Making Hot CDs... how do YOU do it?

What I am about to share with you is knowledge I have gained from books. I have not got to the stage yet where I am trying to master hot tracks (I'll learn that when I finish enough songs for an album!). So personal experience here is minimal!

Firstly, a loud master is NOT made by putting a brickwall limiter on the master buss and letting it go crazy. A loud master is not one little thing - it's the addition of a multitude of many techniques. This of course makes the whole process that much complicated - which is why we leave it to the pros. Each little bit interacts with each other little bit, leaving almost unlimited combinations in settings to get it right. You have to be experienced to do this.

So, lets get started. First book I take some knowledge from a book on mixing - not mastering (no need to name names). As you can imagine - this is to do with individual tracks, not the final mix. This is before the mastering. He does not actually say specifically to use this as a mastering means to make songs louder, more for individual tracks to make them cut through. But this 'could' work if done to all tracks to some degree - or on the entire mix. This is NOT word for word, but the same idea. I'm not copying it out exactly, this is my interpretation. Have not tried it, but it looks promising. So, compressor settings, lets go:

knee - soft knee is vital to reduce pumping effects. You want to bring the really loud bits right down and the bits only a little too loud just down a little bit, so a soft knee works perfectly for this. Increase the knee so it covers the full dynamic range of the piece. If the range is about 30dB, set the knee to that.

ratio - maximum. nice a simple. Infinity or whatever the compressor goes to. The compressor probably will never hit this due to the soft knee. If you don't understand - read up on what knee does - important.

Threshold - set to half the span of the knee. If the knee is 30dB (cause the dynamic range of the piece is 30dB) then set to -15dB. This is because the knee works on both sides of the threshold. Threshold is your middle ground point. Very important to understand this.

Attack and Release - A percussive piece needs these short so it can recover quickly and grab the transients. Longer for more percussive pieces. Probably want something shorter for mastering a track - BUT observe low frequency as the compressor will start attacking the bass notes. If this is a problem, you're going to have to multi-band it or side-chain it (with the bass rolled off), or find a nice middle-ground (this is an addition by me, not from the book).

Level detection - I believe Bob Katz prefers RMS, but peak may be useful if the sound is very percussive.

So, I have actually tried this on an acoustic and it works very well. Did not tweak it, but quick settings gave me a louder sound, much more contained/restrained, fuller sound. Don't push it too far though. Really minimal pumping from this. Quite transparent.

So, what does my other book say? This is from a very well known book on mastering. A little bit of each of these can get you on the way.

 - Nice and simple, high frequency content is perceived as much louder than low frequency content when at the same level. This means low frequencies eat up a lot of headroom. So highpass those things out as much as is safe! A high frequency or presence boost can also help you out too - just don't go too far.

 - Parallel Compression. The King. Compressing your track using the techniques above can be great for use as the compressed track. This can also add power and oomph to your mix that may have been missing. It's truly great, I love it.

 - Digital Peak Limiting - this is pretty much your brickwall limiter I believe, you can probably get 1 or 2 dB pretty safely using this.

 - Surprisingly, Clipping. Digital can be pretty bad, so not much of this. Then a bit of analogue domain clipping (probably quite expensive!). This used with peak limiting, you MAY get 0.5dB from digital clipping, 1dB from analogue, and 1dB from limiting.


Not mentioned in either of these is multiband. I think it can help you out a bit. I have tried smashing the hell out of the low range and this got me about 1-2dB more worth of limiting before it got really bad. Keep in mind I did NOT tweak the settings on the low end in the multiband, so the bass sounded pretty whimpy, but this could potentially get you something, if used carefully. If you didn't smash the bass quite so much so it actually still sounded fine, you might only get 0.5dB out of it; but these things all add up.


The moral is, it's lots of little things to get there. Just boost11 on the master will NOT do the job.

Most important thing of all to remember:



ALWAYS LISTEN AT THE SAME VOLUME. ADJUST YOUR OUTPUT SO IT HAS THE SAME PERCEIVED LOUDNESS WHEN BYPASSED AND ON. If you do this, you will find audible loss with even just 1dB reduction on the very tips of the audio. You're always going to lose, you just need to decide by how much! The art of compromise. The modern music dictionary lost the definition of compromise many years ago, help put it back in there!



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