Boosting the mix volume without clipping

[SlavikSvensk]

any reliable techniques?

having issues with clipping on a track...

[rhythmtech]

limiter. set the output to -0.3 and decrease the threshold until desired.

thats the short version. in reality you should be looking across the entire mix. but my fingers are tired :wink:

[DannyBlack]

All that bum frigging has it's draw backs eh, Baz :-)


@ Slav- what Baz says.

[The_Laughing_Man]

Limiting and a good clipper too.
Run a couple of limiters in series so neither does too much work.
Or better, 2 compressors, 1 optical, 1 Electro FB, then a limiter.
Or even better, use mid side processing to split the mix and then process the mid and side each wth it`s own set of series compressors and limiters.
Or even better.......

Get a good mastering engineer to do it properly.

[SlavikSvensk]

will definitely end up doing the latter :)

in the meantime, though, i'm more trying to get the track together into something passable (it's not arranged yet), so will try adding the electro fb and limiter to the master track.

eventually will bypass all that and get it mastered properly.

[The_Laughing_Man]

for a quick loud master, without the need to delve into compression, I would suggest running 2 mastering limiters in series. Neither should push more than 2db of gain reduction.

Limiters to use in order of quality and transparency.

Voxengo Soniformer (not for beginners, very very hard to use initially)
Voxengo Elephant.
Sonic Timeworks Mastering Compressor
Crysonic Spectra'Phy
T-Racks Clipper (only the clipper, the rest is junk)
Sonnox Oxford Limiter
Waves L3

[SlavikSvensk]

nice recs. i'm running some mild compression on the master at the moment (excluding the kick). might get rid of it once i've got the limiters going.

[Mindful]

What Steve said..

to add to that.. If your using L3, set the output to -0.3, find the loudest passage of your track, pull the threshold down until you get 2db of gain reduction (as Steve says... do it twice)

simples

[CTRLS]

Try absolutely smashing your mix with compression (like 10-20db) and see what sticks out/clashes, then adjust. basically it goes that if you can get your mixdown sounding more or less the same with and without compression (bass will disappear when you smash it) you'll have a nicely separated mix which will be much easier to get louder.

running elements that occupy more or less the same frequency ranges through groups and limiting/compressing them (as transparent as you can, you want to see the reduction not hear it) can buy you a few db of headroom and also stop any random peaks from interfering with the rest of your mix. particularly grouping kick and bass can be very effective.