Wondering if this is not a good technique to tame peaks > -3db here's what i do: I try to get the bulk of my mix under -3db but typically peaks will be greater than -3db. so, i use a limiter such as waves L3 ultra stereo to chop of those peaks at around -3db. obviously this is the lazy mans approach, but am i doing more harm to my mix than good ? i've tried the approach to control peaks at the source, whether snare or kik typically, but too much control on those takes away their impact. maybe its a fine balance that i haven't mastered.. any pointers / tips ?

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.

i was afraid of that answer. so, for example, on a snare track which is peaking all over the place, what is the best method to tame those ? i can't imagine volume reduction being the answer since then i lose my snare impact. transient shaper ? thanks for that informative reply, batsbrew.

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.

@

yes, im sending all drums to drum bus. I typically compress kik and snare on their individual tracks and then less so on the bus to kinda glue them all together. I've tried using a limiter in the tracks but i stopped because it always seemed to kill the punch.. level automation seems so tedious to have to do here. isn't there an easier way?

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.

Thank you both. trying out these techniques now !

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

Josh, I do the opposite from what you've been told. Of course it's rare for me to have something peaking like that if *I* record it, but in client projects that I get, if something is way too peaky and a compressor seems to squash it too much, I can just bring the track into another program and remove the peaks only.

For example, this is the sound of a peak when zoomed in super tight:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/TheSoundOfPeak%20%282%29.mp3

If you lower that peak only, it's not going to affect the sound at all. Open that up in your audio editor. I'm zoomed in so tight on that, killing that peak will not even mess with the instrument.

Keep in mind, you of course want to prevent this stuff from happening. So proper compression as well as the right signal to disc is important, but if you really feel the need to curb peaks, try doing it manually so you don't end up squashing the track with compression artifacts. That's what usually happens and why you can use this method to curb it. If the peaks are bad enough, a compressor or limiter may kill the sound so much, it's not worth using. So this is why I use the manual method. Though it's destructive, you zoom in so tight, you're not really messing with anything. Good luck. :)

-Danny

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.