How to balance loudness?

[killmaster]

I've gotten so confused about how to balance my track's loudnesses. I find that I'm continually turning down tracks so my master output won't peak and then getting in a state where the mix sounds low volume overall and to really hear the master well, I have to turn my speakers up really high. So my question is, how do you go about dealing with this in your mixes?

Help is greatly appreciated. I'm just now starting to realize the need of having a straight forward way of dealing with this.

[whyterabbyt]

This seemed cogent...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubUPukJWzWo&t=402s

[Unaspected]

If you run out of headroom at a group/master buss you can always turn down the input gain there.

Though it might be better to reference something like the kick to give yourself plenty of headroom and then mix around that, introducing and balancing one sound at a time. Then you are only ever balancing two signals. I'd recommend mixing up from zero; most DAWs seem to load with mix faders at unity, which isn't all that helpful.

Another important aspect might be the calibration of your monitor gain stages. You'll want sufficient gain between your audio interface output and your monitor speakers - with the speakers turned up high.

[DJ Warmonger]

Use an oscilloscope / loudness meter. By the end of mixing stage, turn individual clips up or down by a few dB.

In trance at least the loudness is set by kick, which has constant level and dominates the mix and also defines the spectrum remaining for other instruments.

[killmaster]

This is all great advice. Thanks everyone!! Lot's to learn!

[killmaster]

If you run out of headroom at a group/master buss you can always turn down the input gain there.

Though it might be better to reference something like the kick to give yourself plenty of headroom and then mix around that, introducing and balancing one sound at a time. Then you are only ever balancing two signals. I'd recommend mixing up from zero; most DAWs seem to load with mix faders at unity, which isn't all that helpful.

Another important aspect might be the calibration of your monitor gain stages. You'll want sufficient gain between your audio interface output and your monitor speakers - with the speakers turned up high.

Thanks! Not sure what you mean by unity, but for some reason I've been setting my tracks by default to -6 db. Maybe I should put it back to 0?

Interesting about the gain and seems to be what the engineer was talking about in the video above. I have no idea what gain stages is but I'm glad to know what to look for. I think that may be a big part of my problem though since I judge on a totally arbitrary amount of gain, the middle of the gain dial.

[killmaster]

This seemed cogent...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubUPukJWzWo&t=402s

Great video for the general concept! helpful to know...

[killmaster]

Use an oscilloscope / loudness meter. By the end of mixing stage, turn individual clips up or down by a few dB.

In trance at least the loudness is set by kick, which has constant level and dominates the mix and also defines the spectrum remaining for other instruments.

having that loudness reference seems to be an important key here. Thanks!

[killmaster]

These videos seems really useful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBqeSbisROU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-QCQiOkufc

[Unaspected]

If you run out of headroom at a group/master buss you can always turn down the input gain there.

Though it might be better to reference something like the kick to give yourself plenty of headroom and then mix around that, introducing and balancing one sound at a time. Then you are only ever balancing two signals. I'd recommend mixing up from zero; most DAWs seem to load with mix faders at unity, which isn't all that helpful.

Another important aspect might be the calibration of your monitor gain stages. You'll want sufficient gain between your audio interface output and your monitor speakers - with the speakers turned up high.

Thanks! Not sure what you mean by unity, but for some reason I've been setting my tracks by default to -6 db. Maybe I should put it back to 0?

Interesting about the gain and seems to be what the engineer was talking about in the video above. I have no idea what gain stages is but I'm glad to know what to look for. I think that may be a big part of my problem though since I judge on a totally arbitrary amount of gain, the middle of the gain dial.

Unity [gain] is when a signal is passed without any gain adjustment - neither negative nor positive. We can consider this as multiplication of the signal by 1 or "unity". This is equal to -0dB of attenuation/gain or faders up.

There is no sense in setting all your tracks to -6dB at input for the sake of it - you need to take subsequent processing into account. If your channel has no dynamic processing or effects that work differently at varying levels of input, you only need to think about the channel output - which is the gain stage before your group buss.

A gain stage is simply a point in the signal flow where gain is applied; allowing the engineer to adjust the level before it reaches the next stage. In the case mentioned above - for monitoring - we are using gain staging to change the resolution of your audio interface output - which, in turn, influences how loud you can make things with your mix faders. So, indeed, adjusting the gain of incoming signals or gain at the very end of a signal chain will change the responsiveness or "feel" of your output faders.

I'm not suggesting to mix at crazy levels but whatever is most comfortable for you.

[killmaster]

If you run out of headroom at a group/master buss you can always turn down the input gain there.

Though it might be better to reference something like the kick to give yourself plenty of headroom and then mix around that, introducing and balancing one sound at a time. Then you are only ever balancing two signals. I'd recommend mixing up from zero; most DAWs seem to load with mix faders at unity, which isn't all that helpful.

Another important aspect might be the calibration of your monitor gain stages. You'll want sufficient gain between your audio interface output and your monitor speakers - with the speakers turned up high.

Thanks! Not sure what you mean by unity, but for some reason I've been setting my tracks by default to -6 db. Maybe I should put it back to 0?

Interesting about the gain and seems to be what the engineer was talking about in the video above. I have no idea what gain stages is but I'm glad to know what to look for. I think that may be a big part of my problem though since I judge on a totally arbitrary amount of gain, the middle of the gain dial.

Unity [gain] is when a signal is passed without any gain adjustment - neither negative nor positive. We can consider this as multiplication of the signal by 1 or "unity". This is equal to -0dB of attenuation/gain or faders up.

There is no sense in setting all your tracks to -6dB at input for the sake of it - you need to take subsequent processing into account. If your channel has no dynamic processing or effects that work differently at varying levels of input, you only need to think about the channel output - which is the gain stage before your group buss.

A gain stage is simply a point in the signal flow where gain is applied; allowing the engineer to adjust the level before it reaches the next stage. In the case mentioned above - for monitoring - we are using gain staging to change the resolution of your audio interface output - which, in turn, influences how loud you can make things with your mix faders. So, indeed, adjusting the gain of incoming signals or gain at the very end of a signal chain will change the responsiveness or "feel" of your output faders.

I'm not suggesting to mix at crazy levels but whatever is most comfortable for you.

Thank you for this clarification!

[FREMADETHIS]

I always like using the contrast method where you find out what element is selling the song the most, (kick,guitar etc.) then set that one thing to a particular volume that's good then contrast it against every other instrument. You can pick out a few of these in order of importance/what you think will sell the record. It's helped me personally.

[killmaster]

I always like using the contrast method where you find out what element is selling the song the most, (kick,guitar etc.) then set that one thing to a particular volume that's good then contrast it against every other instrument. You can pick out a few of these in order of importance/what you think will sell the record. It's helped me personally.

Thanks! I will try this. Sounds reasonable! At times I don't have any standout instruments or tracks. More ambient evolving tones. The video above using a combination of Limiter and Loudness meter so far is working pretty well for me. Keeping the true peak at -1 db and not letting the loudness go above -14 on the LUFS meter. O, and also turning up my speakers has made a huge difference in me being able to judge loudness.

[FREMADETHIS]

I always like using the contrast method where you find out what element is selling the song the most, (kick,guitar etc.) then set that one thing to a particular volume that's good then contrast it against every other instrument. You can pick out a few of these in order of importance/what you think will sell the record. It's helped me personally.

Thanks! I will try this. Sounds reasonable! At times I don't have any standout instruments or tracks. More ambient evolving tones. The video above using a combination of Limiter and Loudness meter so far is working pretty well for me. Keeping the true peak at -1 db and not letting the loudness go above -14 on the LUFS meter. O, and also turning up my speakers has made a huge difference in me being able to judge loudness.

Also don't limit yourself to -14 LUFS. I suggest if you want more advanced techniques/ideas, check out Mix With The Masters. They do show their LUFs level especially in the Mastering workshops (from industry giants). I believe most records these days sit around -12 to -9 LUFS and in the K-POP realm its almost pushing -6 sometimes.

[Unaspected]

Thanks! I will try this. Sounds reasonable! At times I don't have any standout instruments or tracks. More ambient evolving tones. The video above using a combination of Limiter and Loudness meter so far is working pretty well for me. Keeping the true peak at -1 db and not letting the loudness go above -14 on the LUFS meter. O, and also turning up my speakers has made a huge difference in me being able to judge loudness.

I'm glad things are working for you now. They seem like sensible boundaries to consider - especially for streaming platforms, YouTube, etc.

Ambient music leaves plenty of room for experimentation - which might sometimes feel like new ground, without much to consider as reference. However, you might benefit from approaching the mix in a manner similar to some orchestral music; especially sound textures and drones. Depends the structure of your compositions and the kinds of sounds you are using, of course.

Stay true to the program material.