Master Bus Rape - Help

Demonstealer

Demonstealer

Member
Jun 30, 2003
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demonicresurrection.8m.com
First off I love this forum. I get to learn new things all the time and ask questions that I've either been to afraid to ask or didn't know who to ask.

Anyway getting to the point.

I've thus far been mixing using a finalizer sort of plugin on my master bus which served as my final mastered file at the end (criminal but I'm in India and most projects don't have budgets to master and we don't have a specialized mastering studio). So I've been using a PSP Vintage Warmer which was doing great for me.

But now I'm doing a big project and I need to up my game and have the best sounding freaking album I can come out with. So I took a new route. Slap just a temp limiter which I remove and then mix down and master separately with maybe more than that PSP Vintage Warmer. So an engineer friend of mine suggested that I use the L2 (since I didn't have anything better to use) with a setting like -2 threshold and an out ceiling of say -3. Also maybe boost an eq before that at 80hzs about 2-3db and at 5000hz about 3-4db and then mix into this.

And for the life of me I couldnt get my snare to sound good

This is what it was sounding like
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1953726/Tragedy Clip With L2.mp3

And when I removed that l2, I got this
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1953726/Tragedy Clip No Limiter.mp3


So I have 2 questions.
1. Help! (not so much a question as it is an exclamation)
2. Would appreciate it if someone can break it down to me, whats a good way to go about this now. Or do I just go back to old safe method? Though I'd rather understand what I'm doing wrong and fix it.



Anyway I was mixing
 
Demonstealer said:
So an engineer friend of mine suggested that I use the L2 (since I didn't have anything better to use) with a setting like -2 threshold and an out ceiling of say -3. Also maybe boost an eq before that at 80hzs about 2-3db and at 5000hz about 3-4db and then mix into this.
Click to expand...

Hey, sorry this doesn't answer either of your questions, but you can get away with a louder output ceiling than -3. You'd be pretty safe at - 0.5 or - 0.7 :) Just thought I would mention. - paul
 
Hi, if you don't know well the compression principles don't use it on your master fader. Its safer. I learned this myself. Plus, the PSP Vintage Warmer does more than just warming. Presets are just informative. If I can say anything more constructive it will be to use just a simple warmer or tape saturator but not too much, and some mild EQ. And if you have one, Oxford Inflator, but not too much that one either. And always keep your mix master level at at least - 6dB
 
everyone beat me to it but I do Have to add something. IMO I can't stand L2. Anything harder than slight (almost inaudible) limiting starts to cause pumping. I would have to recommend L3 for the master bus as its auto release is a lot more transparent and you can literally squash the track to oblivion and not have any pumping. I wouldn't touch the ceiling settings, just bring down the threshold and until it sounds good, and if it got a bit too loud (it may or may not) then bring the ceiling down until the volume matches. Keep bringing down the threshold and then turning off the L3 to compare, that way you will know when you have ouched it too far and what setting prove the best result.

However like everyone else has said, a clipper before the limiter would help out with preventing the snare from getting murdered and maybe even a mild compression before the clipper to keep the load down on the clipper. I like GClip more than most clippers as it seems to be the most transparent than ones that you would pay an arm and a leg for, my only grip is that it still clips solo'd saturated guitars even though they aren't actually going over the headroom. Also the softness setting should be increased, anywhere from 20-60% as to much or too little will have some nasty effects. The compression should be a light 5:1, 0.5ms attack, 300ms release with a threshold at -10db, then use GClip to trim off the rest of the snare transient, then limit. C1, GClip, L3 in that order. Should get you an extremely transparent overall (and increase to the average RMS) without killing you dynamics (such as your snare). If you want to go further if the mix needs, use Voxengo Max Punch which I seem to find more effective than MaxxBass at either tramming or controlling your subs (this is really helpful if you have a sub and your doing a side by side comparison with a commercial mix.

Also little tricks like using a a frequency analyzer and a finalizing eq to get your mix will help, I find that in my mixes they tend to be very woolly so removing of the 300 area and a slight boost in the 1.5k area help a lot.
 
ruckus328 said:
Are you using a clipper on your snare channel? Sounds like the L2 is just squashing your snare and taking all of the life out of it. Clipper might be the answer. Use GClip, it's free and seems like everyone here uses it.

Lots of good tips on this thread:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/278894-getting-your-loudness.html

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Have read that thread like 10 times already and I have GClip but its just not working for me, I tried various settings but nothing to my liking at all.
 
Raptor7 said:
Hi, if you don't know well the compression principles don't use it on your master fader. Its safer. I learned this myself. Plus, the PSP Vintage Warmer does more than just warming. Presets are just informative. If I can say anything more constructive it will be to use just a simple warmer or tape saturator but not too much, and some mild EQ. And if you have one, Oxford Inflator, but not too much that one either. And always keep your mix master level at at least - 6dB
Click to expand...


I know the PSP does more but since I was mixing into that and I could always hear what my final output was going to be I was pretty sorted with that.

Now on the other hand I'm just using this as a guide to ensure that when I master I'm not needed to constantly revisit the mix. My current master fader is at -10
 
TheWinterSnow said:
everyone beat me to it but I do Have to add something. IMO I can't stand L2. Anything harder than slight (almost inaudible) limiting starts to cause pumping. I would have to recommend L3 for the master bus as its auto release is a lot more transparent and you can literally squash the track to oblivion and not have any pumping. I wouldn't touch the ceiling settings, just bring down the threshold and until it sounds good, and if it got a bit too loud (it may or may not) then bring the ceiling down until the volume matches. Keep bringing down the threshold and then turning off the L3 to compare, that way you will know when you have ouched it too far and what setting prove the best result.

However like everyone else has said, a clipper before the limiter would help out with preventing the snare from getting murdered and maybe even a mild compression before the clipper to keep the load down on the clipper. I like GClip more than most clippers as it seems to be the most transparent than ones that you would pay an arm and a leg for, my only grip is that it still clips solo'd saturated guitars even though they aren't actually going over the headroom. Also the softness setting should be increased, anywhere from 20-60% as to much or too little will have some nasty effects. The compression should be a light 5:1, 0.5ms attack, 300ms release with a threshold at -10db, then use GClip to trim off the rest of the snare transient, then limit. C1, GClip, L3 in that order. Should get you an extremely transparent overall (and increase to the average RMS) without killing you dynamics (such as your snare). If you want to go further if the mix needs, use Voxengo Max Punch which I seem to find more effective than MaxxBass at either tramming or controlling your subs (this is really helpful if you have a sub and your doing a side by side comparison with a commercial mix.

Also little tricks like using a a frequency analyzer and a finalizing eq to get your mix will help, I find that in my mixes they tend to be very woolly so removing of the 300 area and a slight boost in the 1.5k area help a lot.
Click to expand...

The problem here is that I've already semi-mixed 2 songs with the same master bus settings but they haven't reacted this violently, so I'm a bit stuck with that. I have the L3 Ultra Maximizer and Multi Maximizer. I tried using the C1 and GClip but its not quite working the way I want it to. I'm going to keep all the other stuff in mind though :)

I think I'll move on to other songs and just get the basic stuff going and then maybe revisit this issue.
 
^^^^ means while it improves this snare but it has this very annoying ring/tone/noise that is sounding bad/not good to my ears. I'll definitely keep you guys posted on the band. Right now step one is to just sort out this problem-o first.

@Ahjteam - Yeah I'll give that a shot and see how it goes.
 
^^^ exactly my point. Okay so here is the real question.

the l2 is mainly serving as a reference tone. I will master the file separately which means I will remove the L2 before I render the file to a mixdown which I will then master on.

So that is where my main dilemma lies. So any advice on what I could use when I am finally mastering??

Any ideas on anything I should be doing? cause I'm suddenly even losing the balance of the music vocals keys etc.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

sorry little excess drama is happening :D
 
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