Loudness analyzer and Loudness War

[astramistil]

Personally, I always use my ear but I dont have good accoustic in my mixing room, so I often rely on analyzer. Since the new EBU and ITU-R standard's and 'soundcheck' from Itunes, we entered a new era of mixing/mastering and its sometimes quite confusing, to the extent that I'm not sure when to trust my ear (overcompressing? how many headroom left?).

Therefore after *lots* of reading and looking at tutorial (many from Ian Shepherd), I dont exactly understand how to read/refer properly (depending on style) to:
-Crest factor
-LU
-Range
***and how are they related, which one to focus depending on situation***
=======================

1-Sometimes I feel like I compress alot, and Crest Factor is in green (so I could compress more and win 'db' without killing dynamics?) :: But I look at "Range" and it's like 4

2-*when used on individual instrument like guitar, should I read it differently than an entire mix?

3-To remain in a range that keep me out of Loudness War with maximum volume, what would be *general* readings depending on style? (RMS, Range, Integrated, Crest Factor, etc.) :: Sometimes people says to look at RMS (-10 ideally) , other at Range (6 to 14, 8-11 ideally), other at Integrated (-8 to -12 dbfs, -10dbfs), Crest Factor, etc... **But often these reading just don't match when I press play!!**

Well I hope someone can help!

[alexis1]

Personally, I always use my ear but I dont have good accoustic in my mixing room, so I often rely on analyzer. Since the new EBU and ITU-R standard's and 'soundcheck' from Itunes, we entered in a new era of mixing/mastering and its sometimes quite confusing, to the extent that I'm not sure when to trust my ear (overcompressing? how many headroom left?).

Therefore after *lots* of reading and looking at tutorial (many from Ian Shepherd), I dont exactly understand how to read/refer properly (depending on style) to:
-Crest factor
-LU
-Range
***and how are they related, which one to focus on depending on situation***
=======================

1-Sometimes I feel like I compress alot, and Crest Factor is in green (so I could compress more and win 'db' without killing dynamics?) :: But I look at "Range" and it's like 4

2-*when used on individual instrument like guitar, should I read it differently than an entire mix?

3-To remain in a range that keep me out of Loudness War with maximum volume, what would be *general* readings depending on style? (RMS, Range, Integrated, Crest Factor, etc.) :: Sometimes people says to look at RMS (-10 ideally) , other at Range (6 to 14, 8-11 ideally), other at Integrated (-8 to -12 dbfs, -10dbfs), Crest Factor, etc... **But often these reading just don't match when I press play!!**

Well I hope someone can help!

Check this out! http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb14/a ... ss-war.htm

[astramistil]

Thx haven't read this one yet!

[MeldaProduction]

Actually what I'd recommend is simple - use the meters as reference, but rely on your ears always. If iTunes requires some specific integrated loudness or something, make sure you match it using the meters, but metering is far far from perfect. Not by the meters themselves, but simply by the fact, that it is extremely inaccurate...

I'd even, a little untypically, suggest using headphones. If something is wrong, it will be there. It has different stereo image than monitors, but it makes no sense to consider monitors as the ultimate thing, because my guess is that about 10% of the world has the audio setup right, the rest of them has bad monitors + bad acoustics + bad placement, so thinking that much about stereo placement when the conditions are always wrong seems just ridiculous... Treat it the same way as mono compatibility - we all know we have to check there aren't some huge problems, but other than that mono is just mono, same as poor acoustic situation in end user is just poor acoustic situation . But now half of the population is using headphones, so more than ever the sound quality for headphones is important.

[mesaone]

A crucial part of using these meters (MLoudnessAnalyzer, bx_meter, blue cat DP Meter Pro, etc) is having a calibrated monitor system. The meters are assistive tools, and like Vojtech said you should use your ears. The reason calibrating is required is so that you have your monitoring such that if it sounds too loud, it is too loud. This will help you avoid overcompression because you'll not only see that your crest factor is low, but you'll definitely hear it as well. It's not enough to see an indicator - the visuals need to correlate to what's happening aurally.

[MeldaProduction]

Good point! It's actually true, that headphones may be a little misleading in that context... But I still think it's better to mix on headphones and verify on monitors and no the other way around. Though, sitting 8 hours a day with headphones is... well... hard