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good gain structure and that.

Too quiet = turn volume up
Too loud = turn volume down

I seem to remember reading somewhere that DJs can adjust the volumes of individual tracks via their mixer, but don't quote me on that.

i'm pretty sure OP knows that. There are still plenty of reasons to want your masters to be as loud as other tracks. I like Wub but i don't get why this is such a bullshit question and thread. What happened to helping each other with production?

how about technical tips instead of saying "if you knew anything about anything, you'd know this question is totally irrelevant, man"
or you could just not bump the thread and stay out of it altogether

Today wrote:how about technical tips instead of saying "if you knew anything about anything, you'd know this question is totally irrelevant, man"
or you could just not bump the thread and stay out of it altogether

Hold on a second - my comment was valid. There is a lot of emphasis on making tracks louder, too much so IMO at times...but the simplest answer is often the best. If you want a track to be louder, turn up the volume when it's playing.

It's not always valid though.
I've produced a track that is soft and the dynamics are skrewed.
I can't raise the volume up to an acceptable level due to the track distorting past a certain db.

This can't be solved by simply turning up the system volume.
I would have to correct the fundamental issues with my track first.

No, but it could be solved by turning other things down.

Wub, we both know that having a loud track and hearing a track at a high volume are not equal. That's all.

Perceived loudness though, that's the issue I have with the whole thing. I rant enough about this though, so should probably slap a cease & desist on myself.


I stop short of recommending a limiter cranked on the master though

until i actually got one of my tracks mastered, this was something that always worried me. now i couldn't care less how quiet my pre master is. in fact, it's probably better than having it too loud.

wub wrote:Too quiet = turn volume up
Too loud = turn volume down

I seem to remember reading somewhere that DJs can adjust the volumes of individual tracks via their mixer, but don't quote me on that.

I seem to remember something about that too.... /snark

shelve your bass and clip teh transients

You say brickwall, I say SICKWALL!


In all fairness I should probably do something productive and try and make a LOUDER.FLP 'mastering' template in FL...if only to shut myself up when I think how easy it must be.

i know it's easy to oversquash with a limiter. and i'm not the best at doing this, but I've been getting better. I don't recommend pulling the threshold down on your limiter at all, just using it as a ceiling and driving the tracks into that until you reach a balance between loudness and dynamics that's acceptable to you.

I understand not doing it too, but if y'all are mixing at low volumes and not driving your masters then how the hell is everyone's sig/sc tunes so damn loud? I've been just trying to find what works for me to match you guys' mixes in loudness... and driving my tracks hard into the 2bus by raising the volume faders has been working better than trying to squeeze gain out of plugins on the bus.

Pull the threshold up to -.001 db. lol

err, threshold of 0 and ceiling of -0.1?

But really...the Waves L2 is $99 on their website and that thing helps fatten up tracks in a good way when you put it on the master bus. Usually you can withstand attenuation of about 3dB doing bass music, a bit more doing other types of music.

Today wrote:err, threshold of 0 and ceiling of -0.1?

lol I'm not really familiar with what the ceiling parameter actually does...
according to http://www.ethanwiner.com/compressors.html, it's the same as threshold. None of the other articles I looked at that explained compressors even mentioned ceiling.
...So I tried it out with a couple limiters. With Renoise's maximizer, the ceiling just seemed to work to adjust the gain after limiting. With George Yohng's W1 Limiter, it did the same, but can't go over 0dB. Normally I've just left it alone at 0dB.
And interestingly enough, when I have the maximizer threshold and ceiling at 0dB, the master channel says it is clipping at 0.000 dB, but when I use the W1 limiter with the threshold and ceiling at 0dB, it says it is peaking at -0.000 dB without the clipping indicator turning red.
I had been using the maximizer with the threshold at -.001 because of this(and because I'm just being anal about it ) so....my final answer is

(tl;dr my mindless crap) ceiling and threshold at the highest you can get without clipping [when in the digital domain].