Having a hard time hitting -14LUFS

[T Gobbs]

To get the kick/snare/toms standing out more, look up some videos on parallel compression. I used to send the entire stereo track of the kit to a bus with a compressor on it, but now I just do kick/snare/toms. Fast attack, fast release because I just want the initial hit of the drum to pop out, start with the fader all the way at 0 and slowly ride it up until you can hear what you’re looking for.

I've been using a slower attack. That might be part of my problem with the transients.

 

[T Gobbs]

I had a listen to the first clip on my desktop at work through little speakers. Sounded like all the headroom was being eaten up by a crazy, crazy kick sound whomping away out above the fizzy guitars. Many things to resolve, young grasshopper

I can just barely hear the kick through my headphones. Good to know.

 

[DrewJD82]

I've been using a slower attack. That might be part of my problem with the transients.

Compressors and limiters will either nurture or neuter those transients!

 

[marsonic]

Thanks for taking the time dude.

Agreed it sounds like shit. That wasn't me posting anything I thought was good, more wondering why it took so much destruction to hit that level.. My ears were pretty fried by the point I rendered, and yes I did listen to it after, and it still sounded like shit to me (that fucking fuzz wasn't helping, and I'm assuming that's why everything is messed up around 7k and is one of the reasons why the high end sounds broken), I was also going for "bright," because that's what the internet told me me would help. Lack of content below 100 makes sense, as I was hi passing the guitars around there, as well as compressing the shit out of them.. I'm using a compressor that has preset ratios, and the limiter setting is 1:10 or something like that. You're right about not actually controlling the transients. I squashed everything as much as I could, and there were still big peaks poking through on the waveform while rendering. Pretty much every track in the project had the maximum amount of compression that plugin would allow, and it was still doing that. And not going to disagree about he composition being part of the problem, but I feel like even with that I should be able to make this work.

I'm using Massdrop 6xxs to monitor, and there's enough low end as far as headphones go. Commercial stuff (the KSE My Curse stems) have a lot more punch in the low end, but, again, I was carving everything out that I could looking for headroom. Having the kick be clicky and the snare be thin is the only why I feel like I get them to poke through without clipping.

Here's one that's less fucked up. This got me -13.7 with 1.5 left over according to reaper. Using that same compressor to take 3-6 db off of the drums, and the same plug limiting on the master is taking down about 2.



Thanks again for writing all that out. I still have no idea what I'm doing.

Glad you took it well. I was honestly afraid to post it. I wrote all that out partially because I woke up early for no reason and wasn't ready to start my day job yet. Glad you got something out of it.

Anyway, I'll listen to the other one at some point (feel free to remind me if I don't).

The big thing I'll say is this - don't worry about final level if you say you have "no idea what [you're] doing". Just make it sound good to you and don't clip your master output - if it's too quiet, it's often better to turn up your monitors.

Also, look up Hardcore Music Studio on youtube. He often works in a halfway similar style (not quite that heavy) and has several "This is how you do those things" videos for specific instruments as well as some mix demos. I think his advice is solid, at least as a foundation for one of the big schools of mixing. If I were you, I'd start with his drum videos, then bass. Guitars are probably what you're excited about, but dirty/fuzzy guitars are really easy to mix - the distortion does basically all the work...you mostly just need an EQ at the end of the chain and some level automation.

parallel compression

I'd avoid parallel compression at this stage. First, it's not actually special, it's just a different way of doing things. There is no real difference between parallel compression and normal compression set different (typically lower ratio and more makeup gain, sometimes different timings).

There are reasons to do it, but not as a "beginner".

I don't think it's actually necessary at all, and I do think it'll make it take longer for you (the general you) to really understand compressors if you jump into it too early.

If you're talking about compressing something and adding another compressor in parallel...that's very often more about distortion than any specifics of the envelope.

Your mention of presets is precisely why I stay away from presets with plug-ins

Agreed. Once you've wrapped your head around what something does, then it's time to look at the presets to see what other people have done. IMHO, of course.

I've been using a slower attack. That might be part of my problem with the transients.

Yep.

Slow attacks let transients through. Fast attacks crush them. I don't mean to be condescending, but that's the first big lesson of compression.

I can just barely hear the kick through my headphones. Good to know.

That's a problem. Those headphones are generally good, but they're on the warm side.

Compressors and limiters will either nurture or neuter those transients!

Compressors can do both. Limiters and clippers just squash them (and effectively shift the energy from them up into the next few octaves, depending on some details).

 

[PLX]

Glad you took it well. I was honestly afraid to post it. I wrote all that out partially because I woke up early for no reason and wasn't ready to start my day job yet. Glad you got something out of it.

Anyway, I'll listen to the other one at some point (feel free to remind me if I don't).

The big thing I'll say is this - don't worry about final level if you say you have "no idea what [you're] doing". Just make it sound good to you and don't clip your master output - if it's too quiet, it's often better to turn up your monitors.

Also, look up Hardcore Music Studio on youtube. He often works in a halfway similar style (not quite that heavy) and has several "This is how you do those things" videos for specific instruments as well as some mix demos. I think his advice is solid, at least as a foundation for one of the big schools of mixing. If I were you, I'd start with his drum videos, then bass. Guitars are probably what you're excited about, but dirty/fuzzy guitars are really easy to mix - the distortion does basically all the work...you mostly just need an EQ at the end of the chain and some level automation.



I'd avoid parallel compression at this stage. First, it's not actually special, it's just a different way of doing things. There is no real difference between parallel compression and normal compression set different (typically lower ratio and more makeup gain, sometimes different timings).

There are reasons to do it, but not as a "beginner".

I don't think it's actually necessary at all, and I do think it'll make it take longer for you (the general you) to really understand compressors if you jump into it too early.

If you're talking about compressing something and adding another compressor in parallel...that's very often more about distortion than any specifics of the envelope.



Agreed. Once you've wrapped your head around what something does, then it's time to look at the presets to see what other people have done. IMHO, of course.



Yep.

Slow attacks let transients through. Fast attacks crush them. I don't mean to be condescending, but that's the first big lesson of compression.



That's a problem. Those headphones are generally good, but they're on the warm side.



Compressors can do both. Limiters and clippers just squash them (and effectively shift the energy from them up into the next few octaves, depending on some details).

Do me next !

 

[T Gobbs]

Yep.

Slow attacks let transients through. Fast attacks crush them. I don't mean to be condescending, but that's the first big lesson of compression.

Everything I've heard about drum compression said to use a slow attack to let the transient though. The compressor I'm using has 2 preset ratios and 2 general attack speeds (not preset settings). Using the higher attack felt like it made the snare and kick disappear. boosting 4.8k, using the slower attack just to take some of he edge off and then just lowering the fader seemed to have better results at the time.. I was trying to squash everything at the buss and master, which was a mistake.

 

[Cirrus]

Everything I've heard about drum compression said to use a slow attack to let the transient though. The compressor I'm using has 2 preset ratios and 2 general attack speeds (not preset settings). Using the higher attack felt like it made the snare and kick disappear. boosting 4.8k, using the slower attack just to take some of he edge off and then just lowering the fader seemed to have better results at the time.. I was trying to squash everything at the buss and master, which was a mistake.

The truth is you listen to what you've got, and if you want more or less transient, and more or less sustain, a compressor is a tool you reach for. There's no rule.

Drums are fast. Fast transients, fast decays. Fast compressors are a great way of controlling them and letting a little snap through. Often if you want the tone and sustain of the drums, people distort or brick wall limit to knock down the transients, which acts immediately and does not at all let the transient though. Then you can push the overall level up.

The devil is in the details. A typical fast comp, you might use 1ms attack to control the drum transients. 1ms is still some attack. Once your ear is dialled in, you hear the difference between 1 and 3ms attack times. You might use 10ms to let some proper DONK through before the compressor acts.

For all I know, your compressor has two speeds: 0.5ms and 50ms. 0.5 might well be too much (but you don't have to use lots gain reduction!) and 50ms might as well be doing nothing at all to control the drums.

 

[T Gobbs]

The truth is you listen to what you've got, and if you want more or less transient, and more or less sustain, a compressor is a tool you reach for. There's no rule.

Drums are fast. Fast transients, fast decays. Fast compressors are a great way of controlling them and letting a little snap through. Often if you want the tone and sustain of the drums, people distort or brick wall limit to knock down the transients, which acts immediately and does not at all let the transient though. Then you can push the overall level up.

The devil is in the details. A typical fast comp, you might use 1ms attack to control the drum transients. 1ms is still some attack. Once your ear is dialled in, you hear the difference between 1 and 3ms attack times. You might use 10ms to let some proper DONK through before the compressor acts.

For all I know, your compressor has two speeds: 0.5ms and 50ms. 0.5 might well be too much (but you don't have to use lots gain reduction!) and 50ms might as well be doing nothing at all to control the drums.

It's apparently way slower than that. Been playing around with the stock reaper comp and have been having much better results.

 

[Bruce]

Good thing for the op is there are no less than a million resources to learn how to mix well. Dont feel bad. My first mixes took months and sounded like dogshit. Look at the bright side: you learned how to make things sound bad and got some experience with your tools and DAW. Can only get better from here.

 

[marsonic]

Do me next !

It's a bit bright...i want to turn it up to feel the low end, but I can't because the high end would get piercing. I do like it a lot, but I think the brightness makes the drums (especially low drums) sit a bit far back. Kick and bass are getting lost. It's in the realm of artistic choice, just not quite the one I would have made. FWIW, there are a lot of metal songs/sounds that I just don't like because of that same complaint - could be a style thing. I think you can take a little high-end off the guitars to make it feel a bit more put together without pushing them too far back. The rest of the drums sit well, but there's very little low-end on the snare.

I'd have to actually open it in a mastering session to find out if my "complaints" are something I could address with 2-bus EQ (and I didn't bother recording it). If your monitoring/room are particularly bassy, my suspicion is that I could. (I'm also convinced that a significant portion of mastering is accounting for the mixer's room).

I know this was a short preview, but I think I'd like to hear more variation in level between sections than the preview shows. It really is the case that when everything is crazy loud, nothing is. Oddly enough, that's also easily addressed in mastering. IMO, very little needs to actually be that loud, but -7ish isn't all that crazy as long as you're doing it for artistic reasons. If that's the squashed/loud sound you want, you did it pretty darn well. If you made it that loud just to make it loud, I'd at least want to hear it without that stuff....but I'd have to hear both to decide what I liked better.

Everything I've heard about drum compression said to use a slow attack to let the transient though. The compressor I'm using has 2 preset ratios and 2 general attack speeds (not preset settings). Using the higher attack felt like it made the snare and kick disappear. boosting 4.8k, using the slower attack just to take some of he edge off and then just lowering the fader seemed to have better results at the time.. I was trying to squash everything at the buss and master, which was a mistake.

It depends. Seriously, watch those HCMS videos on drums for more detail, but it's more complex than "slow attack for drums" or even just "fast" vs "slow" - those words are really vague and only mean things with experience. Fast on an opto compressor is not the same thing as fast on an 1176, and neither is all that fast compared to a modern digital lookahead compressor.

A lot of the reason people use 2 kick mics (inside and outside) and 2 snare mics (top and bottom) is so you can use slower attacks and faster releases to exaggerate the transient on kick-in and snare-top along side faster attacks and slower releases on kick-out and snare-bottom to exaggerate the sustained sound....and then blend them to taste.

If you don't have both sounds for each drum but you can hear both transients and both bodies in the sounds you do have, a good alternative is to hard clip just the transient and then use something like SPL Transient Designer (there are at least a handful of competitors these days) to balance the click and body the same way....you just have less control.

Or use samples that have already done that. That's a totally valid approach too. If you love the sounds you're using, you don't need to process them just so you feel like you're doing something. If the individual sounds were recorded/produced well enough, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the whole mix could be mostly just level and panning and maybe wet effects.

IMHO, the recording engineer's dream should be that the mixer feels like they didn't have to do anything. Then, the mixing engineer's dream should be that the mastering engineer feels like they didn't have to do anything. Then the mastering engineer's dream should be that the eventual listener wanted to turn their stereo up but do nothing else to it.

Sadly....that whole chain of doing nothing doesn't seem to happen all that much in practice.

Been playing around with the stock reaper comp and have been having much better results.

The Rea-Plugins are very good in general. They're just ugly as sin. You can at least learn what you need with them and just supplement them when you find a problem you can't solve or just want to try something because it seems cool.

ReaTune is my new discovery - it's just about as good as the paid plugins I've tried if the singer just needs a little help, and it's effectively free and more flexible than the cheap ones. I'm kinda floored by it.

Good thing for the op is there are no less than a million resources to learn how to mix well.

Oh yeah. There's also bad resources and a bajillion ways to do every single thing. IMO, use what makes some kind of intuitive sense at least until you get your bearings and then re-evaluate as you learn more.

Dont feel bad. My first mixes took months and sounded like dogshit.

I think almost everyone's first mixes sounded like dogshit, probably even the people who learned from a legitimately talented mentor.

The crazy part of that for me is that I got an internship in a high-end studio fairly early on in even being curious about mixing. I had "made some songs" before, but I didn't even really know what mixing was, and they were all terrible. But, I was allowed to use the studio's gear when I was off the clock and the room wasn't otherwise in use. So....some of my dog shit "first mixes" literally came out of an SSL 4000G that was used to mix songs that I'm 100% certain that every single one of you have heard.

Random side note - no, there's no freaking way I'd ever buy a console of my own after having worked on one. People today who complain about a DAW taking a minute or two to open a big session have absolutely no idea what a console recall is like or how easy it is to make a million dollars worth of gear sound like garbage. I'm very happy to have had the experiences that most people never will....but, it's not for me long term.

Look at the bright side: you learned how to make things sound bad and got some experience with your tools and DAW. Can only get better from here.

+1. Failure only happens when you don't learn nothin'.

 

[PLX]

It's a bit bright...i want to turn it up to feel the low end, but I can't because the high end would get piercing. I do like it a lot, but I think the brightness makes the drums (especially low drums) sit a bit far back. Kick and bass are getting lost. It's in the realm of artistic choice, just not quite the one I would have made. FWIW, there are a lot of metal songs/sounds that I just don't like because of that same complaint - could be a style thing. I think you can take a little high-end off the guitars to make it feel a bit more put together without pushing them too far back. The rest of the drums sit well, but there's very little low-end on the snare.

I'd have to actually open it in a mastering session to find out if my "complaints" are something I could address with 2-bus EQ (and I didn't bother recording it). If your monitoring/room are particularly bassy, my suspicion is that I could. (I'm also convinced that a significant portion of mastering is accounting for the mixer's room).

I know this was a short preview, but I think I'd like to hear more variation in level between sections than the preview shows. It really is the case that when everything is crazy loud, nothing is. Oddly enough, that's also easily addressed in mastering. IMO, very little needs to actually be that loud, but -7ish isn't all that crazy as long as you're doing it for artistic reasons. If that's the squashed/loud sound you want, you did it pretty darn well. If you made it that loud just to make it loud, I'd at least want to hear it without that stuff....but I'd have to hear both to decide what I liked better.



It depends. Seriously, watch those HCMS videos on drums for more detail, but it's more complex than "slow attack for drums" or even just "fast" vs "slow" - those words are really vague and only mean things with experience. Fast on an opto compressor is not the same thing as fast on an 1176, and neither is all that fast compared to a modern digital lookahead compressor.

A lot of the reason people use 2 kick mics (inside and outside) and 2 snare mics (top and bottom) is so you can use slower attacks and faster releases to exaggerate the transient on kick-in and snare-top along side faster attacks and slower releases on kick-out and snare-bottom to exaggerate the sustained sound....and then blend them to taste.

If you don't have both sounds for each drum but you can hear both transients and both bodies in the sounds you do have, a good alternative is to hard clip just the transient and then use something like SPL Transient Designer (there are at least a handful of competitors these days) to balance the click and body the same way....you just have less control.

Or use samples that have already done that. That's a totally valid approach too. If you love the sounds you're using, you don't need to process them just so you feel like you're doing something. If the individual sounds were recorded/produced well enough, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the whole mix could be mostly just level and panning and maybe wet effects.

IMHO, the recording engineer's dream should be that the mixer feels like they didn't have to do anything. Then, the mixing engineer's dream should be that the mastering engineer feels like they didn't have to do anything. Then the mastering engineer's dream should be that the eventual listener wanted to turn their stereo up but do nothing else to it.

Sadly....that whole chain of doing nothing doesn't seem to happen all that much in practice.



The Rea-Plugins are very good in general. They're just ugly as sin. You can at least learn what you need with them and just supplement them when you find a problem you can't solve or just want to try something because it seems cool.

ReaTune is my new discovery - it's just about as good as the paid plugins I've tried if the singer just needs a little help, and it's effectively free and more flexible than the cheap ones. I'm kinda floored by it.



Oh yeah. There's also bad resources and a bajillion ways to do every single thing. IMO, use what makes some kind of intuitive sense at least until you get your bearings and then re-evaluate as you learn more.



I think almost everyone's first mixes sounded like dogshit, probably even the people who learned from a legitimately talented mentor.

The crazy part of that for me is that I got an internship in a high-end studio fairly early on in even being curious about mixing. I had "made some songs" before, but I didn't even really know what mixing was, and they were all terrible. But, I was allowed to use the studio's gear when I was off the clock and the room wasn't otherwise in use. So....some of my dog shit "first mixes" literally came out of an SSL 4000G that was used to mix songs that I'm 100% certain that every single one of you have heard.

Random side note - no, there's no freaking way I'd ever buy a console of my own after having worked on one. People today who complain about a DAW taking a minute or two to open a big session have absolutely no idea what a console recall is like or how easy it is to make a million dollars worth of gear sound like garbage. I'm very happy to have had the experiences that most people never will....but, it's not for me long term.



+1. Failure only happens when you don't learn nothin'.

I'm guessing you're not a fan of teh AiC, then ?

 

[marsonic]

I'm guessing you're not a fan of teh AiC, then ?

Alice in Chains? Nah...they're fun. There are times I wish the lower drums hit harder, but...my "ideal" doesn't have to be everyone's. Maybe I just grew up listening to too much dance music.

 

[PLX]

Alice in Chains? Nah...they're fun. There are times I wish the lower drums hit harder, but...my "ideal" doesn't have to be everyone's. Maybe I just grew up listening to too much dance music.

Using Ozone 11 now, It seems to want to crank the volume of a rendered track (in ReaperDAW) and sent it out like that. I'm talking way over -14LUFS (like -12 to -7).

I've been manually pulling this back down to make it come in under -14LUFS.. Is this really necessary ? Should I just let Ozone decide ?

 

[T Gobbs]

@marsonic Did you have time to listen to the second clip I posted? Again, the first one was me saying, "I did all this to it and the one thing I wanted to work didn't work." I didn't post something with every track having a comp set to its highest level on it thinking it would sound like anything anyone would want to hear. I really appreciate you taking the time to write up all this advice, and I've learned a lot, but it would be more helpful for me to have feedback on my normal output, which I'm not saying is good either.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

-14 LUFS is recommended (not hard & fast rule) for certain streaming sites (Soundcloud for example) because they have their own compression (and it gets applied to every track). That's not to say you can't go -12 LUFS and get good results; depending on the program information.

 

[T Gobbs]

Thanks to Cirrus for actually giving me what I was looking for. Faster attack and less kick solved my problem. I'm sure the rest will help someone someday.

I also get to check "mortally offend audio engineer" off my bingo card.

Successful thread everyone, thanks.

 

[PLX]

Thanks to Cirrus for actually giving me what I was looking for. Faster attack and less kick solved my problem. I'm sure the rest will help someone someday.

I also get to check "mortally offend audio engineer" off my bingo card.

Successful thread everyone, thanks.

I'm here to help.

 

[Bruce]

Just a note in my experience, I dont worry so much about LUFS anymore. Things like YouTube or Apple Music are going to attenuate to their desired loudness measurement anyway. From what I’ve experienced, it is pretty transparent, too. Master the track so you get good loudness and clarity out of it and you’re done. You’ll go crazy trying to master for a growing landscape of platforms who all have their own target loudness.

 

[DrewJD82]

Just a note in my experience, I dont worry so much about LUFS anymore. Things like YouTube or Apple Music are going to attenuate to their desired loudness measurement anyway. From what I’ve experienced, it is pretty transparent, too. Master the track so you get good loudness and clarity out of it and you’re done. You’ll go crazy trying to master for a growing landscape of platforms who all have their own target loudness.

I decided a while ago I have no interest in trying to compete or even fit in with most modern mixes. If I lose a listen/listener because someone has to turn the volume knob up on whatever they’re listening on, so be it, but I refuse to spend the amount of time I do working on stuff, just to smash the shit out of it for the sake of volume.

And it’s not like I’m banging out beautiful mixes, I’m still a novice with it, but it’s not even something I’m interested in pursuing. I want as much dynamic range as I can possibly achieve in them. All my favorite albums have a ton of dynamics, even the heavy stuff.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

Once Upon A Time In Audio In The 90's and 2Ks, There Were The Loudness Wars

Loudness war - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org