Music loudness

[SampleScience]

I've been listening to music this afternoon, moslty stuff from the iTune store, and decided to listen to a couple of my own tracks. I immediately heard the difference in loudness between my own tracks and the music from iTune (Lone, MG, Plastikman, Pete Namlock, etc.).

I've made a great deal of effort and work to make my tracks sounds loud and clear. I also read a lot on mixing and mastering, watched tons of youtube videos on the subject. I wonder if it's something about the gear I use and its limitation or if I just need more practice (or both).

Any ideas?

What are you techniques to get a loud and clear track? What plugins do you use for the task?

[thecontrolcentre]

I use a comp/limiter and an EQ to polish my final mixes ... mainly PSP Xenon and Neon HR recently, but sometimes I'll just use Sound Forge's built-in plugs.

[Nightpolymath]

iTunes loudness should be pretty standard at around -16 LUFS. There are tools such as LM Correct (Nugen) or Waves WLM Plus that can calculate/log loudness and provide a target loudness for the final mix. I use the latter, which also comes with a True Peak Limiter.

[Googly Smythe]

I feel like I'm teaching my gran to suck eggs, but here goes...
(By the way, I've listened to some tracks on your SC page - they seem loud enough to me.)

I've experimented with trying to get as loud as possible using some of my own tracks, just for the hell of it.
I measure loudness using Cubases's loudness meter, set to show LUs, rather than LUFs.

I've got a track by David Guetta/Sia. It reaches 17 on that scale and the goniometer on my DigiCheck meter shows a perfect diamond. The track is distorted(!). But this is my benchmark.

The trick is to compress incrementally. And don't have too many elements playing at the same time.
Deep breath...
I put a track compressor (mpressor, bx opto, mjuc) on every track, with no more than 4dB gain reduction.
I route the various types of instruments to groups - drums, cymbals, pads, leads, etc.
I put a bus compressor on every group (API 2500, Vertigo vsc-2), again, no more than 4dB gr.
I route these to more groups - all the percussion, all the basses, all the instruments, all the vox.
One these groups I put another bus compressor (PuigChild), but with up 7-8 dB gr.
I use SIR StandardClip afterwards, pushing a bit more.
These get routed to a single group. I put a limiter there, (bx Limiter) set as hot as possible without any gain reduction.
This goes to the stereo out.
Here I have an Alpha compressor set to 2dB gr. Then muiceq for final eq-ing, the bx xl 2. This is where the final crushing is achieved.
Lastly, Cubase's brickwall limiter. I don't think much of this as a limiter, but it catches most, if not all intersample peaks. If there is any gr here, I reduce bx xl's output a touch.

All this will get me to 17 LUs. It won't sound good, but it will stand up against the likes of Guetta.

Low- and High passing depends on the music. Something with a lot of pads will need some high passing, etc.

In practice, I lower the gr on the groups to about 1/2 - 1 dB - I'm happy if I can get 14 LUs. Loud, but not distrorted.

[MogwaiBoy]

They (progressive house/EDM/Beatport chart type of music) absolutely smash their music to oblivion. I believe what you are looking for is (besides compressing and balancing everything in mixing is master limiting with clipping and saturation and just push it as far as you are willing to go. ISPs seem to be largely ignored and subsonics are judiciously cut in favour of letting the lead synths overwhlem the upper mids.

Doesn't iTunes automatically normalize/pull down the volume of super loud stuff? -16 LUFS is pretty quiet I guess. I'm aiming for around -10 to -12 LUFS integrated.

[SampleScience]

iTunes loudness should be pretty standard at around -16 LUFS. There are tools such as LM Correct (Nugen) or Waves WLM Plus that can calculate/log loudness and provide a target loudness for the final mix. I use the latter, which also comes with a True Peak Limiter.

That's really interesting tools, I didn't knew about them, I just wish they weren't so expensive. They really break the bank!

[Nightpolymath]

iTunes loudness should be pretty standard at around -16 LUFS. There are tools such as LM Correct (Nugen) or Waves WLM Plus that can calculate/log loudness and provide a target loudness for the final mix. I use the latter, which also comes with a True Peak Limiter.

That's really interesting tools, I didn't knew about them, I just wish they weren't so expensive. They really break the bank!

Tonebooster's EBULoudness is 19.95 while Melda's MLoudnessAnalyzer is free. The loudness trim will have to be done manually after an initial loudness scan but that is trivial!

[Hermetech Mastering]

I think people ought to spend more time making their mixes sound amazing, and less time worrying about how loud they are.

[legendCNCD]

I think people ought to spend more time making their mixes sound amazing, and less time worrying about how loud they are.

WORD! +1 and so on.

[mementus]

Why don't you just take care of the RMS value?

[Compyfox]

I think my KVR Marks (see signature) might be a good read on the topic.
Especially "Manual Loudness Normalization".

I think people ought to spend more time making their mixes sound amazing, and less time worrying about how loud they are.

Can't agree any more than this

[TIMT]

It's very simple.if you make quiet music and try to make it loud,it will always sound garbage.you can't take small sounds that have no naturally occurring loudness (e.g de-correlated harmonics akin to noise but still somewhat tonal) down to how they are arranged (envelope/time management),synthesized (layering) orchestrated(voicing) and make them loud.you can take a quiet or relatively "normal"sound and squash it to bring up its RMS,but that isn't loudness that's just an averaged signal (we are dealing with perception here not analytical data) and the only people you are fooling are EDM kiddies and their tinny Ipod headphones

If you basically just arrange and sound design with loudness in mind,it wont sound garbage.if you are doing too much mixing or finding you are compressing too much,then your sounds aren't right for whatever range of loudness you are going for

But alas,there is also the brute force method of removing bass from everything (including the kick)and using that available space to push more gain out of dynamics processing and harmonic enhancement and aggressively ducking peaks out the way (which is basically just obfuscating fundamental issues with your arrangement).i think this method sounds shitty though and you have to compromise a certain punch in the bottom end (75-200hz) and settle for that fundamental dominant sound of "Bigroom" EDM and Trap

So,to make loud music that doesn't sound weird or compromised,think loud from the get go


If it wasn't for the analogue mastering of a lot of those bigger name EDM producers (Guetta etc)those mixdowns would sound god awful

[MogwaiBoy]

It's sort of a context thing. If you are producing EDM and you want to create buzz on the Beatport charts, your song needs to "stand out" and compete, RMS-wise.

If you want your music to (as cliched as it sounds) stand the test of time, then dynamic music will have much more longevity. A whole album of music with 2-3db dynamic range is fatiguing, probably even subconciously for EDM fans - yet music that has some room to breathe will more likely be enjoyed for generations... that's my personal opinion though.

We go to all this trouble to present our music at higher bitates which gives us so much more dynamic range... and then we squeeze the song to just a few decibels difference between the "quiet" intro and the "loud" climax...

When a track "drops" it should raise the bar and give impact - and you need range to do that.

It's a shame that EDM is still deep in the Loudness War, which is now over.

That said... try Waves Pusher cause it's actually awesome

Also... aren't you a big Boards of Canada/chill-out electronica kind of guy? I love your Nostromos plugin, man!

Reference your tracks against classic BOC and say to yourself, it's loud enough for them so it's loud enough for you. I also recommend checking out "The Mastering Show" on youtube - Ian created "Dynamic Range Day" and has a deep philosophical and scientific basis for why dynamics are super important.

It is a fact that most delivery systems (iTunes, youtube, spotify etc) where people are experiencing music - are now normalising volumes... in many, many cases less loud and more dynamic music will actually sound louder through these processes.

[legendCNCD]

I thought EDM was over now as a crap trance alike derived from Real Techno

[SampleScience]

Also... aren't you a big Boards of Canada/chill-out electronica kind of guy? I love your Nostromos plugin, man!

Reference your tracks against classic BOC and say to yourself, it's loud enough for them so it's loud enough for you. I also recommend checking out "The Mastering Show" on youtube - Ian created "Dynamic Range Day" and has a deep philosophical and scientific basis for why dynamics are super important.

It is a fact that most delivery systems (iTunes, youtube, spotify etc) where people are experiencing music - are now normalising volumes... in many, many cases less loud and more dynamic music will actually sound louder through these processes.

Thank you for your comment about Nostromos! I try to do various genres and I want to go into louder styles of music (house, dubstep, heavy rock). I need to do that for a music licensing project. One of my dream is to make music for movies.