Making my songs louder after mixdown

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chewalk
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2012/07/09 18:17:30 (permalink)

Making my songs louder after mixdown

Hello, I have all of my songs for my album mixed to .wav files(master track 0.1dB on all songs). I still want them about 25 to 30% louder. I am thinking using a limiter would work for this. Does the Waves L2 Limiter work on Sonar? If not, what is a really good, easy to use, limiter that is compatible with Sonar? Thanks guys ;)
post edited by chewalk - 2012/07/09 18:18:34
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    Kalle Rantaaho
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/09 19:25:34 (permalink)
    What have you done prior to this? What kind of compressing have you done? That 0,1 dB surely means peaks, how is the average RMS level, which is the most important when talking about loudness? It may well be you should have much, much more headroom left when starting to make tracks louder, depending on what you have done this far.

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    alexoosthoek
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/09 19:31:27 (permalink)
    25 to 30% louder, wow, why?

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    timidi
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/09 21:00:03 (permalink)
    Does the Waves L2 Limiter work on Sonar?

    Yes

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    SGodfrey
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/10 03:47:10 (permalink)
    Have you tried using Boost11?
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    Bristol_Jonesey
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/10 04:54:17 (permalink)
    You should be leaving at least 6dB (peak) after mixing in order to give your mastering tools some headroom.

    Kalle is asking the right questions above - what have you already done and what are your RMS levels?

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    chewalk
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/10 15:37:27 (permalink)
      I have put compression on several tracks that I though needed them, made sure none of the individual tracks were clipping, then made sure the master went up to at least -0.01 The song is then moderately loud but not nearly as loud as a standard cd you buy in stores, which is my ultimate goal. The only limiter I see in my version of sonar (Sonar 4 Producer Edition) is called Fx Limiter (which I don't know how to use). I don't know what RMS means. I researched a bit but still don't really understand it. Any additional info or advice would be awesome, and thanks for the replies ;)
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    Cactus Music
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    Re:Making my songs louder after mixdown 2012/07/10 18:34:16 (permalink)
    Mastering is the next step once you've mixed to your satisfaction. You can use Sonar or better yet, a program like Wave Lab or Audacity to master. The loudness game can sometimes be the wrong way to go with certain music. Mastering , which is a whole other skill, is sometimes best sent off to someone with the correct tools. You can quickly trash your songs with the wrong compression/ limiter set up. Wave lab has a Loudness Maximizer that works for small boosts of say + 4 Db. I have also had good results using Sonars multi band 64.( comes with 8.3. ) You do need to know how to apply it. Mastering takes as long to learn as each other step in the recording process.

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