DIY Rough Mastering -- Level Balancing

[Hopeless and Reckless]

I definitely don't want to stir-up a hornets nest here. I am doing some rough mixes for a small project but I want them to sound uniform in terms of levels. This will be thrown-out but I want to give this a try for my own edification.

I usually run a metering plug-in and check the average RMS to get the songs roughly the same volume. I know there is normalization and other tricks. Can someone recommend what they use to get balanced volume?

[ondruspat]

Take all your mixed tracks into a session, pick the most prominent common element in all the songs (usually I focus on the kick drum) and match the level of that from song to song by adjusting the gain of each track.

[albee1952]

Another viewpoint here; Metering is only part of the equation, so your ears must have the final say. I would use a good mastering limiter to set the final volumes of each song. Working in Pro Tools, as ondruspat suggested, import all the final 2mix files and audition for which you think is the "Benchmark" for volume. Insert a mastering limiter on each track(if you don't have one, Massey L2007 is good and cheap), and adjust so each song sounds in proper relation to the others(you may not want everything at exactly the same volume, on meters, OR to your ears). When you get them all feeling correct, transfer the settings of the mastering limiter to the same plugin from the AudioSuite menu and process the audio of each track accordingly. The remove the inserted plugin and compare one more time. If you're happy, then export the files to a new folder of mastered versions.

As an option, you may want to render each track thru a hi-pass filter first(set for around 25-28Hz) so ultra-low frequency garbage doesn't trigger the limiter.

[RegenerationMix]

Different songs will master louder than others depending on, well everything.

What i use to do was get a rough master on each track. Then whichever track was the lowest in level, i would master all the rest to it. That way each track was consistant on the CD for level.

I used to master compilations with different music genres showcasing local bands, so that worked well. Of course i usually didnt do the recording and the tracks were never recorded in the same place, or with the same recording skill.

Chris