Trouble getting a decent volume for my new song

A

Acesulfame

Member
Mar 29, 2009
77
2
8
England
www.youtube.com
(I use Logic 5.5 on an XP machine)

I've just finished recording my latest instrumental and it's come to the mixing stage. I've polished it up as best I can and I'm pretty happy with the overall sound. Except I forgot how difficult I find mastering. I'm really struggling to get the song up to a normal volume (in comparison to modern metal productions).

I've stuck an Ad-limiter on it but can't seem to tweak the volume up without it fuzzing. This song is really important to me and has taken me about 6 months to write! If there's anyone who can give me any tips or even have a go at mastering it themselves I would be eternally grateful!

http://rapidshare.com/files/215029252/Alesis_mix_down_2.wav.html
 
First off, I am not a mastering engineer. When I finish a mix, I don't do any mastering myself as I don't have a clue about mastering and it generally should be done by a pro but who can afford that right? Throwing a limiter on the master bus is not considered mastering.
I realize that everyone wants to be loud because there is a loudness war going on at the moment which pretty much ruins the music but anyway...
if you want it loud, just put a limiter on the master bus, set the output or out ceiling to -0.1 db and bring the threshold down as far as you can without wrecking the material. That is all I do once a mix is finished.
 
What Oliver said, but there's more you can do to it aswell. I usually use gClip, a bit of compression, multiband comp between around 350-900hz and maybe a bit of eq.

Giving this a go dude.
 
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/631208/Alesis Mixdown.mp3

There you go dude. If that's good enough I'll export a wav and upload it for you.
If you want it louder I can give it a go, but I can't guarantee that it'll sound nice or anything. -10db or so right now according to Nuendos statistics program. Voxengo Elephant was saying -9.5db aswell.
 
:worship:
Acesulfame said:
(I use Logic 5.5 on an XP machine)

I've just finished recording my latest instrumental and it's come to the mixing stage. I've polished it up as best I can and I'm pretty happy with the overall sound. Except I forgot how difficult I find mastering. I'm really struggling to get the song up to a normal volume (in comparison to modern metal productions).

I've stuck an Ad-limiter on it but can't seem to tweak the volume up without it fuzzing. This song is really important to me and has taken me about 6 months to write! If there's anyone who can give me any tips or even have a go at mastering it themselves I would be eternally grateful!

http://rapidshare.com/files/215029252/Alesis_mix_down_2.wav.html
Click to expand...


this song is fucking awesome

fucking awesome

:OMG:
 
Wow, cheers for all the kind words and your input on this!

For drums I've basically just been building up my own drumkit sound for years using single samples from wherever I can get them! Many from this forum actually. I've mixed a nice Tama Starclassic kick with the Sneap one and it sounds really nice. For the snare I mixed an Andy Sneap one with a free Steven Slate sample. Toms are mixed Chimaira ones. Cymbals are from just all over the place and all stuck into the EXS24 on Logic.

I'm pretty against this whole "volume war" too. Just look what it did to the new Metallica album. What a waste, and they don't even seem to know. I wish someone would just slap Hetfield in the face and wake him the fuck up. If they recorded with Sneap I'd cream myself.

I'm at work at the moment so haven't been able to hear your take on the mixing because the site's are blocked but I will as soon as I get home. Thanks again for taking an interest guys, much appreciated!
 
I'm guessing you aren't going to go with vocals on this one since the whole song is pretty much one long guitar solo? :D

But apart from that, sweet writing and awesome playing dude! I think it's very good that you've built your own kit, makes you 100% more unique than most of the home studio stuff on the net :)

Do you have more songs? If it's all guitar oriented music, you should release your solo disc soon man :)
 
Uploading a second attempt + the original for anyone who wants it.

EDIT:
Subtle adjustments. Eased off gclip a tiny bit and eased elephant off a teensy tiny tiny bit aswell. Someone with decent monitors want to check for clipping for me? Impossible to tell on these speakers.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/631208/Alesis Master2.mp3

Mixdown coming in a bit.
 
TheXRatedDodo said:
Uploading a second attempt + the original for anyone who wants it.

EDIT:
Subtle adjustments. Eased off gclip a tiny bit and eased elephant off a teensy tiny tiny bit aswell. Someone with decent monitors want to check for clipping for me? Impossible to tell on these speakers.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/631208/Alesis Master2.mp3

Mixdown coming in a bit.
Click to expand...

No clipping as far as I can tell, and my monitoring setup is no slouch ;) And as has been said, awesome song man!
 
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