Mixing / mastering

comma · 2024-09-18T15:12:46.196Z

a basic mastering/mixing question:

i have a piece with low bass events, which sound great with monitors + subwoofer and are totally non-existent with crappy laptop speakers or headphones… what is the strategy to make that sound audible regardless of playback device?

i tried bouncing it off of reel tape (so compression i guess?) which somewhat worked but the result was too noisy. should i continue down that path, try to reduce noise? EQ doesn’t seem possible since there isn’t enough of the event in mids & highs to emphasize.

(open to strategies via audacity as well)

othergiorgio · 2024-09-18T16:38:29.963Z

20 chars of distortion

Gregg · 2024-09-18T16:41:40.381Z

Subtle use of saturation at the right frequency with the right harmonics can increase the perception of the upper bass/lower mid overtones which can then be more audible on crappy/band limited systems. As you probably know, when we hear overtones the brain kinda “fills in” the fundamental, even if it’s not actually there, or we can’t hear it, or the playback system can’t reproduce it.

Maybe look for a quality saturator that also allows you to pre and post EQ the signal like a “saturation sandwich”, or build a chain to do the same thing. I use Kelvin and Silver Bullet plugins for this (and occasionally the saturation in Slick EQ M), but there are loads of quality options out there.

dailyrituals · 2024-09-18T17:23:58.810Z

same concept (adding harmonics) but plugins like waves renaissance bass also can help with this without the saturation effect.

i do not think there is an approach where you get the full bass effect on a phone without blowing out a more “balanced” listening experience though.

comma · 2024-09-18T22:08:33.071Z

for these particular (noisy) sounds, the distortion options in audacity fit the need perfectly, thanks! the other suggestions are very helpful for less noisy situations in the future

soysos · 2024-09-20T12:05:04.635Z

This is not in reply to anyone’s questions or comments, just wanted to share a little trick I use for cleaning up low end in bass/dance oriented music…
Place a low pass filter on your mix bus, end of chain, no resonance. I’ll usually use Abelton’s EQ8 on the steep setting.
Set it for around 60- 80hz and listen to what’s happening between your low end elements.
This in my thoughts is what you’re asking the subs to reproduce. If you’re hearing messiness, what can you do to clear it up? Are there additional instruments that could be high passed? Are there overlapping bass elements in conflict? Can conflicts be cleared up with arrangement or EQ?
Can automation or subtle side-chaining be effective?
Try it!

lilskullymane · 2024-09-20T13:52:36.860Z

sounds exactly like what i use the metric ab plugin for! it allows you to instantly do this for any frequency group, and you can load 16 reference tracks at a time to a/b at whatever settings you have. great with ableton macros, where you can assign a key to switch between your track and the reference, another key to randomize the ref track, and group presets to switch between the frequency groups. just sublime for mastering

ill put an eq8 immediately before and after the plug-in too to visually analyze the spectrum for both

alechko · 2024-09-20T14:07:37.567Z

before buying the ADPTR Metric AB (which is amazing for many reasons) I was using ISOL8 exactly for this, it allows quick focus up to 5 configurable bands and quick sum/diff check, very useful free plugin.

Jendrik · 2024-10-14T05:33:24.611Z

Hey, what is a good level to start with when mastering? -18dbfs is way too low I can tell im in the box. Is something like -16 lufs ok if I do gain staging and bypass for a/b comparison.

graymazes · 2024-10-14T07:00:00.113Z

i’m sure you’re aware that those are radically different units, not just in scale but in meaning… anyways,

do you mean, what’s a good final master level?
dbFS, you can go very “near the rails”, like -0.3dB peak. (use a “true peak” measurement when available.) (as below, some might want to actually clip, i wouldn’t. and the small headroom is for overshoot when/if resampled later.)

LUFS, opinions might differ; i would not use it as a “target,” preferring direct impressions of loudness. platforms will normalize down to various values (-14 is common; -16 also happens, i think usually it is -I but maybe max -S sometimes…) so it is worth checking for that reason.

or you mean, what level to start with in your mastering chain? -12dBFS RMS at the input is a common sweet spot for plugins. (but, you know, “it depends”)

Gregg · 2024-10-14T10:32:19.090Z

Do you mean the mix level before mastering, or the final mastered level?

For pre-master mix levels, it doesn’t matter as long as you are somewhere sensible between the noise floor and clipping. With 24 bit audio and common sense, it’s really not a concern. I get stuff with levels all over the place and am able master it all.

For post master levels, that’s usually dictated by the client and genre, so if you are mastering your own stuff, you can decide wherever you feel it sounds best. I mainly work on various kinds of electronic music, and the final LUFS-I levels usually end up somewhere between -15 and -9, depending, but it’s not a very useful figure, IMO (see below).

For peak levels I use a so called oversampled/True Peak/Inter Sample Peak aware limiter and meter, and try to get things as close to zero as possible without clipping, so they are all “legal” samples. Some people like to leave a dB of “headroom” for later lossy streaming, to avoid potential overs, but most of my clients would not be happy if I did that! Some people are happy with ISP clipping in the master (you still see many pop tracks with hundreds of thousands of clips…) but I prefer not to.

BTW with LUFS you need to specify whether you are talking about M, S or I, otherwise it’s unclear. Momentary is not very useful IMO, as it measures loudness over a very short period of time. Short-term is very useful in mastering, IMO, and measures loudness over a slightly longer period. Watching a LUFS-S meter bounce around with the music does seem to correspond better to human hearing than peak, RMS, or VU metering.

With LUFS M and S meters you can either watch them in real time (bar or figures), or look at the “Max” value after playing/analysing a whole track. The Max LUFS-S figure is often a good measure of how dynamic or dense something is.

LUFS-I gradually accumulates an average, and is only relevant after being applied to the whole track. While it’s the most popular LUFS figure bandied about online, I don’t actually find it very useful for mastering, as it doesn’t always equate well to perceived loudness, again IMHO.

Dekae · 2024-10-14T18:33:12.849Z

In your mastering, what kind of metering do you find the most useful? Obviously your ears are the final say, but what kinds of metering do you find most useful to help you keep perspective?

I usually have a multi band correlation meter, spectrum analyzer, and lufs meter.

Starthief · 2024-10-14T19:58:48.570Z

Dekae:

I usually have a multi band correlation meter, spectrum analyzer, and lufs meter

Same. Voxengo Correlometer and Span Plus, and Youlean Loudness Meter. But at this point the first two are just confirmation for other plugins that are already doing a lot of helpful visualization.

The final visualization though is opening it up in Sound Forge Pro to look at the entire waveform at a glance… it easily reveals if you’ve Metallica’d your peaks, and sometimes hints that you can squash a bit more. Since I tend to go easy with compression/limiting (except for specific effect purposes on individual voices), I often wind up running through Voxengo OVC128 or Sound Forge Graphic Dynamics as a last step to squeeze a little bit more.

Gregg · 2024-10-15T07:39:36.453Z

The only thing I occasionally glance at while actually mastering is a LUFS loudness meter, I use the Youlean one, pro version, but I could get by without it. I’ll use the offline stats in RX Advanced or Foobar2000 if I want to know something like the Max LUFS-S figure quickly.

I also have the RME Digicheck suite and the TDR Prism frequency analyser which I sometimes use when listening to music for pleasure, but they are just eye candy really. There’s an argument that if you have a calibrated full range monitoring system no meters are necessary at all, but I do sometimes like looking at all the pretty lights.

My general philosophy with meters is that you should use them only when you hear something is off, not stare at them all the time, letting them tell you what to do. They should never be prescriptive when mastering, IMO. It might be different for recording or mixing if you have compromised monitoring/room/cans etc.

nilhartman · 2024-10-15T08:37:54.990Z

I find Reaper’s master meter set to LUFS S (the only useful LU IMO) + True Peak + SWS Extension’s Loudness feature to provide all the info I may need when mastering. I monitor TP but don’t ever use TP processings though, works best for me.
I’ll grab TDR Prism if I really need to quickly visually double-check something unusual I’m hearing.

alechko · 2024-10-15T10:19:47.993Z

Dekae:

but what kinds of metering do you find most useful to help you keep perspective?

in addition to what everyone mentioned about a lufs meter and tdr prism I love the visual representation of the waveform on the Pro L2, I often have lots of peaks in my recordings and it helps me visualize where and if I want to clip them before they hit the limit, it’s a bit over surgical but it’s just faster for me, without it I can spend way too much time trying to listen to gentle clipping.
there are probably clipping plugins that have this built but I use the one in TDR Limiter6 and it has this vu-style gain reduction, seeing the waveform in L2 helps me understand the bigger picture of how the peaks look rather relying on numbers/ears.

Dekae · 2024-10-15T12:34:24.843Z

Awesome replies folks, thanks for taking the time to give some clarity!

mateo · 2024-10-15T14:22:53.735Z

For metering, I really like Sonible’s metering tools; they give you a good view of your audio’s spectral and dynamic balance, and let you compare them to references.

nilhartman · 2024-10-15T14:46:14.221Z

Yeah truebalance can be quite useful once you feed it your own references, otherwise their built-in profile are often meaningless.

Jendrik · 2024-11-21T00:22:54.400Z

Today I learnt that a clipper makes square waves out of sine waves and new limiters have input detection and build in smooth clipping. Limiters preserve the tonal elements. Clipping can be used in mixing on percussion for example. Limiter on Bass, Kick and Synths.

+1 for youlean loudness meter might get the pro version.