Author Topic: Perceived Loudness  (Read 22623 times)

Ozone

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Perceived Loudness
« on: January 09, 2016, 08:21:51 pm »
Okay,

So I know I may get some backlash here by buying into the loudness war, but I believe a great amount of the general public prefers loud music as opposed to quiet music, so, I am asking about any tips here to raise the perceived loudness (not necessarily RMS) of my tracks. I am hoping to bring them closer to comparable to the loudest mixes out at the moment without losing all sense of quality and dynamics in my music (I work hard to achieve those). So, If anybody has any tips or has gone through this type of struggle please reply!

Thanks!

Uppertone

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2016, 08:26:37 pm »
Okay,

 I am hoping to bring them closer to comparable to the loudest mixes out at the moment without losing all sense of quality and dynamics in my music

lmao good luck.

All these elitist big room mainstream EDM garbage producers just max their threshold and pump up the gain and call it mastered.

Ozone

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2016, 08:28:45 pm »
Not so much sound like them, but just get in the same league, so listeners dont get turned off by the difference in volume between some blasted through the roof carnage track and my track

ocularedm

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2016, 08:32:54 pm »
Okay,

 I am hoping to bring them closer to comparable to the loudest mixes out at the moment without losing all sense of quality and dynamics in my music

lmao good luck.

All these elitist big room mainstream EDM garbage producers just max their threshold and pump up the gain and call it mastered.
I don't quite think that's the right approach ;D
Plus who is he hurting by wanting a loud master?

Babasmas

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2016, 08:34:36 pm »
Okay,

 I am hoping to bring them closer to comparable to the loudest mixes out at the moment without losing all sense of quality and dynamics in my music

lmao good luck.

All these elitist big room mainstream EDM garbage producers just max their threshold and pump up the gain and call it mastered.
Dubstep used to be like that... Don't you remember 2012.

Luke_BadCatholics

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2016, 08:41:26 pm »
There's no harm in wanting a loud track, as long as your not murdering your dynamics in the process - and he's definitely right, there's definitely a notion among listeners that "louder is better".

Aerithos

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2016, 09:03:59 pm »
Give Maximus a try. Between the per-band soft saturation and custom "compression" curves, you can get pretty close to a constantly maxed peak.

Uppertone

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2016, 09:08:56 pm »
There's no harm in wanting a loud track, as long as your not murdering your dynamics in the process - and he's definitely right, there's definitely a notion among listeners that "louder is better".

Might as well just slap 5 soundgoodizers on the master channel amirite?

Luke_BadCatholics

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2016, 09:10:59 pm »
There's no harm in wanting a loud track, as long as your not murdering your dynamics in the process - and he's definitely right, there's definitely a notion among listeners that "louder is better".

Might as well just slap 5 soundgoodizers on the master channel amirite?

The go-to.


EDIT: But in all seriousness, I find really exploring how you can make the most of stereo space in a track will help you get some extra volume, between widening sounds or just avoiding having frequencies occupy the same space, it generally will give your track a bigger and louder feel without really having to push the volume.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2016, 09:13:32 pm by Luke_BadCatholics »

Axis

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2016, 09:26:54 pm »
1. Make individual sounds/channels bigger using slight saturation (Sausage Fattener on minimum settings works well).  2. Clean up your mix to make sure it's not peaking like crazy due to overlapping frequencies, etc.  3. Stick an Invisible Limiter on the master and push the input gain as hard as you can until you start hearing distortion, then push back a little bit.  Voila!  But seriously, it's all about the mix... and the Invisible Limiter.  It's just THAT good.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2016, 09:28:36 pm by Axis »

Marrow Machines

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #10 on: January 10, 2016, 12:00:31 am »
Okay,

So I know I may get some backlash here by buying into the loudness war, but I believe a great amount of the general public prefers loud music as opposed to quiet music, so, I am asking about any tips here to raise the perceived loudness (not necessarily RMS) of my tracks. I am hoping to bring them closer to comparable to the loudest mixes out at the moment without losing all sense of quality and dynamics in my music (I work hard to achieve those). So, If anybody has any tips or has gone through this type of struggle please reply!

Thanks!

I beleive matt zo said something about having less in your mix increases the overall loudness of the track, because you have less competiting elements that are being balanced out.

and honestly, you're going to run into some issues if you're trying to maximize your loudness with out loosing dynamics. that's just the way optimization works.

if you really want a loud track, make one synthesizer and have that be the only thing you mix lol.


other wise: kick, snare, cymbals, sub bass, bass wubs, lead. that's it man. you can get your balance just right those are the only elements you'll need to push a loud af mix.

But that stuff tends to be incredibly harsh to listen to because of the volume. i turn my volume down because a lot of these "big league"  dudes just crush the shit out of their mix. Caspa does a really good job of this. He gets the loudness out, but doesn't over do it. it's honestly quite excellent hearing any thing he puts out now, because i don't have to turn it down in order to actually hear it.
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Kryojen

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #11 on: January 10, 2016, 12:33:14 am »
Okay,

So I know I may get some backlash here by buying into the loudness war, but I believe a great amount of the general public prefers loud music as opposed to quiet music, so, I am asking about any tips here to raise the perceived loudness (not necessarily RMS) of my tracks.

Thanks!

Basically the easiest way to make your stuff really damn loud is slam it into a few limiters. If I'm trying to make something insanely loud, I'll first make sure I exaggerate the crap out of my gain stage. Like, parts you want to be quite need to be REALLY quite in your premaster. Then, I'll toss an EQ on and highpass at ~30hz, lowpass at ~20khz to increase headroom. Slap an Ozone preset on, into waves l3 (-.3db output) into an l2 (also -.3db) and then into as many pro-l instances as I need to get the sound loud, but not distorted (all limiters at -.3db). Remember: final master should be at -.3db so when it gets converted into mp3 or whatever, you don't get any clipping.

Many people might hate the loudness war, but it's a fact that the average person equates loudness with quality to a certain extent, so making your mixes louder is beneficial. Just don't overdo it.
It's only over when you give up.


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iAmXan

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #12 on: January 10, 2016, 12:53:21 am »
Compression aside, you can attain louder and cleaner mixes by settling conflicts between sounds that occupy a similar frequency range.  When sounds within the same range conflict (especially in the low to mid range), muddiness arises and you lose headroom unnecessarily.  You can save yourself more headroom by creating EQ cuts at pivotal areas.

Be careful of cutting too much -- that can cause your sounds to become "hollow" and "thin".

deathy

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #13 on: January 10, 2016, 02:51:19 am »
I suggest looking at "gray noise" as a mixing tool... that is to the Equal Loudness Contour what pink noise is to the equal power line (1 over f).

It can be tricky to create your gray noise, especially since the contour shifts depending on the volume that the music is played at, but you can (for example) plan for club play at, say, 95 dB, and then you will have loudness but you will still be able to hear the parts.


If you get the right gray noise for your needs, you can actually just use the matching in FabFilter Pro-Q or Ozone to adjust your song's curve to that of the curve for your volume level.
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wolv

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Re: Perceived Loudness
« Reply #14 on: January 10, 2016, 05:37:47 am »
All I can say that it's a skill that takes time and lots of practice. A loud master starts with a clean mix.

Sometimes you can use a few limiters in parallel rather than one limiter all together. Try to do all your compression on busses rather than the master.


But seriously, practice x10000
Stop overdoing shit. Stop downloading new plugins for the sake of it. Your fancy stereo enhancer won't make you any better musically, your hard work will.