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Subject: how loud?


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Original Message                 Date: 13-Sep-07  @  12:16 PM     Edit: 13-Sep-07  |  12:19 PM   -   how loud should it be?

rags .aka. welder

Posts: 649

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I know this is a huge debate, if we should make our tracks as loud as possible "to be able to compete", but frakly I don't want to compete with anyone, so I render this complicated question to a simple one:

What is the loudness with you - as a listener - would be happy with? To me the -8 dB RMS levels in commercial pop are just ridiculous, I would be more happy with -11, but there is still too much being lost with that much of limiting.




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Message 11/16             19-Sep-07  @  07:45 PM   -   RE: how loud?

rags .aka. welder

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I have to admit, the more I play around with the Vintage Warmer, the better results I get... and it is so much simpler than setting up a 5-band multiband compressor....



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Message 12/16             25-Sep-07  @  12:25 PM   -   RE: how loud?

malkytrance

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I'll have to check out elephant never heard of it, and vw2 ill go and find em, the multiband
compressor if iam honest is the one that 9 times out of 10 ruins the track, which is probably
inexpierience on my part coz if all it does id make it louder then sitck to limiting, but if you can
use it to keep bass ends thick and defined you can sink them into the mix and make them
smaller but still solid, so then you got some more room to adjust mid and high bands(by the way
start with only 3 bands coz thats hard enough to judge, more than that and you are running
before walking) now u can squeeze the mid and maybe reduce the highs, careful on the
compression coz sometimes it causes harshness, do all of this gentley and keep the master out
below overload, in fact leave some headroom , and if you got it right you might! have a smaller
detailed solid mix, that then will take some nice limiting/psp ect.

However as some of the masters of mastering say you need to to then make an equal volume
comparison ie the original track at 0dbs and the mastered track at 0dbs and if the mastered
version sounds better in several ways ,depth thickness,warmth and definition then cool but if it is
nothing but louder then you failed and u might as well have just limited it to the wall.

Malk

___________________________________

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S.Thompson -



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Message 13/16             25-Sep-07  @  12:30 PM   -   RE: how loud?

malkytrance

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Also with vintage warmer always check the the change it makes coz a little bass added and the
overdrive knob turned up can add a lot of bass to the track which needs to be kept under control
make sure it adds bass where you need it and back off a bit when your happy, bass plays tricks
on the brain and its amazing how much sounds ok when there is loads to much, take it right
back until it is just a shadow you will be surprised once your brain accepts this shadow of bass
compaired to the original that it still sounds better without being overblown fluffyness.

Phew
Malk

___________________________________

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S.Thompson -



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Message 14/16             25-Sep-07  @  12:30 PM   -   RE: how loud?

malkytrance

Posts: 315

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Also with vintage warmer always check the the change it makes coz a little bass added and the
overdrive knob turned up can add a lot of bass to the track which needs to be kept under control
make sure it adds bass where you need it and back off a bit when your happy, bass plays tricks
on the brain and its amazing how much sounds ok when there is loads to much, take it right
back until it is just a shadow you will be surprised once your brain accepts this shadow of bass
compaired to the original that it still sounds better without being overblown fluffyness.

Phew
Malk

___________________________________

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." Hunter S.Thompson -



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Message 15/16             25-Sep-07  @  01:09 PM   -   RE: how loud?

rags .aka. welder

Posts: 649

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Thanks for the help, well, I dunno if I do it "right", and this is prolly one of those things one can do 1000 ways right (and 100000 ways wrong ), but I treat the stuff with har-bal first, add some ~5-15% stereo widening (depending on the material), and then use whatever is neccesary to add loudness.

The good thing with har-bal that it not only helps improving spectral balance, but makes everything sound more clear and defined by reducing frequency masking. It could be overdone of course, so half of the effort is to knwo where to stop adjusting

Another advantage is that one can almost absolutely eliminate any "peaks" in the frequency plot, ie. there will be no resonant frequencies "standing out" afterwards. It essentially does what multiband compression would do, only that it doesn't affect dynamics in any concievable way.

The bad thing is, if I treat the har-bal-ed stuff with just a limiter (to gain loudness) then it will get loud, but it will sound different than the stuff you usually hear elsewhere. I guess we are jut too used of the sound of bus compressors and multiband compresors etc. And this is where the VW2 comes really handy, because if you don't mess around with the bass and high knobs, it is pretty frequency-linear, I usually add about 3-4% compression (10-15% in some special cases.) The rest of the loudness comes from peak-limiting...

Elephant 2, yep, check that one out, it can start pumping if you push it too hard, but under normal circumstances it is very transparent, without any distortion (except with the "clip" algorythm, which does alias like the rest of the clippers, but in 4x oversampled mode it is still much nicer than the others...)

One neat trick is if you press the alt key while turning up the input, because then it will automatically turn down the output by the same amount so you can really hear how the dynamics is affected by the limiting.



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Message 16/16             02-Oct-07  @  11:40 PM   -   RE: how loud?

psylichon

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-12 db RMS is nice for most music. Non-percussive program can go hotter without harm.
But please, won't anyone consider the kicks and snares? -12 is nice.



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