I wish this was true if I try to get more loudness from my music I start clipping and I can here the digital distortion (for the want of a better word) I would like to know how to get past this so my songs sound more dynamic and rangey (if there is such a word).
 
 

This could be caused by a lot of different things.
 
Overcompression might be squashing your dynamic range.
You might have too much energy building up in certain areas of the frequency spectrum that are consuming your headroom (low frequencies are usually the culprit here - try to high pass stuff out of your tracks.)
Check you plug in chains to make sure you're not clipping within the plugins themselves.
 
There are lots of other potential issues causing this as well.

I listened to Moon & Stars, 21, John Grey and Turn on the Beamer. Granted, YouTube isn't a good platform for judging dynamics, but I liked the mixes, the clarity of vocals and how they float above the mix, and the crisp percussion. I would not call these tunes dynamically-challenged.
 
The one common characteristic that stood out, however, was that the low bass seemed excessive. I suspect that your monitors might be weak down at the extreme low end, causing you to boost those frequencies beyond what's actually needed. Listening on headphones, it wasn't obvious. But on full-range speakers, it exceeds what I'm used to hearing on bottom-heavy reference material.
 
The problem with low frequencies is that they have to be so much higher in amplitude than everything else, just to be perceived as loud as the rest. That means any dynamics processors on your master bus will be primarily responding to them at the expense of everything else, even if you can't hear those extreme lows.
 
I'd suggest two things that might help. First, a moderately steep HPF set to start rolling off around 50 Hz, to attenuate the stuff you really don't need down in the 20-40 Hz octave. If that doesn't do it, try inserting a multi-band compressor in front of the limiter. By leveling lows, mids and highs independently, that will let you reign in the low end without sacrificing that nice and crisp percussion you've got going.
 
If you then feel you're losing the bass, look at your bass tones, especially the ones where you're apparently using an acoustic bass. Some of those tracks are so concentrated in the lows they're almost sine waves. Try an EQ boost on them somewhere in the 150-400 Hz range, which will improve their clarity and help them punch through at lower volume. If you have a plugin capable of gentle distortion, like FabFilter Saturn, you can use that to boost harmonics on the bass and make it sound louder than it really is.

dwardzala
This could be caused by a lot of different things.
 
Overcompression might be squashing your dynamic range.
You might have too much energy building up in certain areas of the frequency spectrum that are consuming your headroom (low frequencies are usually the culprit here - try to low pass stuff out of your tracks.)
Check you plug in chains to make sure you're not clipping within the plugins themselves.
 
There are lots of other potential issues causing this as well.

Sorry to be nit-picky Dave, what you said is spot-on except I think you meant 'hi-pass', not 'low-pass'. Low-pass reduces high frequencies and lets low frequencies through.

Thank you for the advice so far...just to other musics it sounds like im missing somewhere but I know how technical you guys can be (picky) so again thanks for the reviews...Bitflipper good to see you and Jamesg still here. Dwardzala I will definitely look into that as I am not well versed in what elements to use first.
 
Bitflipper I am using KRK VXT6 however the bass never seems to come through with them and that is why I am struggling in that area, unless with the VXT series its about getting the tone of the bass rather than hearing the bass. I will have to look into that to see if I can make that sound right. I wonder if anyone else is using the VXT6's and wonder how they are coping with the bass element of mixing?

jamesg1213

dwardzala
This could be caused by a lot of different things.
 
Overcompression might be squashing your dynamic range.
You might have too much energy building up in certain areas of the frequency spectrum that are consuming your headroom (low frequencies are usually the culprit here - try to low pass stuff out of your tracks.)
Check you plug in chains to make sure you're not clipping within the plugins themselves.
 
There are lots of other potential issues causing this as well.

Yeah, thanks for catching that.


Sorry to be nit-picky Dave, what you said is spot-on except I think you meant 'hi-pass', not 'low-pass'. Low-pass reduces high frequencies and lets low frequencies through.

dappa1
Thank you for the advice so far...just to other musics it sounds like im missing somewhere but I know how technical you guys can be (picky) so again thanks for the reviews...Bitflipper good to see you and Jamesg still here. Dwardzala I will definitely look into that as I am not well versed in what elements to use first.
 
Bitflipper I am using KRK VXT6 however the bass never seems to come through with them and that is why I am struggling in that area, unless with the VXT series its about getting the tone of the bass rather than hearing the bass. I will have to look into that to see if I can make that sound right. I wonder if anyone else is using the VXT6's and wonder how they are coping with the bass element of mixing?

It's probably less about your monitors and more about your room with respect to missing the bass.  This is a clear case for reference material.  Pick a song that is "similar" to the track you're trying to mix and listen to it and try to "match" (I know not a good word) the tonal characteristics.  I.E. if the bass is low on the reference track make it low on your track too.  A spectrum analyzer can help too.
 
Also, check you mixes on other systems, (car perhaps?) to see what you really hear.

Great stuff Bit! I agree with the others on it likely being the room. Long ago I began A/Bing my room with my KRK headphones and with the advent of Sonarworks and their krk profiling, I've between able to achieve far better playable mixes.

Vastman the bss on the VXT6 seems to be missing or very very flat when I fatten up the kick drum and bass it sounds a bit more round. With out Sonarworks was you able to get good bass in your mix.

A 6-inch woofer is always going to fall short of filling the entire audio spectrum, due to the unavoidable physics of speaker size versus the wavelengths of very low frequencies. However, that needn't be a showstopper.
 
One of the reasons 6" and 6.5" nearfields are so widely used is that many people prefer to mix without the distraction of those frequencies. Bear in mind that the lower your speakers go, the more problematic your room becomes. Large speakers can even cause the opposite problem of too little bass in your mix, because they'll excite low-frequency resonances in your room that'll make the bass sound muddy to you, and you'll turn the bass down in an attempt to mitigate boominess caused by acoustics.
 
Fortunately, we're talking about a range of frequencies that, except in specific circumstances, simply aren't needed. There is nothing musical happening down there, and most people who'll listen to your tunes won't have the equipment to reproduce those frequencies. They can just go away. And you don't need to be able to hear them to discard them - a spectrum analyzer is all you need.