Stem volume mastering help

Cubase
1

Hi All,

Am new to stem mastering but recently tried to master a song - but everything started sounding bad if I went higher than 14LUFS on the limiter and Maximizer.

I think the mistake I’m making is that when writing and mixing a song, I use volume automation on the track and sometimes bring the volume down on selected pieces on the timeline. This I assume results in a loss of resolution and when I look at the audio on the tracks they are very thin and graphically the vocals or loops are not very fat on the timeline.

So, if I export new stems with much high volumes - does one just turn down each stem’s individual fader on the mixer in the new mastering session - or will I be repeating the problem in a new way?

If I select all the tracks on the mix project and turn up the volume collectively so that each indivdual track is peaking at 0db and not hitting yellow - then export the stems to a new session - do I again select all tracks in the new project and collectively bring them down till the STEREO OUT is just below yellow? Is that the solution? Or is turning down the gain on each stem the answer? I would appreciate any advice. Thank you.

2

Stem mastering is useful if someone with better monitoring and experience is mastering for you as it means they can somewhat rebalance your bad mix.
Stem mastering your own mix seems a bit pointless unless it’s purely for cpu reasons and you can’t apply the processing you want to buses in the mix.

As to it sounding bad…this is unlikely to be anything to do with levels. The only possible issue with low level would be noise…but if you’re using 24bit that’s still very unlikely to be a problem.
What does bad mean exactly? Can you put a limiter on the mix master out and get it higher than 14LUFS or does that sound bad too? (in which case the mix is the problem)