Mastering, how much should I limit ?

[chicken muffin]

the loudness comes in the mastering not the mixing.

Nope. If you wanted it that loud, you should have played your instruments like that.

Serious post coming up soon...

-Kim.

btw, i just listed to horse head, and you way over compressed this. this is the distortion im talking about. when you make a track to loud. you get that the distorition that all over horse head...

The distortion in Horse Head was intentional. I added most of the obvious audible distortion in the mix, not in mastering. It's the sound. Listen to that piano! That snare!

There are problems with the mix, but distortion is not one of them.

-Kim.

yes dude, its distorted in a way that certain parts are just too over powering for the ear especially the vocals. you can say i don't know what im talking about, i don't care. i don't care if others say im wrong too. the fact is, these elements are uncomfortable to the ear. i feel like thew chick is screaming in my face.

[chicken muffin]

btw, i just listed to horse head, and you way over compressed this. this is the distortion im talking about. when you make a track to loud. you get that the distorition that all over horse head...

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/5/22/ ... %29%20.mp3 no distortion

What are you talking about? If the whole thing were over compressed the vocals would gain noticible volume during the decay of the drums. The pumping compression that is used is obviously used as an effect. Listen to the amount of dynmic range between the loudest and softest passages.

Kim is one of the few people here I would take mixing/mastering advice from, not only does he know wht he's talking about he also shares his experience far more than I have patience for.

I agree. I wish I could pay Kim to come to my place and critique the hell out of my mixes. I've saved most of his posts to my HD.
chicken muffin, you might want to relax a bit, wait for a reply, and just read and learn. How about we don't let this thread derail into stupid defensive arguments?

i don't care he can critique my mix any day of the week.

[Kim Lajoie]

you can say i don't know what im talking about, i don't care.

I didn't say that, and I'm not going to. You're entitled to speak freely here without being insulted.

i feel like thew chick is screaming in my face.

I'll take that as a compliment.

-Kim.

[chicken muffin]

your right. i apologize kim. we obviously have conflicting opinions.

[Kim Lajoie]

Ok, I've been baited. Here we go:

First some science:

How much can i limit this before it loses dynamics?

This depends entirely on the type of sound you are limiting (and to a lesser degree, the limiter you're using). Don't ask us this: we don't know.


Now, some philosophy (I'll try to keep this short!):

And its highly important i get the best result possible.

... but i need your input.

You won't get the best result possible. You need to understand this. The sooner you free yourself from your own expectations of perfection, the sooner you will be free to accept your mistakes and learn from them.


Ok, now for something (hopefully) useful:

Mastering is a process of preparing a mixdown for distribution. Often people focus on signal processing (such as EQ and compression), but it's important to remember that it also includes setting times between songs (for mastering albums or EPs), fades (usually fadeouts), and (in this day and age) encoding to a lossy format such as MP3 or AAC.

First, do no harm.

You're asking about dynamics, so I'll focus on that here.

In preparing a mixdown for distribution, you should consider dynamic range and overall level. They're not the same thing: Dynamic range is the difference between the loudest parts and the softest parts. Overall level is (in digital) the distance below 0dBfs.

If you're targeting digital distribution, then you're probably expecting your music to be added to a listener's library (such as iTunes) and played alongside other music. If you want your music to be perceived as "normal" or "professional", then you'll need your music to sound as similar as possible to the other music your listener has in his/her library.

To best achieve this, you should select two or three other songs that you think represent a similar genre to your music. The more similar (in genre, instrumentation, and overall sound), the better. The more well-known, the better. This is your reference.

You should find a way to be able to switch quickly between the references and your mixdown. Personally, I do this by starting a new project in my DAW and loading my mixdown and my references each on their own track. By working with SOLO mode on, I can switch between tracks as fast as I can press the up or down keys to switch to the current track.

Resist the temptation to immediately slap a limiter or mastering toolbox on your mixdown and turn it up to match the references. Instead, turn the references down to match your mixdown. Don't use meters - use your ears. Make a note of how much you turn them down.

Let's pretend for now that you have two reference tracks, and you turned them down by the same amount: 18dB.

Now you have your mixdown playing at the same overall loudness as the reference tracks. First listen to the dynamic range of your mixdown compared to the references. Are the quiet sections too quiet? Are there any loud bursts (not transients - but whole notes or sections) that are too loud? If so, you might find a compressor useful. Use it to subtly reduce the dynamic range of your mixdown. Don't use it for "colour", or to adjust transients. Typically I'll start with a fast attack, medium-long release, low ratio and medium-deep threshold. If your compressor has an RMS (or similar) sensing mode, use it. It might take quite a bit of fiddling to get this right. Remember to bypass te compressor regularly to make sure you're doing no harm. Also remember to keep the overall level of the mixdown the same. Resist the temptation to push it all louder at this stage. Typically you won't have to do much to adjust the dynamic range of your mixdown.

Once you've got the dynamic range right, it's time to look at overall level - the distance below 0dBfs. Right now your mixdown is the same loudness as your references. However, the peaks on your references are at -18dB (that's how much you turned them down), and your mixdown might be peaking around -9dB or higher. This is where the limiter comes in.

What you need to do is bring the peak level of your mixdown to -18dBfs without changing the loudness as you hear it.

Adjusting the peak/average level ratio this way will make it easier for you to hear when you are doing damage to your audio. The typical method of "pushing up" the level of the mix makes it difficult because you're changing two things at once - the peak/average ratio and the overall level as you hear it. Not only does this complicate the hearing process, but it also makes it easy to ignore audio damage because the more damage you do, the louder it gets (and as you know, humans tend to perceive louder music as "better").

Unfortunately, most limiter plugins are configured for the above behaviour, sporting an easy-to-abuse "input level" control. To get around this, you should insert two gain plugins, so your chain looks a little like this:

gain1->limiter->gain2

Set the limiter to limit at 0dBfs. When you switch it on, you should hear no effect. Then slowly increase the level of the first gain and simultaneously reduce the level of the second gain by the same amount[1]. Do this 1dB at a time, and listen carefully to what you're doing to your sound.

If you get down to -18dB (or whatever your references are at) without reducing the overall level of your mixdown as you hear it and without doing too much audible damage to your sound, then WELL DONE! YOU WIN THE GAME! Turn your speakers down, remove the second gain plugin, and render it!

If you couldn't get down to the level of your references, you need to adjust the settings on your limiter, or use different tools. Unfortunately I can't give much advice here, as it depends entirely on the kind of damage the limiter is doing to your sound, and what kind of damage you're willing to tolerate. Sometimes you might need to reduce the bass with EQ (why it's important to match the spectral/EQ response to your references before you try to match the dynamics). Sometimes you need to add some more aggressive clipping to retain the overall level as your reduce the peaks (particularly if your reference are as loud as commercial pop). Sometimes you might need to use a compressor beforehand to bring a "spiking" element into line (such as the kick drum in my track Horse Head). I've heard of some people using a series of several compressors or limiters, each reducing a small amount (personally I haven't needed to try it, it sounds far too complicated to control effectively).

If you've done well, you should have your mixdown at the same overall level as your references (as it has always been), but also with the peaks at the same level as well (-18dB in this example). When you're happy turn your speakers down, remove the second gain plugin (which will pop your mixdown up to 0dBfs), and render it!

Hope that helps.


[1]Unnecessary technical note: What this effectively does is move the 0dB point inside the limiter plugin! This is a cool trick to do with any other dynamically-sensitive plugin, such as compressors or distortion! Blue Cat's free gain plugins can be linked in reverse, allowing this kind of two-way gain adjustment to be done quite easily.

[anfmusic]

Many here already know this and this isn't written for them or for me to get on a soap box and preach how things should be done. This is written for those that don't quite understand how, why, and where compressors and limiters are used in the mastering chain. Hope this helps some.

Let's not confuse mixing with mastering, two totally separate processes! Whether you like Kim's mix or hate it has nothing to do with the way he mastered it. I take him at his word that what he did with the mix was intentional. I do unconventional things with mixes too, depending on what the song is about and what vibe I'm going for, and yet some people will criticize it because it's not what they would've done, and without knowing why I did it. The funny thing is their criticisms were exactly what I wanted; they told me exactly what I wanted them to feel and they don't even realize it. Case in point, I posted a rough mix in the Music Cafe for a song called Alarm. One of the criticisms I got was for the three keyboard parts I put in the intro, panned one hard left, one hard right, and one in the middle. The sounds are dark, dis-jointed, and the panning gives you a very unsettled feeling. But if you listen to the lyrics, the song is about a guy reflecting on a not so happy relationship, "I don't know where you are, I don't where you've been, you tell me that you want love, you tell me that you're alone" etc... Also, keep in mind that the mp3's we stream here to listen to people's music do many mixes a great dis-service!!! Mp3's suck the life out of drums and bass! LOL, another criticism I got was that the drums weren't powerful enough, yet if you hear the WAV file, the actual mix, the drums smack you in the face and are the first thing that immediately draws compliments from the people that have heard the actual track. So it's very hard to judge someone's mix from an mp3 file!

Now onto mastering. There are no black boxes for mastering! You don't run your mix through a plug-in, not understanding what it is doing to your mix, and each style of music is mastered slightly different. And if you don't understand the mastering process or what you are trying to achieve, leave it to someone who does. No quicker way to kill a mix then to hand your hard work over to a black box mastering plug-in that you have no real understanding of and no real idea of what you're trying to achieve. The rule of thumb when mastering is, when you pass the majority of your program material over the threshold you use very low ratios 2 to 1, or 1.5 to 1. If you are passing very little of your program material over the threshold you can get away with using higher ratios because you are not effecting the entire program material, only the peaks. On things that I've mixed and will master myself, I rarely ever use EQ in the mastering stage, I get what I need with the EQ'ing I've done in the mix. When I'm mastering someone elses music, I generally always use EQ. The ideal of using the compressor before the limiter is to slightly raise the average program level. In general you should use very low ratios at this stage and use about -2dB of gain reduction which should then be made up at the output stage of the compressor. So now what you'll notice is that there's a little more bass, a little more meat in your mix, because the transients that the compressor reduced were most likely coming from the cymbals. So now your cymbals have been reduced by about 2 dB, which in theory gave you 2 dB more of program level. You cut the cymbals 2 dB and then raised the mix 2 dB at the output of the compressor, so your dynamic range just decreased 2dB, and this decrease has brought your low end closer to your high end. Now comes your limiter, the last thing in your chain. You want a virtual brick wall setup so that whatever crosses that limiter's threshold comes out at the exact same volume. The only thing that should be hitting that threshold is the occasional peaks that may be left in your program material. Say your average program level is riding about -3dB under digital zero, and yet you have an occasional transient that is 10dB above your average program level. You are now 7dB over digital 0 and distorting! Without a limiter you have to lower your average mix level at least another 7dB to offset this distortion. But if you set a limiter ratio to 100 to 1, whatever passes that threshold comes out at only another 1dB (a virtual brick wall). So now your 10dB peak has become a 1dB peak and is now 1dB above your average program level instead of 10dB. Now you can push your average program level up another 1 to 2 dB or simply leave it where it is. Either way you've got yourself a hotter mix.

[pandashake]

Headmaster Kim, thank you for the lesson! This helps explain why most of my mixes suck (not in a compressive way, but in a quiet way) when played against other tracks in my playlist.

[Cordelia]

Kim, as always, thank you so much. I learned more from that single post than I have in all my reading about the subject. Another one saved for posterity.
And, anfmusic, also thanks for the great post.
Awesome.

[SatanaSucks]

[banned troll is not allowed to return under another name and keep trolling]

[pandashake]

Kim, as always, thank you so much. I learned more from that single post than I have in all my reading about the subject. Another one saved for posterity.
And, anfmusic, also thanks for the great post.
Awesome.

Agreed. This little tip

gain1->limiter->gain2

will be implemented tomorrow when I drag myself out of bed after staying up too late posting on kvr.

[Cordelia]

Agreed. This little tip

gain1->limiter->gain2

will be implemented tomorrow when I drag myself out of bed after staying up too late posting on kvr.

Goodnight pandashake.

[SatanaSucks]

[banned troll is not allowed to return under another name and keep trolling]

[tonAP]

Ideally you should want any song to look like this;



You should be able to tell by looking at it what notes are there too, and what colour the singer's leotard is too. For instance, in the above clip, by studying the waveform I could easily tell you that song is 'Tarnce me lady one more time' by Paul Van Dick. The leotard was red.

Usually i don't quote so many stuff just to add nothing but emoticons.
BUT it was so funny i couldn't resist. Best of the year.

[contrary]

This stuff shows why I don't waste time over at the Gsluts mastering forum.... there is'nt any info like this . Thanks Kim !!!! man I'm glad I stay up and scan KVR !!!!

Cheers!!!

[donkey tugger]

Ideally you should want any song to look like this;



You should be able to tell by looking at it what notes are there too, and what colour the singer's leotard is too. For instance, in the above clip, by studying the waveform I could easily tell you that song is 'Tarnce me lady one more time' by Paul Van Dick. The leotard was red.

Usually i don't quote so many stuff just to add nothing but emoticons.
BUT it was so funny i couldn't resist. Best of the year.

I used to tell one of my mates that I could tell what song it was by looking at the waveform in soundforge. The daft twat believed me.