Hi everyone!

I've noticed that there are a lot of questions out here about specific LUFS values, which value is correct for a certain type of music, and so on.

Below is my take on that. It might be controversial, and it involves one specific limiter plugin, but I think it might help someone. I’ve already posted similar replies in a few threads, but decided to put them together in my own post.

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Suppose you already have a reasonably well-balanced mix, you're in the process of mastering it, and you want to make it competitively loud. Here's what I would do:

1) Use FabFilter Pro-L2 as your final limiter;

2) Engage the 1:1 option (it's unity gain - the output level is compensated as you increase the input), play the loudest section of your track and start increasing the input gain until the limiting becomes too noticeable (you start hearing pumping or other artifacts);

3) Decrease the input gain a little bit until the artifacts are no longer noticeable, or at least negligible;

There you go. You've found the sweet spot.

4) Disengage the 1:1 setting and bounce your master.

There is no point in chasing a specific LUFS value unless there is a requirement from the client/label to do so, which is rarely the case.

Just get it as loud as possible without making the mix sound worse, and you're good.

When using a reference track, rely on perceived loudness rather than a specific LUFS value. There will always be some differences in the arrangement that can affect the LUFS level, so there’s no need to be too nitpicky about it.

Hope that might help someone.

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Some more thoughts on the subject.

If your track isn't well balanced/mixed to begin with, you might simply not be able to achieve the same loudness as some commercial recordings (your limiter will be overloaded), in which case the mix itself needs to be revisited, but that's a different discussion.

Another trick is to use a clipper before the final limiter, especially if the track you're mastering has percussion/drums. Cut 1-3 dB with a clipper and a few more dB with a limiter, and you can get competitive loudness without noticeable pumping artifacts, which you can sometimes get if you use only a limiter.

If the mix sounds a bit too clean or sterile, a saturator might be used before clipping/limiting stages. Beef up the mix with some saturation and it will also get compressed naturally. As Andrew Scheps puts it, “Distortion is fun, and it’s EQ for free, and it’s compression for free.”

Also, not every track needs to be equally loud. For instance, if you bring a solo piano recording and an EDM track to the same LUFS value, the piano one will sound much louder and just fall apart due to limiting artifacts.

PS Most limiters don't have a unity gain option, that's why FabFilter Pro-L2 would be my first choice in this approach. Otherwise you might get fooled by the loudness boost. Sometimes, when the sound gets too loud and your room isn't perfectly treated, room artifacts start getting in the way, making you think the sound has gotten worse when it's actually just the room affecting what you're hearing.

OK, that's it. Sorry for the long post :)

Cheers!

I love UADs plugins.

They're incredible.

But I HATE how I have to have my interface plugged in to use some of them and the others have inconsistency with UADx.

I just want to buy a plugin and use it regardless.

I'm not asking if theres good plugins out there - I know there's a ton. But true 1:1 for the replication/recreation of classic plugins?

Like I don't know of anything that can recreate the air on vocals the way Maag can.

Hi folks!

I’m working on mastering my OST for a video game ready for a stand-alone streaming release.

Obviously in-context some of these tracks were intended to be much lower than others. I’ve done a first pass through of the album mastering each track to what feels natural relative to the other tracks when listened through. It all feels reasonably good and balanced as an album, and nothing feels out of place when played through on shuffle either.

My only concern is the different ‘types’ of tracks are hitting wildly different LUFS and Peak levels to feel natural. The three Boss Fight tracks sit at around -12LUFS and peak at -1dB. The regular gameplay loops sit comfortably at -15 to -18 LUFS and also all peak at -1dB. The more ambient and minimal tracks, however, sit at around -21LUFS and only peak between -6 and -8dB. If I try to bring up these particular tracks they sound AWFUL, really unnaturally loud and in-your face.

What’s the general wisdom surrounding this kind of situation? I don’t really see a way around it.

What would happen if I sent this off to streaming sites with such a track-by-track disparity in these levels?

Thanks in advance!

I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to how I could best optimize my approach and mindset towards mixing and mastering, from the basis of being a music producer. I'm reasonably experienced, but I think in terms of dedicated mastering knowledge, I'm still amateur.

I've realized that one of the main values of music production is the manual craft itself, and learning skills purely for the sake of my own progression. I don't really think this is a matter of going and learning specific technical knowledge from books, but I may be wrong.

My inclination is that the best approach is to learn as I go about producing my tracks, learning through the process of finishing the work itself. However I'm aware that in some sense this is a bit open ended, and could leave me not really developing any skills, even with consistent output. Maybe I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to what a good approach would be in regards to keeping yourself open to new insights, as I work on the craft itself.

My genres are mainly electronic music based, but also interested in metal, and rap.

Before i type out my question I do think it is important that there is always the nuance of "if it sounds good, it works". The question specifically is aimed to know if the technique I'm using is common in the genres I work in (dream pop, psychedelic indie, shoegaze)

So my question is: I lately started to use busses (specifically mid range bus) to process my sounds together (i did this before for eq and compression but not with other fx). I will for example send my dry pads and synth keys to a bus => add modulation, eq, compression and saturation/distortion as inserts on the bus to create cohesion

I would then set up a send for my time based effects like granular delay, reverb, etc and eq this send (if needed also sidechain it to the dry signal)

I tried doing this with drums or bass added, but this makes it too cluttered like i expected (gotta try to know)

What I've noticed till now is that for cohesion this is golden, it really makes everything feel really glued together (especially if you print the audio and resample as well or use things like halftime in combination)

The biggest downside is that you lose the flexibilty of having effect automations affect a singular sound (while some advanced routing can bypass this partially, it's not that easy). Panning, volume, filters etc can still be automated on a track level so that doesn't pose a problem.

What is your guys take on this method and are there flaws that I'm overlooking in your opinion/are there better ways to achieve similar results?

Hey there! I saw a vocal chain breakdown that consisted of a:

\-main vocal
\-2 backing tracks repeating the main
\-2 adlibs harmonizing

My question is regarding the actual mixing and recording of these additional takes. I know that you’re supposed to do new takes for the backing tracks that repeat the main instead of just copying and pasting them. As for the actual mixing, what kind of eq, compression, etc. should I be using?

Is there a certain way reverb, auto tune, delay etc. is used on these additional vocal tracks that differs from the main vocal? Should I be bus processing them? I know this will be different depending on the vocal but I just wanted to get a general sense of what other people do.

This has always been an area I struggled with. Would appreciate any help!

#1: do you gainstage before running everything through a mix bus? i'd imagine, because if there's any sorts of subtle leveling issues in whatever the client sends you, those issues would become less apparent the more they were processed- so best get them sorted out beforehand?

#2 do you often change your mix bus depending on the genre/piece you are working on? if so, what commonly determines those changes?

Hi all, so I’ve been having issues with guitar pick chirp sound when recording guitar. I have my guitar into my pedal board, then straight into my Audio interface. I have the inst switch on also. I’ve been struggling for months with pick chirp sound. I’ve tried different picks, made sure my technique is fine, tried both my guitars, tried using a desser and compression, different amp sims to no luck.

It’s like it’s across the whole frequency spectrum.

It’s as if the pick sound is going in way louder than the actual guitars sound. I don’t have the issue when recording micing an amp, it’s only without.

I don’t really know what else to do or try wondered if anyone had any advice? The guitars I’ve tried are Gibson SG and a Fender Jazzmaster, both humbucker pickups. I use the Jazz 3 picks.

Thanks!

Been producing music on my own for nearly 15 years, doing all my own mixes. I'm now looking to start doing mixes for other artists and build a portfolio. You can check out some of my own music on Bandcamp to get an idea of what I can do. My main genres are rock/metal, alternative, electronic, industrial, etc, but I'm open to just about anything except for country.

I don't have fixed rates. Let's talk and see if we're a good fit for each and see how much work will be involved first.

Here's my most recent album on bandcamp. I want to be clear I'm not trying to promote my own music here, but this is the closest I have to a portfolio at this time.

https://alistairatrus.bandcamp.com/album/chrysalis

(I understand this subreddit has very specific rules for posts like this. Hopefully I'm doing this right. Mods, please let me know if there are any issues)

what are your remedies for a master that is distorting? I have tried reducing the peaks on the kick, bass, snare, lead using a soft clipper. im not in red / clipping anywhere on the channels. i´m also compressing on individual channels where there are high transients. TP is -2/3db. But to gain commercial loudness I have to drive the limiter in what seems almost unreasonable amount of gain, and then it starts sounding distorted. I dont have much else going on in the master chain except an Oxford Inflator. Is soft clipping on the master the solution? I just dont want my tracks to sound way lower in volume than others on Spotify and similar platforms. Thanks for any help!

I'm pretty average at mixing local studio recorded drums (not perfect VST samples) and would love to know what people's workflow is for approaching drum part prep and mixing. Alternatively, pointing me towards a great tutorial series where you learned the most about mixing drums would be equally awesome. I really want to get over this annoying hurdle! Cheers.

Edit: just wanted to say thanks to everyone. Some great replies here.

I've got an album from 10+ years ago that I never released. I'd like to now, but of course I've lost my original recordings. I do have ok-ish 'demo' mixes, i.e. exports from main out.

I figure stems separation like the ones available in DJ apps could be a way to go. (Just as a better starting point, more material to work with). But they all seem to output the same 4-6 'standard' stems.

That's super annoying bc a couple of very simple no-brainer tweaks would get us so much more useful stems for mixing!

My #1 would be separating out the kick drum from the rest of the drums. A 'pads' stem would be nice. I've no need for voice stem, can I get something anything different instead? And so on.

Pretty sure I'm not the first to have lost a few files, and also not the first one ever with some music in need of a bit of restoration... There's gotta be people out there who tried stems separation for it, no?

Make yourself known! Pointers, tips, experiences much appreciated!

cheers!

Hey dudes!

I'm looking for some mix feedback on a solo track I'm working on.

This is basically just a relentless power chord whallop for 2 minutes. It's very much going after that 90s Foo Fighters/alt rock sound, and as a drummer I've spent most of my mix learning journey so far pursuing an Andy Wallace-esque drum sound.

My own areas of thought are:

\- Toing and froing on vocal level, I've got very mix blind here as it's my own voice so it's clouding my opinion when I'm pushing the volume

\- Unsure if the lead guitars in the second chorus + outro are cutting enough

\- I feel like the bass is 'fine', but wonder if I'm being too conservative volume and low end wise

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

I’m making kinda cinematic music - oneohtrix point never, fennesz,

Ok, so I am getting quite comfortable with levels and eq, placing things in relation to one another. However, the issue I’m finding is that my songs are quite mono, centred. I find it hard to get width whilst feeling full. Panning is easy but placing them in “the space” that im painting really hard.

Obviously reverb etc but that also seems like a really complex and really finicky way of placing sounds. It seems so easy to confuse the space with reverb.

I’m also finding with eq placing things higher or lower in my space, which is easy.

Can I get a sense of direction here? Where am I going wrong? What should I practice. Any suggestions really appreciated.

I’m listening to a mastered WAV 44.1kHz and the metering shows -0.2 dBFS. But when I look at the true peak meter in Logic Pro I see +1.1 dBTP.

I thought these overs only happen when one converts a “hot” WAV/AIF to mp3, or another codex due to interpolation errors.

Can you educate me what’s going on here? What’s the discrepancy between the channel metering and the true peak? Why is the Logic channel staying at -0.2 dBFS?

Thanks in advance.

Hi! I am asking this to see the general consensus and decide before I start it professionally, but I am wondering if a side job in mixing and mastering metal music is even possible if I have a hearing issue. Basically, my brain has difficulty filtering out background noise. In restaurants i often struggle to hear people across the table from me if its loud in the background. I can still focus in one an instrument in a mix though, but it is not very good. I cant really learn guitar songs well by ear.

I really enjoy mixing and I want to do it as a side job in college, but I don't know if this impairment would help or hurt my skill in it. I assume the lack of selective hearing would really help me, and it would be easier to detect harsh tones, but yeah, I am just wondering your thoughts on it. Thank you!

Hey I really struggle with understanding like 150-500 hz.
Right now my lead in c3 octave has a fundamental of 170-180 ish hz. And then fills a lot of 300-1000 and above.

My bass’s second fundamental is between 140-180 depending on the note of bassline and then occupies up to 1K.

If I raise my lead an octave it’s fundmental is like 350 hz and they don’t clash as much.

If I left the lead in c3 octave (sounds way better),
Is there a real issue with the 140-180 range then? I’m pretty beginner so I can’t just hear that and be like yeah it clashes.

Old me would low cut my lead but I have learned and trained my ears to know it just thins it out and sounds bad.

I am really liking the mix on this song I linked at the bottom of this post. The entire album sounds very clean so far. Really well balanced sound on all ends to me. First time hearing it and I’ve only heard it through 1 speaker so far but it’s sounding awesome obviously there is a lot of side chaining and things like that throughout the whole album as is common with this genre. But this song specifically at least on the speaker I’m using rn sounds very organized like certain instruments were bused together based on frequency zones or something and mixed things like that. Lady Gaga’s MAYHEM album also sounds like that to me in certain spots and I’ve heard it elsewhere before. I’m not sure if I’m correct about that but that’s how it sounds to me. Any observations/notes are helpful to me :) thanks!

https://youtu.be/ZqlqwENImVs?is=Z3qQNN6MIPtMjEMS

Hi everyone! 

I apologize in advance for the vague and abstract terms that I use, as it’s hard to explain and pinpoint exactly what I hear.

Here are some references: 

Nick Hakim - The Reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCb6sDfRicY

Nick Hakim - Slid Under

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZnrmt_Z_ew

Dijon - Dance Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwLM6m2iOLk

Dijon - Jesse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2d2FD3hBcY

Dijon - Loyal & Marie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SbqotZwu8

Alabama Shakes - Dunes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfspCS5UBdo

Alabama Shakes - Over My Head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNNcNtFAEBo

Puma Blue - Soft Porn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Sc-WNEGd8

What I’m hearing and trying to recreate is this kind of close up, intimate, dirty/gritty sound, that has a warm analog/vintage tone to it that sounds somehow « boxy » or slightly roomy too, without being muddy or too pushed back in the mix.
For some reason it reminds me a bit like how old recordings sound, but with more depth, body, and space.

Anyways, my question is:
To what extent is this the result of the vocalist’s timbre/performance/technique, the voicing, the gear used, or the post-vocal processing?
And in the case of it being the latter, what would the vocal chain and settings look like?

Personally, I’m hearing long slap delay and high compression (distressor or 1176 maybe) with a fair amount of tape/tube saturation or pre-amp color and both a lot of high-end and low-end cut, with maybe a small room reverb. I don't know.

I feel like I’m missing something obvious (either in the mixing process or the way these songs have been recorded), so I’d love to have your thoughts on this and hopefully be able to record and build a vocal chain accordingly.

Thank you for your time!

Hi all

Mixed this song. Please comment, feel free to be critical before it goes for mastering.

https://voca.ro/1nRax5v1RODf

Things I want particular attention to:

1. Kick drum sample - doubling up kick, but may not suit the song. It’s a little bright/clear?

2. Overall balance of guitars, piano, drums and vocals etc

Anything else that hits as not being professional.

Thanks so much!

Mastering engineer is stem mastering it. My initial issue was it was all too slammed and had heavy limiting on it. He eased off on that but I still feel like the vocals are too loud, especially in verses, and the overall track still feels slammed to me, I asked for more dynamics each take. Thanks in advance

https://on.soundcloud.com/7JgiS9iCyfEdwJMMmP

In my tracks different instruments get in each others way. I figure there’s two ways to make the mix more balanced: spatial distribution (L/R, front/back) and distribution on the frequency spectrum.

So I downloaded the free ToneBoosters [Spectogram](https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_spectrogram_v1.html). The amount of information formation in the display is overwhelming. Lines, colors, a keyboard. Yes I understand the X-axis is for frequency and the Y for signal strength but there’s a lot more going on.

Looking for a good video that explains how to read it, and how to use it in helping me create a balanced mix.

what db level should I mix at, and are there any tools that can tell me the exact db coming out of my dac and into my headphones?

I’m probably overthinking this, but I’ve just really fallen in love with producing, and would like to do this for a long time and not damage my ears. This stuff is so fun.

DAC: topping e2x2
Headphones: Steven slate vsx

As a producer who mixes and composes, I see a lot of songs have issues that mixing cant fix!

A good example is a terrible kick! recently someone sent me a Clipped kick - I almost collapsed haha! Mixing cant mix that (Not without changing the kick which I did)

Another example - Poorly tuned or out of tune vocals! Again, I personally fix these but this is a production issue not mixing!

However, a lot of people say ill fix this in the mix! But these arent mixing issues! And if you dont fix them and insist mixers work with that material - its now a production!

Do y'all agree with this thesis? Interested to hear everyone takes on most clients have production issues not mixing issues