Help me to increase RMS from -12dB to say -6dB without damaging the peaks...

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Help me to increase RMS from -12dB to say -6dB without damaging the peaks...

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additive additive is a male

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I wonder if anyone can help me with a question:

The RMS on my track ('additive - Music Box' in the Tunes archive) is about -12dB and the peak is about -.02dB. I understand that this used to be accepted in CD mastering, but now, it's not uncommon to have a clean mixdown with only -4dB to -6dB RMS.

I've tried everything I can to bring up the RMS level without chopping peaks or distorting the bass (hard and soft limiting - then main bus boost, sidechain compression, parallel compression, you name it).

Any ideas on how to bring up that RMS without destroying the nice timbres?

I am using Cubase SX 3 and Waves Platinum. All my sounds are either self-recorded or samples. I do not use pre-constructed loops.

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06-05-2008 13:25

Greyone Greyone is a male

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where are your peaks ,

snare can be limited very much
kick can be limited very much
be subtle with your bass and sub

when EQing , volume of your drums on - 5db for example , then add bass and sub till its -3 orso , then you highs and synths till -1/0

try a limiter then on your master and check how it sounds ,
do it off again and check the difference .
now you can let your limiter of your master 'on'

now everything you will add will be limited to 0
while your drums and bass are good

and you wont have peaks and it will still sound good Smile

-ps: that the FL Studio 8 way Smile

06-05-2008 13:33

Halph-Price Halph-Price is a male

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quote:

Originally posted by additive
I wonder if anyone can help me with a question:

The RMS on my track ('additive - Music Box' in the Tunes archive) is about -12dB and the peak is about -.02dB. I understand that this used to be accepted in CD mastering, but now, it's not uncommon to have a clean mixdown with only -4dB to -6dB RMS.

I've tried everything I can to bring up the RMS level without chopping peaks or distorting the bass (hard and soft limiting - then main bus boost, sidechain compression, parallel compression, you name it).

Any ideas on how to bring up that RMS without destroying the nice timbres?

I am using Cubase SX 3 and Waves Platinum. All my sounds are either self-recorded or samples. I do not use pre-constructed loops.

waves has the maximizer or whatever, read up on "Mastering" to learn how to bring it up without destroying the product. it's more then just the sound you wreck it's litterally damages any system it plays on if it's over the peak.

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This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Halph-Price: 06-05-2008 14:00.

06-05-2008 13:58

additive additive is a male

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haphprice - In reply to your original post: (which was something along the lines of radio/tv audio submission being -12dB peak) Yes I know, but that has nothing to do with my question. That is so that they can dump a heap of compression on it. But I'm not talking about tv/movie production.. I'm talking about CD mastering, and it's pretty old-school to have -12dB RMS on a CD. Most masters are higher RMS these days.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

halphprice - In reply to your second post: I doubt it would damage a system if you pushed the peak over 0dB - it's DC that damages systems. the peak distortion CAN result in DC which can damage systems, but it would have to be a heap over 0dB.

Anyway, yes I know about the maximizers and I use them. They're effective to a point, but really they only boost RMS by about 4dB without harming the peaks. I've googled aplenty to find a solution, but I think I may have done something earlier in the mix that is keeping the peak high and RMS low.

greyone - I think you're on the right track to help me - it seems to be working using limiting on the tracks that peak and boosting overall. I think you understood my question better. Thanks!! Smile

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This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by additive: 06-05-2008 14:07.

06-05-2008 14:01

Halph-Price Halph-Price is a male

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good mastering is unnoticeable. and it helps, the louder it is the more bas and high end is what you notice the most. because these are the least sensative places the areas you hear the least. so for dnb the more you crank it up in mastering, you then have to be mindful that the high end will be louder, so you have to leanr to cub the high end a bit when mixing, and this also helps makes the bass bigger, in both aspects of it.

and heck if you guys want "dynamics" and "natural sound" stop doing drum and bass. or rock, or pop, country, r&b, or hip hop. go in to acustic jazz, it's the only place where there's "dynamics". and the only spot peple WANT their to be dynamics. so you guys that don't want "louder" music cuz some oldie pro guy says it's a problem, wrong genere.

all of it is drum smapled, not played live or anything, it's already lost all dynamics, it's a synth and some drum samples.

but yea, for pc my absolute favorite is voxengos' Elephant, and also teh warmifier for chacater before it, also Ozone 3 is suppose to be good, i never liked the sound of it, and then waves maximizer, which seems ... ok. it's not an adaptive one like elephant, which actually changes bassed on the music being played. more like an analog compressor.

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06-05-2008 14:11

Greyone Greyone is a male

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glad to be helpfull

06-05-2008 14:14

additive additive is a male

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Waves do have adaptive maximizers (l3-16, l3 multi etc) but I don't like them. THey make everything sound flat... so sure i do want some dynamics.... I totally agree with what you're saying about dynamics in DnB, but DnB has so many sub-genres that there's room for a bit of traditional "musicality?"... i like quality music, and dynamics can add to the quality. i sure as hell don't want to crush the shit out of my track.

thanks for the suggestion on the voxengo stuff (i've tried ozone b4 too and it sucks ass)... I haven't had a go of the voxengo, but I think I read somewhere that it's good at what I'm after.

Cheers

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06-05-2008 14:18

Tomos

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quote:

Originally posted by Halph-Price
and heck if you guys want "dynamics" and "natural sound" stop doing drum and bass. or rock, or pop, country, r&b, or hip hop. go in to acustic jazz, it's the only place where there's "dynamics". and the only spot peple WANT their to be dynamics. so you guys that don't want "louder" music cuz some oldie pro guy says it's a problem, wrong genere.

Totally disagree. I'm suprised you say that because it's very obvious when you crank all the sounds to their maximum volume, it gives the whole mix a very squashed, eardrum-battering sound. It isn't pleasant to listen to, especially at high volumes.

The issue shouldn't be about whether to have full dynamics or no dynamics (i.e., acoustic jazz vs "loud" dnb), it's about retaining enough dynamics to make the tune sound pleasurable to listen to, at low and high volumes.

That oldie pro guy is right I reckon. Wink

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06-05-2008 14:31

Tomos

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quote:

Originally posted by additive
DnB has so many sub-genres that there's room for a bit of traditional "musicality?"... i like quality music, and dynamics can add to the quality. i sure as hell don't want to crush the shit out of my track.

Bullseye! Absolutely spot on with those comments mate, imo Big Grin

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06-05-2008 14:34

additive additive is a male

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who's the oldie pro guy? the people who are actually making a dollar (or whatever currency you have in belgium Smile

....doing this stuff?

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This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by additive: 06-05-2008 14:38.

06-05-2008 14:36

Tomos

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quote:

Originally posted by additive
who's the oldie pro guy?

Possibly Bob Katz. But Halph might be referring to someone else.

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06-05-2008 14:38

Muad'Dib Muad'Dib is a male

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I believe he's reffering to TheChronic (?).

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06-05-2008 17:42

SafeandSound SafeandSound is a male

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There are a few ways of increasing loudness, compression, multiband compression, limiting, soft clipping, hard clipping, EQing and getting the sequence right is the key for this working without sounding like rubbish.

Care is needed to be able to hear the trade offs of getting high average RMS levels.

Sometimes -8 RMS is easy on quality material, badly recorded material can be hard to get to -10RMS. Each track has a different potential for loudness.

The trade offs are over compressed fatiguing sound, distortion, tracks lacking in punch, sounding boring due to no level changes and even more distortion on playback if there are intersample peaks (peaks in between samples) that the D/A convertor generates when applying a reconstruction filter (to convert the digital signal back to analogue again). This is made even worse if the analogue buffer stages on the D/A (usually a cheap opamp) have no headroom so you get more horrible inharmonically related analog distortion added on top.

Too loud and you risk club sound system limiters kicking in and they really do sound bad, it will make your track look silly and very badly produced.

Only monitoring that has excellent transient response can really hear what the negative side effects are.

cheers

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This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by SafeandSound: 19-10-2009 22:53.

19-10-2009 22:51

drumnbass.be forum » Production » Production questions & answers » Mastering » Help me to increase RMS from -12dB to say -6dB without damaging the peaks...