Loudness

Does anyone here bother making their tunes as loud as commercial tunes? I know loudness is something you want to achieve, but is it the general feeling that you would want to leave that to someonelse to do? In reason ive usually got my mixes running at about 74 on the main mixer. In other words do you think this is an important aspect in production quality when trying to impress for example, label bosses....

Seafe

saying you have the fader at 75 in reason doesn't really mean anything because the faders on the rest of the mixer could be peaking and making the master clip.

or the faders could be quite so either way having the master at 75 dont mean anything.

but i know what you mean. what is the point of really having loud tunes?
isn't that what the gain knob is for?

when it comes to mastering the "pro" master engineers limit the fuck out of tunes and really fuck with the dynamics.

but i guess when your sending them to labels it could be benificial to make them loud because they might sitt down to listen to a few demos etc and then they get to urs and its loud, its gonna catch his attention more.

not really sure where i'm going with this so i'm gonna stop

yeah its psychological aswell, louder sounds better. You should know about that when you add some sort of effect that makes it only louder but you think it sounds soooo much better that way...

The main reason I ask is because ive been reading about normalising, and seen some people messing with the waveform levels manually, and just thought if anyone was into that kinda thing... to make their tunes a commercial level

Personally, I do think watching the volume is helping dynamics and keeps the mix tight.
I make my music with -5 db in each channel. If I try the limit, for example 0 or -1, it will clip and sounds are being pushed away. And if you really want to record it at a hard volume, you can do that in mastering I think

Next time you mix try this, be open minded, if you mix as you produce your track wait till you start a new tune.

Set you DAW at 24bit resolution

Peak you kick/snare or main breakbeat at -18dBFS on the master output

Do not add a limiter to the master output.

Use that intitial kick/snare or main breakbeat as a reference that you mix all other sound to.

You have just built in headroom, your monitoring will be clearer as the electronics in you DAC (DA converter in your sound card) will be working more cleanly so you have just improved your monitoring as well.

Gain loudness in self finalizing or professional mastering after you have exported the file at 24 bit.

cheers and all the best.

Barry