Before you export the arrangement you’ve created for your performance set, you’ll need to do a little basic mastering. Here, we are getting into one of those subjects where no matter what I say, someone will shriek with horror that I would ever suggest such a thing…so first off, lemme tell ya: I’m a pretty […]
GETTING IT LOUD
To get oriented, put your RMS meter on the track you want to want yours to sound like (more or less). Listen to a full, loud portion of the song and take a look at the Average RMS: Now, put the meter on your own song and take a reading. Let’s say the unmastered song […]
LOUD – BUT AT WHAT COST?
For the moment, we’re going to continue focus on Limiting as the main source of adding loudness to a mix. It’s not the only tool that’s used, but it’s the most available and the easiest to understand… At first, when you crank up a limiter to give your mix some volume, it can be very […]
LIMITER TWEAKS
If you use a limiter to bring up the volume of a track, bear these few principles in mind. A slower attack will leave the transients of the music a bit more in tact, but at the cost of higher distortion. Live’s Limiter does not have an attack control, it only has Lookahead. The shorter […]
SETTLING FOR LESS
You may find that, even after tweaking the limiter a bit, you’re just not able to get acceptable sound quality with the level of loudness you’re going for. That’s understandable – music these days is mastered incredibly loud. It takes a lot of skill to get stuff that loud with good sound quality. (There’s also […]
