If your songs are still too low, raise the Thresh. Typically if you have more reduction than that it will give you a pumping sound, but again, none of this is set in stone. You want to bring your Input signal up loud enough so you see no more than a consistent -5dB reduction or less. Input does just that, it raises the input signal, but Thresh compresses the sound before your reach the -1dB mark. If you use the -1dB preset on the Studio One limiter there are two controls that will increase the volume. Especially if you make an MP3 out of a track that has been mastered to 0dB. It's a fail-safe for several reasons, one being that all digital to analog converters are not the same during playback and if you limit your levels to 0dB you do risk going over 0dB and that will cause an audible pop/click. If you use the Studio One Limiter, there are presets in it that set it up for you automatically to -1dB, and lower. A well respected guy, but his word is not Gospel. Limitings purpose is to get your final volume level to a certain perceived loudness, which is not set in stone by anyone including the developer of the K System, without going over the digital medium limit of 0dB. You can do it without squashing the living daylights out of a quick rundown, and anyone please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. I think the derogatory comment was a bit harsh though.īut, I highly doubt that the OP want's to remix his entire album at the burning stage and there's nothing wrong with using a Limiter to bring your volume up to near 0dB as long as it's not overly compressed. That's all very good information Jeff and I agree. Your ears are already shot from mixing, making good mastering choices is very difficult under these conditions. Mixing is not the time to make mastering decisions. Treat mastering as a separate event either by yourself or a mastering engineer. (Great!) So it is not hard to change a K-20 or K-14 track up to -10 rms levels or even slightly higher. But we don't want to go too high now due to Loudness Wars concepts are pushing mastered levels back down a little. Small amounts of gain from each stage will result in quite a dramatic lift in mastered rms levels. You can add another 1 or 2 dB at the mastering compressor.Ĥ Final limiting in mastering should only be adding 3 to 4 dB or rms level overall. And that will only get it back to where it was. In mastering you raise your rms level in these various areas:ġ Putting your mix into an editor, limiting the peaks of all transients to say -3 dB and add 2 dB of rms level to the whole trackĢ The EQ can often add some extra gain without issues.ģ The mastering compressor while it may only be dropping the GR by 2 or 3 dB you can add this back in the form of makeup gain. But this compressor is not raising rms levels, it is just acting as some slight conditioning on your premastered mix that is all. For some genres it works well later in mastering too. The only thing that you can mix into sometimes is some light compression on the masterbuss. With good gain staging and use of the K system it is possible to print a mix at either K -14 or K-20 without any clip lights coming on anywhere. A mix is usually being printed at a much lower rms levels than in the final mastering phases so it is basically not necessary. There should be no reason to use a limiter when printing a mix. You should also leave a week between these two stages as well so you can master with fresh ears. I have always thought that mixing and mastering are two very different processes and limiting usually forms part of the mastering process. It is not in any one stage but a combination of all of them.
There are various places that you need to add rms volume to your mix. The trend is already moving away from that these days too. Comparing to a commercial mix can be dangerous too because you may be comparing to a really slammed horribly too loud commercial mix. Getting the average level (rms) up high to commercial standards is not easy and not in one step either.