Mastering your mixes- what do you use?

[if6was9]

What do you guys use when your mix is gonna be the finished product, where you've to master it aswell. Its sticking out as a major weakpoint for me- my mixes are sounding okay and getting better( I think!!) but I've been asked alot to make stuff louder. my mixes are very quiet and I'm finding even after I've compressed it is still falling well shy of the mark and when i push the compressor harder it turns to crap and still isn't that loud!
I'm decent enough with eqing the mix and having it translate to other speakers its just that everything i've done is wayyy quieter than even other bands demo's.

What do you guys use? I've heard alot of people talk about using brickwall limiters to get their volume up but I'm fairly sure I don't have any in my plug-in arsenal- everything I have is pretty much freeware stuff.

Am I right in thinking that a brickwall limiter is just a compressor set-up in a certain way?
What kind of settings do you guys use too?

 

[wishtheend]

I say, go for what sounds better. If the mix sounds overall better at a lower volume, keep it there. I've actually found myself getting away from trying to squeeze every db I can out of a mix. Something about it just sounds much more natural and open.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Usually a combo of 4 plugs in this order:

PSP masterQ (settings are not very extreme at all, plug is nice though for just a touch of presence sometimes)
Ozone 3 (not much whatever I decide to use, could be a touch of verb could be the exciter, multiband comp)
PSP Vintage warmer (limiter)
Wavearts finalplug 5 (not usually used to limit, just dither)

 

[if6was9]

I'd like to leave them as they are where they sound good, but some of the people I've recorded have been asking me to make it louder. One of the bands I recorded had a big manager check out their demo they did with me and he said it was good but it needed to be louder- I'd even already worked on that one to make it louder and even though the band asked me to make it louder again I didn't- to be honest I couldn't without completely ruining it.

 

[LSD-Studio]

I'd like to leave them as they are where they sound good, but some of the people I've recorded have been asking me to make it louder. One of the bands I recorded had a big manager check out their demo they did with me and he said it was good but it needed to be louder- I'd even already worked on that one to make it louder and even though the band asked me to make it louder again I didn't- to be honest I couldn't without completely ruining it.

send me the mix, would like to have a look at it.

 

[wishtheend]

This is pretty much what my chain looks like right now

SSL G-Comp: Hit around 3-5db reduction with attack @ 30ms - make up gain raised to loudest without clipping

Q10 EQ: HP @ 25hz, LP @ 20khz - subtle cuts for polish

GClip: I use two inline, about 5-10% cut on each w/ the gain on the 2nd one raised with added headroom from first. 2x oversampling enabled on both, Softness at 0%

L2: Set at -0.3 ceiling / -1.0 threshold, anything more kills the sound to my ears. Then dither set to 16-bit

This doesn't come close to commerical CDs, but it's plenty loud. If I want more volume, I use the volume knob on the cd player

I would look at your mix prior to mastering to see if there is anyone instrument that is causing a large amount of peaks. If so, you can tame just that track with a clipper so your master comp doesn't get hit so hard. I've done this with some kick and snare that was loud for volume, but the peaks were setting off the master comp too much. Clipped them a little and it sounded better.

 

[grywolf627]

Look for the "getting your loudness" thread on here. There's a wealth of information there. Especially Slate's advice on using two cascaded GClip's and a limiter. This thread helped me out immensely.

 

[matt youwin]

If you're looking for a quick simple fix try this free vst plug-in:
http://www.sonicspot.com/classic-master-limiter/classic-master-limiter.html

 

[MrLee]

hmm. I use to heavy compress the whole mix, make shure nothing comes out too hard. when the whole mix is really even i volum and compressed really hard I put on 2 limiters each with threshold from -0.5 - -2.0, depends.. then 2 Gclips, just 98% clip and rais the volume as much as it goes..

If the mix is right, then you easily can make your song as loud as feks. Dimmu borgirs - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia.. but read the "get your loudness" thread. its really good!

 

[broken81]

This is something i struggle with as well. Either there is something in protools holding me back or its honestly a bitch to get things loud. I can touch some commercial cd's but I have a few tracks from Joey Sturgis that i can not even get close to in volume. Its so depressing and my mixes always turn to shit in mastering because I'm pushing them so hard to try and make them loud. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #$@#!

 

[matt youwin]

I don't know where you're at personally skill-wise, but mastering is an art that takes years to develop, requires a lot of patience and really good ears. It also helps if you have really good gear/plug-ins. But stick with it, practice makes perfect and all that

 

[Zombietakeover]

This is something i struggle with as well. Either there is something in protools holding me back or its honestly a bitch to get things loud. I can touch some commercial cd's but I have a few tracks from Joey Sturgis that i can not even get close to in volume. Its so depressing and my mixes always turn to shit in mastering because I'm pushing them so hard to try and make them loud. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #$@#!

i know exactly what you mean dude.....its down right fucking depressing

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I usually settle for "loud enough" .

 

[gorath23]

I start off making sure that the mix peaks between -5/-4 db, render to Stereo Track and start up a new project for the Mastering sequence.

My chain is then this, and I can get close to around -10db:

1. AIX EQ (On Digital) just for a high and low pass plus occasionally dipping around 500hz by 1-1.5db
2. 2x Gclip in 2x oversample, making up about 1.5 db each at around 75-80% clip.
3. Buzzroom Grancomp Stereo (Usually start with the Master Loud preset and work from there)
3. JB Brickwall Limiter set at -0.1 to catch any overs.

All Freeware. Now I'm not claiming that this will result in a 'pro' sounding Mastering job, far from it, but it should get close to the loudness you want. The trick for loudness would be Multiband Comp though, but I'm still a long way from feeling confident about using it.

 

[nwright]

This is something i struggle with as well. Either there is something in protools holding me back or its honestly a bitch to get things loud. I can touch some commercial cd's but I have a few tracks from Joey Sturgis that i can not even get close to in volume. Its so depressing and my mixes always turn to shit in mastering because I'm pushing them so hard to try and make them loud. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #$@#!

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily hold Joey's levels to be a goal...I remember him saying on here he goes for like -7dB RMS levels or something. That's absurdly loud IMO, but at the time he was pretty much a POD and DFH dude, IIRC - which IMO makes it a bit easier to get your loudness (because everything is already somewhat compressed and "mix ready" so you can slam the hell out of it).

I usually try to hit -9 or -10dB RMS levels when I master. Seems like that's where a lot of the mixes I like tend to be. Anything more and it starts to become an ear fatiguing mess. A lot of the pro mixes I hear that are really loud always have a high mid, ear shattering mess going on (the latest AE comes to mind, I think the first signle was around -8dB RMS when I looked at it))...Almost like pushing around 1-1.5kHz up to 3kHz to the extreme rather than balancing everything well purely in an effort to make it louder.

My chain usually goes:
1. slight compression
2. Phase EQ
3. TC Finalizer (MB comp., softclip, etc.)
4. GClip (x2)
5. limiter

If I'm mastering a project that I think could use a mastering reverb, I'll put it somewhere in the chain as well.

 

[colonel kurtz]

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily hold Joey's levels to be a goal...I remember him saying on here he goes for like -7dB RMS levels or something. That's absurdly loud IMO, but at the time he was pretty much a POD and DFH dude, IIRC - which IMO makes it a bit easier to get your loudness (because everything is already somewhat compressed and "mix ready" so you can slam the hell out of it).

fwiw, he's still a POD/DKFH hell guy, and also does a lot of compressing/limiting to individual tracks, so that it isn't necessary to flatten the mix itself as much to get things crazy loud

 

[Jaymz]

1) SSL Gcomp
2) EQ
3) Boost 11 (limiter set to -0.1)

There will be a C4 in position 1 sometime soon but thats the basic setup im using until ive researched how to use a multiband well.