Mastering Levels

Could someone please explain to me why it's so hard to get a master as loud as commercial masters?

Because your not mastering it correctly. Don't shoot the messenger as you ask a complex question and got the truth. No 2 songs are the same and you do different things to each song, so there is not do this or do that for this question.
 
Your mix may be lacking also. If you mixed it without the proper EQ'ing of the tracks, then you may not be able to get it loud in the mastering stage
 
Just Read up and study the art of mastering. Also look into getting a tuned room with a great signal chain and do not record and master in the same room.
 
There are books wiht thousands of pages written on htis
 
CJ

CJaysMusic
There are books wiht thousands of pages written on htis
 
CJ

hwat's wiht htis speeling JC?

Dude Ivey

Could someone please explain to me why it's so hard to get a master as loud as commercial masters? I realize they got more money but levels are levels right? I was trying to get a song as loud as a commercial track. I imported the song Nightmare by Avenged Sevenfold and check the RMS Levels and then i worked on mine and got it really close and even higher at times. Play them both and the commercial release sounds twice as loud. I know the levels are close enough to where both tracks should be close in volume. What am i missing? I mastered it with Ozone 5.

One trick is to keep your track peaks (or is it peeks? <-- Cj, can you clarify spelling for me?) level. The more 'level' each track is, the louder you can push your Limiter without clipping it.


No matter what material you are mastering, you are only going to get so loud before it distorts or you start to hear artifacts of your Limiter, and what mainly causes that are the decibel spikes. 


If it's loudness you are going for, try putting Limiters on every Track to even out the levels, keep an eye on how much the Limiter is limiting ... for example, if it says -8db, then raise your Limiter Output by +8. That's a rough guide, but you get the idea.

HTH.

Bub

I made two different masters of the song i refered to in the original post. The first one the percieved level about -9 and the second around -6. I blasted both in my truck on my way home from work. The first one actually sounded pretty good. The second one was obviously a Little louder but not near as good sound quality except the kick drum. The kick sounds good in both masters. The vocals sucked in the louder one, i noticed that immediately. They sounded pushed too far. So ill be back to the mix and tweak some more. But at least the first mix had some pretty good sound quality. Loud is not the most important thing to me. I just wanna get better at making a good sounding mix and a good sounding master thats loud too!
@Brian, id be interested in the brands of plugs in your mastering chain if u dont mind.
Thanks for everyones input. I,ve got two books on mixing and mastering that i been reading, i guess we'll all get there one day.

brconflict


 
I've also found from Greg Calbi (I believe) who said that in your mastering chain, not to simply use one compressor or limiter, but maybe add a few with settings which are minimal, and with them all doing just a little bit instead of one doing a lot, you might get better results. Bub made a similar point above. Little bits at a time is sometimes better than taking one Limiter or compressor and infusing LOTS of gain.

I find it similar to painting - you get much better results form applying several thin coats than you do with a single thick coat

There are several good frequency spectrum charts available, which would give you an idea of where different instruments can compete for the same frequencies, which causes a muddy sound.

Thinning out these competing frequencies really gives you a lot more space, which keeps things sounding clearer when louder.  Less leads to more - particularly with the low end.

It takes a lot of time and a lot of learning to get good at it.  Hang in there and learn from the forum, videos, web, anything you can get your hands on.

Bob Bone

Interesting read.  How do you measure "Perceived level"  ?

Bub

moffdnb

Interesting read.  How do you measure "Perceived level"  ?

It's that whole Dynamic Range thing, or lack there of.

Using an old, tried and true analog meter or Dorrough is good, but IMO a Peak-Level digital meter that most DAW's have isn't going to tell you much. Wavelab has a good one that I use, which appears right next to the Peak-Level meter. It can tell you a lot, but your ears will be the ultimate judge. Care must be taken, though that your master isn't dramatically fatiguing when listening to 3-4 tracks at a time. Your listeners shouldn't reach for the volume knob to turn it down more often than up. 

Anyone can make a loud recording. Not just anyone can make that loud recording sound "good".

A Mackie 1202 Master meter ok for this?  I rarely look at its meters as I work ITB and only use for monitoring.





I try and get around -8db RMS in Digital domain but besides my Ears, any advise what to look for in analog?

Point-being, is that the OP wanted to know why his masters don't compete with some Professional Masters. I used to ask that question, and even after years of working on my methods and such, I will STILL occasionally ask the same question again. Then I will go pick apart the one I want to know more about until I have a few ideas. 

Today's Maxi-Masters in the midst of the volume wars are not attained without years of research and a lot of trial and error. The guys who succeed at making those masters have been doing it for years, and they still learn new techniques all the time. 

I don't personally think that Mastering is a truly subtle job anymore. There are some "tricks" to the trade that many never hear about or know, and you may never know them. There's equipment in some cases that make the difference, and we can't afford those units. There's ears out there that are seasoned perfectly for the best job, and we won't get those on our own. 

Bottom line is, learn all you can about it, but master your mixing skills first. If then you feel Mastering is an area you wish to be involved in, you'll be able to decide that later. 

Best of luck!!

Mastering made easy - use the volume knob in your truck.  I've heard more songs ruined by bad mastering than I care to hear again, esp. in home mastering.  Why anyone would want to match many commercial releases to the .1 dB is beyond me, other than as an academic exercise.

Most mastering engineers in the past have gone through the gamut - learning tracking, learning mixing and then graduating to mastering w/ a fine ear and knowledge of what needs to be corrected - and what doesn't.  The first lesson was like the Hippocratic Oath - "first do no harm."  Originally, mastering was the process to prepare a tape (usually) for mass production on LPs, which didn't have the bass or dynamic range of tape.  That is where all that cool and expensive hardware came in - Pultecs and Fairchilds.  Tape was ususally recorded hot, not just for the sound but to overcome the noise inherent in tape.  It is different in the digital world, where bass can be as loud and low as you like, and noise is not an issue really.  Rather than taking advantage of larger dynamics, many modern productions squeeze the very breath out of songs.  When I comp my old LPs or CDs, volume is all over the place between them.  Since these are for my personal use, I quickly and roughly adjust the volume between them, and leave the fine tuning for the vol. knob.  Gee, I even use it when the washer in the other room kicks in to the spin cycle, or the car hits a more knobby stretch of road, or the kid next to me at the light is blowing his subwoofers on a flat-line CD in his car.

But if you want to go academic, you just take common mixing procedures and go anal w/ them to produce a hot mix.  Go in and vol envelope all the main elements (hell, if they were paying me by the hour I'd go into the backing ear candy, too!).  They sound level, now, pretty much?  Good.  Now but a compressor on every track.  An opto L2A2 emulation on many things, but percusive and lead on an 1176.  On lead vocals, both.  Now route your tracks to buses.  On the buses put another comp - probably an SSL emualtion.  As well as your master.  That is an easy way to serialize your comps, using less compression but more compressors.  Yes, it does usually sound smoother, more natural than hitting the all button on an 1176.  Your mix still not hot enough?  Follow the comp with a limiter and crank up the output on the comp, squeezing the bejebbers out of dynamics so every sound is an on/off affair. 

Still not loud enough but still hitting the red at points?  Open Sound Forge or another editor and start looking at your tracks.  On vocals, drums, acoustic guitars you'll find spikes.  1, 2 even 3 dBs louder than the majority of the sound.  Use the pencil editor to bring these down towards the rest of the level.  Oh, suddenly you have a few more dbs to play w/ on several tracks.  Cool.  Raise the bus or track comp output.  Just be careful that you haven't muffled your punch, which was what those spikes were.

Now you have a mix track that sits at -3dB or higher.  Surely you can squeeze a few dBs in mastering easy, right.  First, open it in your editor.  Any more spikes where the bass, kick and guitar all hit the downbeat.  Be ruthless - prune those spikes, too. 

Now comes the fun part of mastering.  You throw another compressor (and EQ, tho that is another subject - you probably have eqs on tracks and buses to high pass bass wasted bas energy in the triangle, vox, etc.).  Put a limiter on the master so you can really slam those levels w/o going over.  It is best if you go buy some really expensive hardware.  Yes, I know software is almost there - but commercial CDs usually go through pricey analog.  The fine hairs you get in analog saturation live there.  Close is -.1 dB - you want exact.  Even w/ the +$1000 a channel mastering compressor (and that is low end in this game) you'll still want digital compression before, or use SF to render it before mixing it out through hardware.  One can't be too careful there there might be any air left in your song.

While you are buying hardware, invest $5000-10,000 in some "pro" speakers, kick everybody out of the biggest, non-square room in the house and spend several thousand dollars treating it.  I know my wife would understand, tho I would have to find a completely new home not to master in, but live.  Now you can hear all these little tweaks you are making - once you gone through the above processes a couple hundred times and your ears can hear them.  Don't worry, it will get faster once you get the hang of it.

Those are some of the tricks the pros use.  But be warned, most of the effort above will be wasted on people who don't have trained ears, who are listening on ear buds etc.  The . whatever dB differential between home mastering and pro mastering is mostly hype.  That little difference can be heard, sublimely.  Studies have shown people like the louder version of anything (well, maybe not jackhammers or wrecks at night outside your window - I'm talking about music).  But there ain't that much difference.  You shouldn't try to not make your music competitive, but 1 dB isn't going to be a deal breaker.  If you like your song, you'll probably turn it up anyway.

A good song (after all, you will be listening to it many, many times), well recorded and mixed on typical home recording systems, and home mastered to w/in a dB or so of a commercial recording, will sound fine.  Once you get your basic techniques down.  Until then, don't worry about the last few dBs.  You are more likely to do harm than any good. 

You can use most of the techniques above - but not on every track of every song.  Unless you want to.  But I prefer to leave a little breathing room the music I do.  It sounds better than cranking every step to 11.  Back in the day, I could seldom get my analog stuff to sound harsh.  Digitial, easy as pie.  You can feel tracks straining against the limits of sound.  And vocals easily become harsh, the T's sound like Derek Jacoby in "I Claudius" and the S's sound like the singer is speaking Slitheren.  That bugs me a whole lot more than reaching for the volume control.

@

redbarchetta

Bub


If it's loudness you are going for, try putting Limiters on every Track to even out the levels, keep an eye on how much the Limiter is limiting ... for example, if it says -8db, then raise your Limiter Output by +8. That's a rough guide, but you get the idea.

HTH.

Bub

Which if I understand correctly would have a huge impact on the dynamic of the music right?

 

Yes.

What is this mythical "Dynamic Range" thing that is being tossed around this thread??!?!?? Is it available as a plugin? Freeware would be great! lol

CJaysMusic

Limiter  Limiter  Guitar Rig 4  Limiter  Limiter  Limiter 

Shouldn't there be like 6 compressors in that chain also?

Who got a hold of CJ's login?


Not one misspelled werd.

I've personally had good luck with the P-36 Space Modulator. It's not hard to imagine using weird techniques. Just ask any pro photographer how he gets the results he does in stunning photos. He might tell you he does something totally radical just for a little extra edge.