Mixing and loudness

JonasEdenbrandt · Post by **JonasEdenbrandt** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:27 am

Theres been alot of disscusion about this off and on but I never fully understood it and I tried reading old threads but I don't think this specific quesstion is anwered. So here's my question!

I've been focusing alot on mixing lately, doing remix comps and remixing my older tracks. One thing i realized is that I give the bass end way to much room in my mix, when i realized this I thought this might be why my tracks lack so much loudness cause the bass has been eating away at all the headroom.
Well now I mixed the kick and bass differently and I try to refference my track against professional tracks but my tracks still sound week I also checked tracks with a VU meter and I'm about at about -5dB when a professional track is at 0dB.
Any way I guess my qeustion is since people say I should refrain from slapping things on the masterchannel and the pro tracks have been mastered professionaly is it possible for me to reach there percived loudness just by doing a balanced mix? Where are you'r tracks on a VU compared to pro tracks?

Robot Criminal · Post by **Robot Criminal** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 9:48 am

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 10:01 am

JonasEdenbrandt wrote:Theres been alot of disscusion about this off and on but I never fully understood it and I tried reading old threads but I don't think this specific quesstion is anwered. So here's my question!

I've been focusing alot on mixing lately, doing remix comps and remixing my older tracks. One thing i realized is that I give the bass end way to much room in my mix, when i realized this I thought this might be why my tracks lack so much loudness cause the bass has been eating away at all the headroom.
Well now I mixed the kick and bass differently and I try to refference my track against professional tracks but my tracks still sound week I also checked tracks with a VU meter and I'm about at about -5dB when a professional track is at 0dB.
Any way I guess my qeustion is since people say I should refrain from slapping things on the masterchannel and the pro tracks have been mastered professionaly is it possible for me to reach there percived loudness just by doing a balanced mix? Where are you'r tracks on a VU compared to pro tracks?

Dude honestly......
fck how loud other people are!!!
99% of minimal and techno mixdowns have no dynamics and sound like a pile of crap compared to somebody that can really mix. Don't judge your mixes by what other people in dance music are doing cause almost none of them are what can be considered a "Pro" when it comes to a mix. You want to judge your mix by some of the great ones in history.

Robot Criminal · Post by **Robot Criminal** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 10:04 am

and yea, totally depends what you concider "professional"

JonasEdenbrandt · Post by **JonasEdenbrandt** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:13 pm

thx both of you. Hmm yeah Torque might be a good idea. I'm gonna have a look at some other kinds of music and use them as references instead and see how that turns out. Thanks for the searching Robot found a thread or two in you'r list that i didn't pay attention to in my own searching! thanks alot.

Tom Moulton here I come...

JonasEdenbrandt · Post by **JonasEdenbrandt** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:48 pm

Ok just read threw alot of the discussions on this subject closely, and I'm starting to understand what I'm lacking in my mixes better than before. The people on this forum never stop amazing me, thanks alot.

Just listend to the Larry Levan mix of Is It All Over My Face and the dynamics are insane. So I guess we should change the topic of this thread to "how the fck do you get those dynamics?"

Brankis · Post by **Brankis** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:50 pm

JonasEdenbrandt wrote:Theres been alot of disscusion about this off and on but I never fully understood it and I tried reading old threads but I don't think this specific quesstion is anwered. So here's my question!

I've been focusing alot on mixing lately, doing remix comps and remixing my older tracks. One thing i realized is that I give the bass end way to much room in my mix, when i realized this I thought this might be why my tracks lack so much loudness cause the bass has been eating away at all the headroom.
Well now I mixed the kick and bass differently and I try to refference my track against professional tracks but my tracks still sound week I also checked tracks with a VU meter and I'm about at about -5dB when a professional track is at 0dB.
Any way I guess my qeustion is since people say I should refrain from slapping things on the masterchannel and the pro tracks have been mastered professionaly is it possible for me to reach there percived loudness just by doing a balanced mix? Where are you'r tracks on a VU compared to pro tracks?

of course its possible to get that loudness. the reason people talk against limiting and master channel processing is because many are abusing/overdoing it and killing the track without realizing it. if you set the limiter properly by using the difference in values from your RMS value to the reference track, you can match the levels exactly... you need to pay attention to the difference between the peak and rms values and get yours to match up closely. around -10 to -11 RMS is pretty standard

When you say you are using a reference to mix your bass, does this mean you are just listening or are you using any other tool like a spectrum analyzer? You should be able to see the exact amplitudes of the pro tracks bass and get yours more in line with that. whats also important is looking at the spread of frequencies over your reference track, meaning you should look at what amplitude each instrument range is falling in relationship to each other and mix your track accordingly. I used to have the exact same issue as my mixes were way too bass heavy and my kicks were always sticking out in the mix.

as far as dynamics, its a trade off... you want the meter to be jumping from from around -10 to 0db, although I have seen plently of beatport tracks that barely jump from -4db to 0db so its always a trade off between dynamics and loudness.

group bus compression when used gently can also help the perceived loudness before the master channel stage. like many have said, certain compressors will give you a louder sound without killing dynamics. i personally use focusrite liquid mix and some t-racks plugs and they seem to do a great job and remain very musical

mixing well also helps, most sounds have a large frequency spread that interferes with other instruments. the more garbage you can cut away the more headroom you will have at the end stage. especially low subs under 30hz should be filtered out as well as super hi-end above 18hz or so.

Mixing and loudness

Mixing and loudness

Re: Mixing and loudness

Re: Mixing and loudness