Hi batsbrew I can see where you are coming from and now looking at my initial response I can also see where I have gone wrong too. Your statement here:

bottom line is...
you cannot be expected to match levels achieved by professional mastering engineers.
not without paying a sonic price. 

got me thinking hang on I can do it and it was a bit over generalised. But in your other post you made this statement:

but too many people seem to be proliferating the idea these days, that their home-style mastering attempts are TRULY equal to that of a serious mastering house, and i don't believe that to be true.

This is a good statement and perhaps should have been added to the original statement. I agree with it, you cannot match professional mastering results with the standard tools found in most DAW's.

FYI I am not using standard DAW things either. I use the LP64 for the EQ which I believe to be a great sounding transparent EQ. I come out to analog at that point and go through a SMART C2 compressor. I don't own it but have access to it whenever I want. This is what I believe makes the mixes sound great. Much more than the limiter that comes after. Now this is something that the average home studio person would not have access to. The C2 costs over $3000 and I just don't believe that any cheaper emulation could be in that class. (Unless maybe it is a UAD product, but even so by the time you invest in the UAD card etc you are spending a similar amount of money here)

So in that sense I am using a professional expensive product as part of the mastering chain. From there I use the PSP Xenon limiter which is also an expensive limiter. That limiter is on another level all together. I believe the combination of the C2 and the PSP can rival any professional mastering job. You can get to very loud levels without any sonic price. I have done it time and time again. But yes you do need a serious compressor though. For me this is the very important part of the mastering chain. Danny has also mentioned the API2500 compressor as being very nice too and I don't doubt him on that. I am going to buy one of these and will try and get my hands on the API for a test run.

  Well, while I would love to get my grubby mitts on some of the really high end gear it isn't happening anytime soon.  I am not slamming these songs with the limiter Droddey,  I am just trying to push them up a bit.  I am retaining full dynamic range through 60-70% of the songs, during the loudest passages I am up near my .2db limit with a few peaks attenuated by 2-3 db in an attempt to just keep it in the ball park of modern rock.  
  I will make an effort not to completely give in and smash my music however I stand by what I said....  Most do not notice or care, The argument that loud music causes fatigue is a brittle on at best.  I have never bought an album and turned it off because of the production or because my ears got tired neither has anyone I know of?  
    I am not a Metallica fan but their album "death magnetic" has become like the industry poster child for over compression and lack of dynamic range and yet it is accepted and listened to just the same selling upwards of 4 million copies.

another good mastering article from SOS:
http://www.soundonsound.c...steringpreparation.htm



and this is interesting, coming from Bob Katz


7. Don't Try This at Home
The invention of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and the digital mixer is an apparent blessing but really a curse. Many musicians and studios have purchased low cost DAWs and digital mixers because they have been led to believe that sound quality will improve. Unfortunately, it's real easy to misuse this equipment. We've found many DAWs and digital mixers that deteriorate the sound of music, shrink the stereo image and soundstage, and distort the audio. There are several technical reasons for these problems-usually wordlength and jitter are compromised in these low-cost systems. Therefore, we recommend that you protect your audio from damage; use a mastering studio that employs a high-resolution system that enhances rather than deteriorates audio quality. Prepare your tapes properly, and avoid the digital pitfalls. Use the informative articles at the Digital Domain web site as resources to help you avoid audio degradation. When in doubt, take this advice: mix via analog console to a high-resolution file or to analog tape, and send the original tapes or files to the mastering house. You'll be glad you did. Those are only some of the reasons why, inevitably, further mastering work is needed to turn your songs into a master, including: adjusting the levels, spacing the tunes, fine-tuning the fadeouts and fadeins, removing noises, replacing musical mistakes by combining takes (common in direct-to-two track work), equalizing songs to make them brighter or darker, bringing out instruments that (in retrospect) did not seem to come out properly in the mix. Now, take a deep breath and welcome to the world of mastering.

Earlier in this article, I cautioned against returning to the analog domain once you've converted to digital. Ideally, you only want one of these conversions, once in the original recording, and once in the CD player playback.

But what about Pultecs, tube and solid state equalizers, tube and solid state compressors, limiters, exciters... Most mixing engineers can cite a plethora of famous processors that perform their work with analog circuitry. While useful for effects patching during a mixdown, a good number of these processors are unsuitable for mastering purposes. For example, an old, unmaintained Pultec may be a little noisy, but still be suitable to process a vocal or instrument during a mixdown. But would you pass your whole mix through that noisy box (maybe yes, if you like the sound!)? However, every processor used by a mastering studio (a good mastering studio) will be used in matched pairs, have calibrated positions, be quiet, clean, well-maintained. Calibrated positions are important for re-mastering, or for revisions. Clean means low-distortion and noise. Matched-pairs keeps the stereo image from deteriorating.

If a mastering engineer has a favorite analog EQ, or processor he wishes to use to create a particular sound, he should carefully balance out the cure versus the disease. There is always a loss in transparency when passing through analog stages, particularly A/D/A. Anyone who has patched processors in their consoles is aware of these tradeoffs. In other words, you have to carefully weigh the veil and fogginess that results from adding in an analog stage and additional converters with the subjective improvement from the processing versus processing the source in the digital domain. There will be an inevitable slight (or serious) veiling or loss of transparency due to each conversion. However, perhaps the mastering engineer feels the music will benefit from the sonic characteristics of a vintage compressor or equalizer...maybe he's looking for a "pumpy" quality that can't be obtained with any of today's digital processors (many people complain that digital processing is too "clean"...certainly a subject for another essay). There are many vintage "sounds" and other effects that still can only be obtained with analog processors. And finally, some mastering engineers claim that analog processors sound better than digital processors. I'm not one of them; I won't make that blanket statement. But I agree that analog processing is the "bees knees" for many musical productions. For example, I transferred a client's digital file to 1/2" analog tape and then back to 24-bit digital. Why? Because it sounded better. The analog tape stage did just the right thing to the source. I also had to make the fine choices of tape type, flux level, speed and equalization to help attain the spacious, warm, yet transparent sound quality my client and I were looking for. Ultimately, we used (and preferred) the analog dub to the original digital source for 8 out of the 10 tunes! Even without going through the analog tape, I have always maintained that A/D and D/A conversion processes are the most lossy part of the chain. When we do go back to the analog domain, I use the highest-quality D/A converter with low-jitter clocking, carefully calibrated levels, short analog signal paths and quality cables, and when converting back to digital, an extremely high-quality A/D converter. Then, the slight losses in transparency may be offset by the improvement due to the unique analog processing.

Our choice of whether to use analog or digital processing depends on the nature of the source, the music, and the tools we have on hand. I have some digital tools now which are so remarkable when used properly that clients with excellent ears cannot believe that the processing was not analog!

There are also some unique techniques that I cam perform only in the digital domain, one of which I call microdynamic enhancement , another is tonalization and the third is my patented K-Stereo Process (which is available to other mastering engineers).

For example, microdynamic enhancement can restore or simulate the liveliness and life of a great live recording. I've used it to get more of a big-band feel on a midi-sample-dominated jazz recording. I've used it to put life into an overly-compressed (or poorly-compressed) rock recording. It's really useful and extraordinary in helping to remove the veils introduced in multi-generation mixdowns, tape saturation and sound "shrinkage" that comes from using too many opamps in the signal path.

K-Stereo finds a use with unidimensional (flat-sounding) material, often the sad result of low-resolution recording and mixing. It is very different from the various width-altering processes that are now-available. K-Stereo captures and brings out the original ambience and definition in a source. The degree of stereoization is completely controllable. Instruments in the soundfield obtain a more natural space around them. The process is totally natural, utilizing psychoacoustic principles, and it's fully mono-compatible. For more information on this remarkable process, check out the K-Stereo.

DSP engineers are constantly inventing new ways to simulate all the traditional analog processes. So there's a lot to be said for digital processing, and I have no doubt that will become the dominant audio mastering method over time. For the forseeable future, in many cases we use a hybrid of analog and digital processing techniques to produce the best-sounding master.

Jeff,
 I asked for and got Mastering Audio from Bob Katz for christmas and have been reading it and while (Like you said) it is very infomative, at the same time it get so technical in spots that he loses me.   Some things in there I am just then reading about a concept for the 1st time and then he goes off on a detailed tangent about it &  I still don't follow the basic of it... It will be years before I can benefit from some of that information if ever?    
   It would be like trying to explain (in 2 or 3 paragraphs) how to more effectively replace the piston rings in her car...  odds are she barely gets what a piston is no less how to change the rings faster.

Good points Bit.

I've read through it once and thought "Wow - I got some of that, but a lot was way over my head"

Time to dust it off and give it a re-read.

And the Roey Izhaki offering.

And Scott's POWER! book

And I've got several novels that haven't been started yet.

As for the articles & tutorial stuff I've printed out and never read

There's not enough hours in the day to do a tenth of what I want to do.

But on the second read-through I came to appreciate it much more. 

doh! 


that's why i posted that section.....


trying to share, but it seems to get lost in the shuffle.


that's ok, i've already gotten what i needed out of it.
but the one thing for sure is, it's a never ending lesson

are you referring to my sos link?
i don't understand...

Yes, that's the one I was referring to. Technically. I could have a song that is thirty seconds of completely 0dBFS white noise, followed by two minutes of complete silence, followed by another thirty seconds of 0dBFS white noise. As a whole, that would have a very reasonable overall average level, but wouldn't be very listenable.

Well, no, it would be a LOT less dynamic in the sense of small scale dynamics, which is what was being talked about above. It doesn't matter if you have a minute of silence if the rest of it is slammed. Though, Nevermind wasn't remotely heavily compressed/limited compared to stuff today. It was quite reasonable.

And the modern mastering isn't just raising the peaks up to just below 0dBFS, it's slicing off almost all of the peaks and putting that sliced off top at close to 0dBFS. So snares don't sound like snares half the time, they sound like a tree trunk smashing a car, because they have been sliced off, making the 'peak' be what was the mid-body of the snare originally.

There are plenty of good examples out there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSwLeLdkYjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v6ML2DsBfA

Basically yes. As I said, macro-dynamics is meanless as a measure of compression. I gave the obvious absurdium example above. A song that is 30 seconds of completely maxed out 0dBFS white noise, followed by 2 minutes of silence, followed by another 30 seconds of 0dBFS white noise would actually have a pretty good overall dynamic range on average. But it wouldn't make it listenable in the first and last 30 seconds.

What matters is how much is the compressed/limited stuff compressed/limited, and these days that's a lot, and all too often these days that's almost all of the song.
 
Go back even to the ninties and look at something like The Smashing Pumpkins, a fairly agressive rock band. Look at something like 1979, which is a pretty up tempo rock song. It's got vastly more dynamics than a song would today. That big kick drum that dominates the whole song sounds big because it's allowed to be the loudest thing in the song. If you limit it to the point where lots of other stuff starts getting just as loud, then the whole point of it is lost.
 
Though even by then things were starting to change. Of the ones I have in my collection and am therefore away of, stuff like Blues Traveler's Four or Collective Soul's self titled album. Those are starting to get pretty compressed for those times. Or Live's Throwing Copper and Natalie Imbroglia's Left of the Middle. Those are pretty heavy as well for then. But even those are nothing compared to what you see these days. 

Which is extremely out of character for SOS articles, it has to be said.

droddey 


 
Go back even to the ninties and look at something like The Smashing Pumpkins, a fairly agressive rock band. Look at something like 1979, which is a pretty up tempo rock song. It's got vastly more dynamics than a song would today. That big kick drum that dominates the whole song sounds big because it's allowed to be the loudest thing in the song. If you limit it to the point where lots of other stuff starts getting just as loud, then the whole point of it is lost.

Droddey,
  Thank you for the repeated/eloborate explanations of what is going on.  Now I can understand what the issue is better and the above statement was a nice example to show what you mean.   If they had limited that song hard, the kick would have been cut off and the song wouldn't feature it like it does.   The hard limited stuff has that Everything is equally loud thing going on.  
   So in trying to avoid that damage but still get a bit louder than having peaks at -6 is it best to jst take the time to push the master fader up a bit, see what peaks and then automate that track to avoid the peak, then repeat until the track is a bit hotter (but not like a limiter would do)?  Or do you simply just use a limiter more conservatively?

At the moment I am listening to Lauryn Hill. (thanks to my son) very hiphop type of groove, great actually. What is interesting about this one is that it is LOUD and I mean loud but here is the thing. The transients are seriously clean and punchy and really kick hard and no distortion in sight either.

When you look at the whole track yes it does look like the broomstick on the side concept (I love that analogy BTW) But as soon as you open it up and look into it much more closely all the transients are there and they are clean and very high compared to all the other instrumentation. So try and explain that one!

It means it can be done. Loud and transient all at the same time. The limiter has a lot to do with it. The PSP Xenon is in a class all by itself. There are many controls not found on other limiters including control for transients. Dont ask me how it works but if you turn this the transients all come through and are as snappy as hell. But the volume is still there, it doesn't get any quieter.

It is too easy to generalise and say you cannot have loudness and snappy transients at the same time. Wrong, you can. (check Lauryn Hill and see what I mean) Maybe you guys just have not used the right tools yet. That is what it sounds like to me.

Those videos that Dean pointed us to are excellent BTW except they are 6 years old now! Things have changed a lot including limiters. They are way better and smarter now.

Yeah Dean I can see how you feel that way. Even after I posted that I thought Dean might think its very percussive and hip hop like, it is in fact much more an R & B sound and all the vocals are sung. Lots of nice instruments in there and none of it really sounds over processed or anything, pretty natural and laid back and plenty of dynamics at the right spots. Lot of live playing going on. With a nice snappy sounding groove over the top.

What's wrong with giving the impression that a mix is not slammed at all, yet things are getting right up to 0db FS while all this non slammed impression is going on but some serious limiting has been done. If it's great sounding limiting, then who cares that it has been done.  The listener has no knowledge of what has been done prior to that so, its only their impression that counts.

We are only just making sure our mixes are going to generate the same amount of energy or signal/voltage level if you like as everything else out there when they are played back over the wide variety of mediums we have. I am all for leaving off the limiting and turning things up for sure. I think that sounds the sweetest. (and at 24 bit too) I just wish  -20 db FS is where 0 db FS is now.

I just listened to some of her stuff. The one I'm listening to now is almost completely kick drum, probably fake, a shaker, and some organ stabs in the background and periodic vocals in the background. So there's no way the kick woldn't be punching through, since there's not much to punch through.

Some others I listened to were very similar. It's a huge kick drum, heavily limited, and everything else is kind of built around that. Which I guess is not suprising given the hip-hop roots of it.

Compare that to Run DMC, who I'm not particular fans of but they are the roots Lauren Hill grew from, and they have real dynamics, and the difference is very obvious. Listen to the huge swells that happen. They are LOUD because they are louder than anything else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snefIzUpXjU
 
I think a lot of people today never listen to any music with actual dynamics, so they convince themselves that it's really not missing, but when you compare it to real dynamics the difference is stark.