Mastering: Max Volume Ceiling

[WernerF]

Isn't the idea that we, as music producers, make records, or whatever, that to our ears sound as good as we can get them to sound and then we send them off to mastering. If it takes squashing the mix buss a little to match the energy of a rock band's live impact and get it to translate on a record then so be it. That is what is happening to your ears at a live show. The sound is being compressed by the fact that it is being contained by the walls of that room. Yes, too much is too much but none is quite boring. It doesn't do the music justice. The rest is up to the mastering engineer and, at least in my world, if I don't like what he or she has done I won't approve it until it is correct. The A and R guys are less and less involved in the actual music making process these days. They're too busy scanning YouTube and looking for other people like us to do thier work for them. I submit that we have more opportunity to determine the final outcome than we might think here. And once again, to quote a fellow DUCer, "if it sounds good it is good". Let the technical minutia serve your ears, not the other way around.

[Bob Olhsson]

The problem is dogma or trying to pose as somebody else. Listening with your eyes and mental concepts rather than with your ears and body.

[WernerF]

Exactly. Let the ears rule. Not the eyes that look at waveforms and read technical pronouncements about what is the only right way to do things.

[holden]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

The problem is dogma or trying to pose as somebody else. Listening with your eyes and mental concepts rather than with your ears and body.

I believe this is partially true. Like you said earlier much of the trend is driven by fear, combined with lack of confidence and desperation for success.

But there is also the mystery of why a piece of music affects one so. If I hear a loud piece that is very moving, even as a creator I may not understand why I am so moved. If I wish to make something equally moving I may choose to make it loud just in case loudness was a contributing factor to the original piece's success. Bring in a record company exec clueless about music creation and they may insist on loudness for the same reasons.

[WernerF]

I've never had one ask for loudness. Most of them are clueless. You are giving them too much credit in technical department. They are depending on the producers and the mastering engineers to the work involving judgement calls that their predecessors may have made in the past.

[PTUser NYC]

Originally Posted by WernerF

I've never had one ask for loudness. Most of them are clueless. You are giving them too much credit in technical department. They are depending on the producers and the mastering engineers to the work involving judgement calls that their predecessors may have made in the past.

Werner i think the suggestion is, not that they ASK for loud, but that in competitive meetings, they CHOOSE loud, without knowing why.

[WernerF]

Yah, it's probably true that they might choose loud if they were comparing two masterings of the same song but it would be a rare occurance for them to even get involved in that process. I would submit that even in your business, making music for advertising, that the specifics of the musical composition and style choices far outweigh the fact that one track may be louder than another. It's the same thing as the record business. They're looking for a piece of music that works with the picture that the composer came up with and that they wre too clueless to imagine on thier own. Not to mention the fact that pretty much everything is delivered, as you have even said about your own stuff, pretty loud anyway. My point is that the musical content still trumps the loudness unless, of course, they are comparing mastering aspects of the same song or piece of music and that we're giving loudness too much credit here.

[Alécio Costa]

Recently I have received some curious requests formastering pop /rock commercial releases... "you may make a softer version"... ( in numbers meant from -10 to 12.5 RMS).

[rdolmat]

What's the difference between -0.1 or -0.2 etc? Does it really matter?

I assume in a year, we'll be right at 0. Clipping or no clipping!

[booter]

We have a training series and are about to put out a section on this. We had extensive discussions with the guys from Sonnox who just released the Sonnox Fraunhofer plug in.

It is a good idea to keep your final mix 'not too squashed or compressed' to go to mastering, and then the final mix at -.5db . Esp because if you make it an AAC or MP3 file from there these codecs don't like getting mixes that are that 'hot'.

We will be publishing about this soon. BTW the new plug in is EXCELLENT for encoding to AAC or MP3.

We're at www.secretsofthepros.com ... cheap, excellent training!!! =)