB to boost it later. That means the mix is of course not mastered at this stage. After mastering, it should of course touch 0 dB often.