Please help me out, I'm going nuts here...

[abyssofdreams]

Aye, seems like I'm doing something that is trivial wrong:

I'm completely satisfied by how each instrument sounds by itself when in mixing stadium, however I have the master vol of my sequenzer set to MAX so it's awfully clipping and peaking here and there but the overall sound is the way I want it, so what I basically just do is turn the master fader down so that it's not in the red anymore and mix it down afterwards. However, once I try to master the bitch it sounds completely different, kind of washed out.

Don't get me wrong here... I'm not talking about the issue that I'm a noob at mastering but the fact that just turning up the volume on the mixdown-track sounds different than what I have before mixdown at MAX volume.

Hope it doesn't sound too confusing :zombie:

So, I know that the perception of "loudness" depends on many factors but my question is, what is the best (or most common) way to mixdown a track and having the exact sound like mixed in max volume? Is it better to just turn down the master fader (like I just did) or turn down the fader of every single track in respect to the overall clipping/peaking dilemma?

Or in other words, do you boost the volume of your monitors and take that volume as a reference?

 

[smy1]

I always keep a limiter set to 0db of limiting in my 2bus chain in the insert slot before the master fader. I then put the master fader to -0,2db and mix everything so that I only have the limiter catch a few very strong peaks here and there.

Be aware of the fact that mixing at loud volumes changes your perception of how it will sound and how it will translate at other volumes. Mixing at low to very low volume usually gives you better relative levels of the instruments - and when you turn it up, it will still sound good.

 

[AudioPhile777]

+1 ^ what he said.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

+1 as well.

I turn off the limiter however to make sure I am not already boosting the volume into oblivion on the master buss.

 

[broken81]

Is it normal to have your master buss clipping if you take Limiter off it?

 

[smy1]

No. Because you can see from the limiters peak meter where you are volume-wise.

 

[dontletmedrown]

Sounds like there could be a couple problems, however, you didn't give any indication of what kind of setup you are using. I also don't know your level of experience, so please don't be insulted by my comments. Even though you might not be a noob at mastering, it sounds like your mixing might be the problem. You could be hitting the mix-buss way too hard, you could have a bad monitoring setup, or it might be that you are just monitoring too loud. Read up on the "Fletcher-Munson" curve and maybe give a little more info about your setup. Perhaps you can upload a clip so we can hear what you're talking about?

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Is it normal to have your master buss clipping if you take Limiter off it?

For me no, I try to avoid that, if it goes over like .2 or something I don't care but any more than that I bump the mix down.

Whether this is right or not however I dunno.