Super Cranking the Limiter/Compressor

[westremote]

I have a question about a controversial topic... THE LOUDNESS WAR!!!

 

Now, I know that everything you read these days is super anti-compression and tells you not to crank the limiter, but when I bounce my tracks and look at their waveforms next to other professionally produced music, my waveforms look puny, and the song sounds way quieter.

 

This leads me to believe that the engineers of today are preaching different than their practice.

 

What is a standard amount of dB boost to put on a limiter? Assume that the incoming waveform is normalized.

[fastfourier]

There's no real standard amount, you just have to use your ears.

 

If you want to kinda-match the loudness of some other audio, then load it onto another track and insert the MultiMeter plugin. Look at the light-blue level meters on the right (RMS level) and make a note of their average level on a part of the tune that has a similar "loudness" to what you'd like to achieve somewhere in your tune (by this I mean take two choruses, as you'll likely want the chorus a bit louder than the rest of the song).

 

Now mute that and insert the multimeter after all the processing on your output. Wind up the limiter input until you get the same kind of RMS level.

 

There's a plugin ("TT Dynamic Range Meter") which will show you the dynamic range of the signal. The download page is here but I don't know if the link works properly.....

Edited October 4, 2012 by fastfourier

[tristancalvaire]

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of sound here:

 

Big Amplitude / Decibel Level ≠ Loud.

 

Loudness is a perceived as a ratio of sounds, not a specific value. For example, let's say you leave a particularly loud rock concert in the city. The sound of a jackhammer probably won't sound all that loud to you.

 

Now let's say you were sitting in a park, where it was eerily quiet. Near dead silence. Suddenly, the same exact jackhammer is sounding the same exact distance away from you as it was after the concert- yet it sounds much, MUCH louder.

 

If you take your music, slap an adaptive limiter on it, then gain the hell out of it, the music will have a very loud volume– but a very soft perceived loudness. If you're playing the song at anything but the max volume of your speakers, it will sound very quiet, dull, lifeless and monotonous. Listeners will lose their attention to it and not particularly care for it.

 

The process of creating a loud song isn't simply turning the gain up and flattening it at 0dB so it won't clip. It's in part arrangement to imply loud and soft parts of a tune for extra emphasis on the loudness, in part mixing the sounds so that they fill up the frequency spaces they are desired to fill and have the right volumes when they need to, then finally boosting the right frequency ranges at the right times and tastefully using compressions and limits to get a more consistent volume level. If all this is not met, the final result may look loud in your Traktor waveform (or more likely like a giant block), but it will sound very weak and meager.

 

Even take an artist like Skrillex (who is honestly not the best example of someone to look up to for proper mastering)– the only reason he is able to slap an instance of iZotope's oZone and gain like hell on his tracks is that he started with a very rich, overly distorted timbre that fills all the frequency ranges. If you don't have that, it's going to be bland. Regardless, his mastering technique would actually result in the 'drop' part of it sounding very quiet if he didn't cheat, in a way- If you load up a track like Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites into Logic Pro, you'll notice that all parts other than the 'drop' are limited at -2 to -3 dbFS, with the drop being allowed to reach 0. This had to be done, as the overly compressed drop would've actually sounded quieter than the more melodic parts of the piece.

 

In conclusion- either pursue the long, arduous journey into learning how to mix and master, or leave it to professionals. If you're uploading a piece to youtube and don't particularly care about quality, then fine- gain your limiter like no tomorrow. But, be forewarned- it won't get your music much of anywhere.

[rhys]

I have a question about a controversial topic... THE LOUDNESS WAR!!!

 

R.E Dance music I think its just part of the sound, all this coverage of the "loudness war" should just be made clear that its more of an issue with other genre's and not so much with dance. Who wants a quiet dance track, I don't get it. I don't care about dynamics in a club, punchiness is important but lack of overall dynamics isn't going to make it less punchy if its done right.

 

Stuff like rock music and anything that utilises real instruments for the greater percentage of the track content is more dynamic by nature so its a shame to squash the life out of it as you will lose some of the character of the instruments that you spent so long getting right in the first place.

 

I can see both sides of the argument but when the 2 sides are thinking in the contexts of completely different genres I don't get where the argument is going really 8)

[tristancalvaire]

I've changed my mind. In the realm of EDM, might as well just have a kick drum at 0dB with an EQ gaining the low shelf of 80 hertz and below by +24dB run through a limiter with maximum possible gain cutoff at 0dB. Then throw other instruments underneath, they don't matter at all, could be i completely different keys with no rhythm, just sidechain them to the kick, and then run all of that through a 0dB limiter at +24dB gain.

 

Obviously this formula will make your EDM track successful. I mean, it's worked for yall, right? You're famous EDM artists paying no attention to dynamics, are you not? :3

[rhys]

Ha

[XMaramena]

Depends on the genre. I do a lot of EDM and synth-based commercial pop. I primarily use the L3 and I crank it way up high, but you've got to use your ears and know when enough is enough. Yes - pushing it further than just "clip control" can add some depth into track as the reverberation and transients smooth out and the quieter parts are brought up, but push it to the point that it starts becoming noticeable and "pumpy", and you've gone too far.

 

This goes without saying but you'd be amazed what some people come up with - never ever EVER limit classical/orchestral music. In fact, the only time you'd ever put a limiter on a classical master is if you couldn't normalize (lets say you were doing an analog bounce), and you just wanted to make sure it didn't clip at one or two spots with brass and percussion dotted around the track.

 

Since I got the L3, it changed everything. Ozone's IRC limiters can be good, but only if used wisely. I stick with the L3 and I've never felt better.

[rhys]

I now use the L3 too, I've found I can push the perceived loudness further when using multiple bands. The L1 is still great for trimming peaks pretty nicely. It responds to sub frequencies a lot better than logics limiter. I'm not sure what that is all about.