Certain frequencies and perceived loudness....

[bryan_kilco]

Did a mix about 2 days ago, just demo stuff for my band. A lot of my older mixes seemed to have too much sizzle in the guitars and I've gradually been lowpassing the guitars a bit lower. (Used to LP at like 12k, now sometimes going down as low as 9-10k.)

Burned a disc of this new demo song and a few older demo ideas I had, took it in the car for a few spins on the way to practice, and realized that my older mixes with (what seems like) less bass/harsher highs, are WAYYY louder......even though my meter is reading about -13 to -12 RMS on the new and old mixes.

In short: Is more mids/high mids/highs making the mix seem louder (older mixes), or is this a problem with too much low end eating up headroom (in my newer mixes)?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443251/Jeremy Song FULL MIX 1.mp3

 

[Benalthel]

From what I've understood the human ear percieves mids-high mids best as that's the frequencies that our voices are at. So yeah that would make it seem to be louder.

 

[RedDog]

Read up on the Fletcher-Munson curve. Puts physics in there.

 

[Maybelater]

Read up on the Fletcher-Munson curve. Puts physics in there.

+1

 

[mmmatthew]

Boosts in the 1-3K area in mastering and certain elements when mixing aid some, but be careful. Easy way to destroy your hard worked on mix, at least until you find a balance with your style. Controlling the low end all the way up until about 400Hz is crucial, and in most ways more important for an overall good mix anyway. Decide what in this range is useless information and discard it with notch filters and multi band compression. An idea of Overall understanding of dynamics, as well as how they relate to the human ears understanding of the playback systems of 2012, are what you really want to develop...even the best out there are still learning in one way or another in this department, whether they are mastering for loudness or anything else. Has the potential to get subjective to the point of madness.

A good rule of thumb though it to never get too nuts with anything on your master bus, if you want a recording that has any sort of natural sound. Some well crafted, fairly subtle mastering EQ, probably after pulling pull out about 4db down with an SSL G Buss type compressor... set with fairly slow attack fairly quick release... your desired progression of limiting and go from there!