help with pre-master preparation - taming peaks properly

for premasters-

use no limiters.

it's ok to mix into a master buss compressor (i do) but typically it's more for color, not peak control.

you control peaks on a track by track basis.

for PEAKS on the master buss, you should shoot for about -12.


yes, -12.


study this chart:



based on the chart, actually -16db should be where you sit, if you are comfortable with older analog-style recording basics.

digital sound, especially at 24 bit and 44.1khz, has plenty of headroom for clean clear tone, you do not want to trust your meters to tell you  that you are close to clipping......


the last thing a mastering engineer wants, is a limited mix.


he/she has MUCH better equipment to use to do that.

give him a good dynamic mix, and keep your master peaks low, with tons of headroom.





even if you are going to master yourself, do it the same way.


you will get all of your 'VOLUME' back during the mastering stage.

Vol Automation.  Compressor.  Limiter.  In that order.  And yea, that is the trick.  Evening out the sound w/o losing punch.

Are you sending your drum tracks to a drum bus?  The SSL bus comp can help.

@

if it's only the snare that's causing the most problems, just put a compressor on the track with the snare.

it takes a while, and some experimenting, to come up with the correct settings for the compressor to work the peaks the way you want them...


just google.....
you'll find tons of 'suggestions'....

but the point is, you identify the worst offenders, and focus on those....

and let the rest ride.

then when you bring it all together, you change focus on EQ settings, and look for 'PILE_UPS'...

such as the bass being eq'd the same as the kick, and the middle of the snare masking the vocals, stuff like that.


but as far as peaks go, limiters, and compressors, are your friend.

but there's no point in compressing the entire drum buss, when it's only the snare that's offending.
plus, there's almost no way you'll find a buss compressor that works for the snare but doesn't kill the kick, etc....
and don't mess with multiband, at least not in the beginning.

sometimes you only think your helping the person asking the question but your really helping others as well,thank you guys for this information and its very helpful to all.

seriously,i need to be more aware of my levels.

Ty

It is almost essential to have a wave editing program such as Adobe Audition to do stuff on individual tracks. These programs seem to do it better and faster than DAW programs do.

I use what is called hard limiting. It sounds worse than it what it really does. If all your snare peaks say average around -10 dB say but three or four of them are way too loud and might come up to -2 dB. You can set hard limit to say -9 for example and most of the peaks wont be touched but the loud ones are just brought down to where the others are. The peaks are not squared off either just the tops of the loud ones are pulled down to be more in line with the others. This approach also does not touch the bottom part of the snare sound. Using envelopes to pull those loud snare hits down is not the way to go because you end up pulling the whole snare hit down and it lacks punch as a result.

Then you can add maybe 6 dB to the whole track bringing the whole snare track up in level.

Basically I am saying what Danny is in that manual editing is a very good thing to do on tracks before any mixing takes place. There is ton of stuff you can do here (in pre mix editing) before a mix even begins. The great thing is that after you do this editing you need less or not at all any compressors to even things out, you have done it all already. You end up saving in plug in use and your CPU.

I don't feel editing is bad at all but rather excellent and the more you do the more you realise you can prepare a lot of stuff before the mixing process. Take a bass track for example or a vocal track. There will always be a phrase or two that will be a little softer or louder than the rest. It is much better to edit the offending phrases rather than slamming a compressor over the whole thing just to tame the offending areas. People do that too much and the compressor settings need to be harder for it to work. But edit a few things here and there so everything is nice and even then you can still use a compressor but in much more relaxed manner and the track will sound much better as a result as well. (Remember this: low compressor ratios make the sound BIGGER, higher ratios make the sound smaller. If you have to use a higher ratio to tame silly peaks here and there you are shrinking the sound for no reason)

The compressor can now be put over the whole drum buss (rather than on individual tracks) and act as a glue type now just glueing the whole thing down a bit more.

I am very good and consistent drummer for example and can capture my playing very well. But even so there will usually be a few snare and kick hits that are just a little out of context with the rest. (ie tiny bit quieter or louder for whatever reason) A few detailed manual edits can put things very right and still preserve high sound quality. As a result less processing is almost required later on and that is not a bad thing.

Many top mix engineers hire very good editors that do a lot of work before the mix engineer even does his thing. There is a reason for it, it works very well.

After a multitrack session I open every single mono and stereo track up and have a look in the editor program. Some tracks don't need much or any work but others really benefit from it a lot.  If you have got lots and lots of plugins in your mix I believe you are doing something wrong to a certain degree. Editing prior to mixing will eliminate probably half of them. It means you are using too many plugs to fix small areas of tracks (and acting over the rest of the track for the rest of the time and not necessarily doing good either) instead of fixing the small areas of the tracks to start with.

Danny - The same holds true for me, ie, what i record is rarely the problem. the problem for me occurs on the kik and snare samples i use ( i only use samples for drums at this point - not set up to record drums). So, in an effort to make them sound good, i usually wind up with peaky tracks. (Mind you all: i am using Steven slate drums and or session drummer, or addictive drums for source, so drum samples are not crap). In my original post, the way i've been using the limiter is to cut off peaks >-3db, on the final mixed stereo master. Basically, I'm processing the limiter directly to the track, ie, it's not sitting in the effects bin. i used to go in to the offending tracks, as you do, and reduce the gain on the offending peaks, peak by peak, but that is so tedious !!! damn you need patience for that.