This is true, and if you start overusing some of the advanced character type plugins that include crosstalk and noise settings (like those from UAD, Waves, or Harrison Mixbus—the Waves Non-Linear Summer comes to mind), or use the two or three or ten together with even moderate harmonics/distortion dialed in and then a maximizer at the end of the chain, well…
Okay your initial post suggested you are mastering for streaming not a CD.
Those are two different objectives.
Again, I’m assuming you completed all analysis and error checks, such as what is in Wavelab, have read and followed the mastering for i-tunes guidelines? You left enough room when converting .wav to MP3?
Without knowing the numbers as guidelines, what your feeding the Ozone, and a copy of the rejection it’s difficult to guess the issue. But your premise that a limiter, even when utilizing it to add color and in your case “punch,” is opposite of the resulting characteristics of limiters in general.
I don’t understand this. The “loudness war” had to do with mixing mastering to the point of having an extremely limited dynamic range. “LUFS” actually does not refer to dynamic range, but perceived loudness relative to full scale digital.
So you can take a mix that is as “loud” as you want it, and if it measures -4 LUFS (for example) you can simply pull down the absolute level in a DAW by 8dB, and you end up with -12 LUFS. If you then turn up your volume knob on your stereo you end up right where you started. Same loudness, same limited dynamic range.
If you think about the moving image instead you can have a commercial meant for the internet and smartphones, squashed to hell and back, and lower its level so that it plays back at the same loudness level as a feature length film mixed in a Dolby certified mix stage. The latter, if it’s a romantic comedy perhaps, could end up somewhere around -30 LUFS (or LKFS, for those in the US), and just lowering your commercial can hit the exact same number. But they sound nothing alike. One has a huge dynamic range, the other a very small one.
So, I don’t understand this concept of mixing to this loudness value when dynamic range really is the issue.
Am I missing something here?
Hitting a limiter hard reduces dynamic range and therefore increases perceived loudness. A less dynamic track will read higher on average loudness scales.
Thanks for that, you beat me to it as i was about to post pretty much the same thing as that’s the way i understand it too… From my own ‘experiments’ i seem to find if i use the ‘DR10’ principle http://dynamicrangeday.co.uk/challenge/ or thereabouts, then dynamics/loudness wise things generally seem to translate pretty well on most platforms. There seems to be a real ‘sweet spot’ around there too so choruses seem to lift properly and dropping back into a verse things seem to open up really nicely instead of just a constant ‘BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE’ you get with certain types of rock and EDM in particular.
Maybe i’m just getting/become old, but there are just some things i cannot listen to any more, even on an objective level as i find them fatiguing incredibly quickly.
Back in the day i was a huge Jamiroquai fan, their first album (1993 iirc)has great dynamic range, the opening track peaks around -1.3dbfs and in the choruses RMS hovers around -15 to -12bdfs… wind forward to 2001s 'a funk odyssey and the CD is dreadful! there are some great tracks on it but i just couldn’t get into it when it was released, it was only years later after looking at it on meters that i realised why, the CD is pushed into inter sample clipping and even in the verses RMS level hovers around -5dbfs… it’s just a never ending aural assault!!! fine for BGM but try and actually LISTEN to it!!!
While i was typing this i listened to the first track all the way through, i had to bail just into the 2nd verse on the 2nd one and i barely have the monitors audible as it’s still early here…
(the second part isn’t necessarily true)
I think you’re missing my point actually. I know what a limiter does, my day(night) job consists of using that and compression etc and measuring that using AES BS.1770-1/2/3 all the time.
I think if you read my post again you’ll see what I mean. I have to sleep now so I won’t go deeper into it now.
I never had the opportunity to master a pipe organ, but assuming the content is mostly chords or pads, or think of the Phil Spector “wall of sound” yes, you could beat out the loud -6dbRMS pop tracks since there is hardly any dynamics. Therefore a track like this will read higher on average. But as you may know, the problem is reality. dbRMS is just numbers, and while they can give a good guideline, the numbers can also sometimes be deceptive. Think of a pop song where the verses are very quiet, but all choruses are huge…like a wall of sound. dbRMS isn’t going to be of much use since it averages the verses and choruses together.
No highs without lows. It’s all about contrast. You can’t make mountains higher than 0dBFS , just valleys less low: mushy peas
Ok, please bear with me for a second…
Well the issue I tried to point out is indeed one of nomenclature and standards. So, first of all I was talking about LUFS, not RMS, and they aren’t the same thing. Secondly, what I pointed to in PeppaPig’s post was really that sometimes the statement will be true and sometimes it won’t, and in the context of what I was saying before we might as well consider it to not be true.
Really the bigger point I was making was that LUFS is indeed a measurement of “loudness” but it is a ‘relative’ measurement as far as the scale goes. So, I just put on some French hip-hop and I play that on my computer using the browser to access Groove Music. The signal goes out of my motherboard’s sound card via SPDIF at full level (no attenuation) and into my Lynx TWO-B. From there it goes into Nuendo, and I have an iZotope Insight meter inserted on that input - before any gain adjustments are made. This is how it reads:
Integrated: -10.6 LUFS
Loudness Range: 4.3 LU
Integrated loudness, -10.6 LUFS tells us how loud we would perceive that relative to 0LUFS. Since 0dBFS is the absolute maximum ‘value’ we can achieve in digital that sets a reference of sorts, or a maximum. But it doesn’t tell us anything about how loud it feels in real life as we listen to it. In order for that to be ‘a thing’ we need another reference.
“LUFS”, or “LKFS” in the US, was adopted as a standard in broadcast to deal with different carriers boosting commercials relative to others to mimic what radio was doing. Since we moved to digital transmission we were now all of a sudden able to enforce a standard that actually had some meaning. Everyone was limited to 0dBFS, and once we started to measure content using the BS.1770-1/2/3 standard we could actually tell how loud content was relative to other content. So, flipping between channels on the TV should yield less of a difference between commercial levels (because all aim to be as loud as possible, and now we have a ceiling). That was the whole point.
So back to music.
This just doesn’t apply to how the loudness war destroyed music. Why? Because what ‘destroyed’ music wasn’t ‘just loudness’, it was the way we achieved an increase in perceived loudness, by limiting dynamic range. If I sit in a living room listening to music, I can change the perceived loudness in my room by turning up/down the level of my ‘stereo’. That changes how loud I perceive it to be. It is independent of how I feel about the mix/master in terms of quality.
So back to the OP.
If he is missing “the punch and vibe” in his music then there are two possible reasons and two possible solutions:
1: he’s playing back the music at a lower level… solution; turn up the volume on the stereo. Problem solved.
2: he’s now mixing/mastering with more dynamic range… solution; keep compressing like you used to, but lower the absolute level if you want to stick to -12LUFS.
My point: That the dynamic processing he does to his music he can still do and still hit a lower LUFS, BUT that the problem with the loudness war was that dynamic processing killed the “life” of music in order to make it loud. So, he could still create the exact same problem while hitting -12LUFS, exactly because that measurement only means something in digital distribution of content. I might listen to his non-dynamic -12LUFS mix and hate it, not because it’s louder than the other content I listen to, but because he compressed and limited it far too much in order to get the “the punch and vibe” he likes, while still hitting -12LUFS just fine… Or, I might love his mix that reads 5LU higher or lower than -12LUFS because it is more dynamic or better mixed.
So, using LUFS/LKFS seems to me NOT to be a way to deal with the actual problem of the loudness war as it relates to how music is ‘damaged’. I included above the reading of that hip-hop’s actual loudness dynamic range, and it was 4.3 LU. That to me seems like a more important value to look at if we’re trying to solve the problem with overly compressed/limited music. So to use my example to make that point clearer: I can “remaster” that song on-the-fly to meet a -12LUFS requirement by just lowering the gain before the meter by exactly 1.4 LU. It would then read -12LUFS but it would be the exact same mix/master, with exactly the same loudness range, and if my problem was that it didn’t feel as loud I could turn up my level knob to make up for it…
See what I’m saying?..
Again, perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t think I am…
I do get what you’re saying Mattias, I remastered a track last night with more dynamic range but level matched them before listening, initially I liked the more squashed track but fatigue did kick in and the more dynamic version ended up the keeper. The more heavily limited track averaged 5dbs louder on my metering despite the track’s gain being pulled down 7dbs.
Lots of interesting stuff on here I’ll try all the tips and see where I get. Thanks for all your valuable input, I’ve certainly learned a thing or two.
I think your point on listening fatigue is really a good one. One of my major problems with modern mixes and masters is that I get so tired so quickly. I might like the way it sounds, but after a short amount of time I’m sort of done listening, period. It’s really a shame.
The music when I grew up was dynamic enough that listening to music for several hours straight was totally fine.
Here is another experiment: try to build a mix, without compression, or additive EQ, on ANY of the channels.
Just use volume, LCR pan and a HPF to get to mix, leave the mixbus empty and let the mix just peak on the hottest parts below 0dB. No limiting, no compression, no additive EQ, just channel gain. Build for impact, contrast and seperation.
Now, once this mix is done, listen to it elsewhere for a week, doesn’t matter where, headphones, car, laptop, ipad, phone, home stereo, doesn’t matter. Get used to the track and the dynamic relationships.
After a week, slap on your “chain” crank the limiters input gain and just hear all those relationships change. Together with mild distortion, phasey smearing and all the other stuff that until now you considered nice sounding.
Less is often more, better transient response, less artifacts, better seperation.
Thanks for the input, I hardly ever use eq to boost, but I could try mixing without a bus compressor.
It’s just for shits and giggles, to get away from the paved paths and your habits and to also get a feel of dynamic relationships. We get used to “workflows” way to fast because we did read something somewhere and we think we must work that way. Back to basics is always good for perspective, volume and pan and no clipping.
To often we use tools, because we feel we must use them, while there is nothing to fix.
My thoughts are actually the opposite, that loss of punch and vibe correlates with less dynamic range, not more.
Any thoughts welcomed!
PS nice technical discussion of LUFS here: The End Of The Loudness War?
When I read the original post in conjunction with the thread title it seems as if the OP tried to counter the loudness war, which is about overly compressed/limited music, by doing less of it, not more.
OK thx, I’m just not sure how you correlate more dynamic range with lack of “punch and vibe” (which is how I understood the part of your post I bolded above, sorry if I misinterpreted it)?
I guess you should re-read my posts then. Seems you’re missing my point.
No prob if you don’t want to take the time to explain, and thanks, but it’s not worth rereading what you wrote. Just pointing out that in my experience songs are more “punchy” when they have more dynamic range, not less. With less dynamic range, nothing stands out, nothing punches through, it’s all the same. To my ears.
Seems to be the opposite of how I read what you wrote (your #2, which I’ve bolded above a couple of posts above). Maybe a difference in terms (“punchy, vibey”), or just a difference of opinion. It’s all good!
Thanks -
Well then I guess you’re stuck not knowing what I was talking about.