I use the Maximizer tool when I export to 2 track. If your levels are very close it is a good tool that doesn’t need much…30-35 on the dial and you can get -14 LUFS integrated which is a good level.But I have a couple tunes that are at about -20-22
before the Maximizer and even at 40-42 % the integrated LUFS just won’t go louder than -17.5. I tried the classic and the modern setting and it won’t budge. The modern setting seems to change it after a few times, the first time its a little louder then it backs off… and won’t let it go louder…
What do you do to force it to go louder??? Is 40-45 just not a high enough setting?? I was trying to keep it to 35%…
What I would look at:
First, make sure your input gain is hot enough that the input track is just not clipping (0 dBFS) before going into the maximizer.
Second, if there’s just one loud part of the track, and the rest is soft, then you will want to do some loudness management, either by adding compression (perhaps with a long release) or by manually riding faders, before it goes into the maximizer.
Third, depending on your program material, there may be certain frequency bands that are, intentionally or not, keeping the signal “hot” while not contributing to the RMS very much. Transients from percussion can do this especially. You may want to EQ the peak frequencies of these to be less prominent, to be able to bring up the overall gain without clipping.
Fourth, depending on what you’re looking to get out of the material, a multiband compressor (like the one included with modern versions of Cubase) can help bring details up.
I’m sure there are other approaches, and all of this depends a lot on what kind of genre and material you’re using, so let us know what ends up working for you!
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thanks. good info…btw. I tried highlighting all 10 tracks and tried to raise the volume on all 1 db…but I couldn’t figure out how to move them up…???
After you highlight what do you do???I wanted the exact same raise on all tracks to start with…Artist 11
Send them all to a bus, and pull the bus up by 1 dB?
Or just push the master itself up by 1 dB, and make the mastering effects be post-fader. Which works great as long as you don’t want to also automate a fade-out 