Strange happening with mastering...

[Unavailable]

I was finishing up a track this morning, and I decided to mess around with some mastering plugs.

I ended up using Tls Saturated Driver, Sonar's compressor, and Event Horizon in clip mode.

Strangely enough, with only some minor boosts, I had this track sounding equally as loud as professional tracks... and it was barely peaking?

What's going on, did I just hit the jackpot with my mix or something?

Mine:

As I Lay Dying - Within Destruction (My reference):

 

[devouredremains]

You just made a good mix. I find with mixes that are nice and loud without too much clipping/limiting everything has it's own space and is filling the audible spectrum evenly.

 

[Sloan]

party time!

 

[006]

party time!

Man I told you it's just a good mix

~006

 

[Torniojaws]

Are you comparing them on the same audio program? Or more importantly, same application volume?

 

[~BURNY~]

Ask fletcher and munson.

 

[Unavailable]

Are you comparing them on the same audio program? Or more importantly, same application volume?

Ah, you got me there. Apparently WMP 11 plays songs quieter... who knew? vv

 

[-Noodles-]

the key thing to note is that it's SOUNDING louder.. as it's mentioned before, it must just be a good mix.

A crappy mix won't have a good sound regardless of how limited and compressed it is..

also, whats your RMS level on the output?

Most CDs these days are around -6dB.. but if you can get it to sound like that without being at -6 you're on a winner!

 

[Morgan C]

-6?! No way! Death Magnetic was 'only' -7dB.

 

[DeathByDrums]

u guys need to stop using ur eyes so much and start using your ears. That AILD album is super fucking loud.

 

[crosstalk]

u guys need to stop using ur eyes so much and start using your ears. That AILD album is super fucking loud.

I think it was only -10 RMS if we're talking Shadows are Security. EDIT: I see the example was a different CD. SaS sounded loud to me.

All Shall Perish's Price of Existence was -7 RMS. It doesn't sound distorted to me though and I like it.

Whether it's too loud or not, what I don't understand is how these pros are getting the distortion. I've run mixes so ridiculous loud (just messing around) that it sounds horrible... but there's none of that distortion going on.

Can't they just limit to -.01 or something instead of letting it go over 0? It drives me crazy and they're getting the big bucks.

As an artist I would be seriously pissed to hear all of my hard work fucked up.

 

[Omega_Void]

I believe you have to limit to -0.3 to be sure of avoiding intersample overs on all DACs.
IIRC James Murphy posted a couple years back that he'd been told that by a guy from a pressing plant or something.
SSL X-ism plug seems to agree.

 

[crosstalk]

I believe you have to limit to -0.3 to be sure of avoiding intersample overs on all DACs.
IIRC James Murphy posted a couple years back that he'd been told that by a guy from a pressing plant or something.
SSL X-ism plug seems to agree.

Thanks for the info, I'll def keep that in mind.

 

[-Noodles-]

Omega - I've been told recently that it's -0.2, but it's def. around that region!

 

[-Noodles-]

-6?! No way! Death Magnetic was 'only' -7dB.

It's around the -7dB RMS mark, as far as I can see.. no clipping, still punchy,.. just used my ears and did a lot of sound comparison tests.