Mix/Mastering pt 2: tips for louder music

during my first 3 years i was producing, i was nowhere close to being confident in my ability to master, let alone mix. i was actually on fl studio, and found their ‘mastering’ effect called maximus - a multiband compression tool. i felt like this was a necessary step to add this every time i master something, so i carelessly threw it on every tune i made and overcompressed everything to shit until i thought it sounded good. it wasn’t a great thing to do to the song per se, but it was necessary for my growth to learn from that experimentation.

eventually i started using other tools, ozone included. i was still under the impression that redlining was rule #1 that shouldn’t be broken, and that if a master is distorting then the master is no good. it wasn’t until late 2018 i realized that that wasn’t true, and a master can still sound incredible without a limiter - sometimes it’s even necessary especially for tracks that are louder than -6 LUFs.

that was probably my most eye opening moment in production - that you didn’t need a fancy limiter on the master. in fact, if the mix is right you don’t need anything but just to raise the gain accordingly. it also taught me to not mix-in, or make mixing or production decisions while something is on the master. in that way, you know where every little detail of the mix is located without master effects clouding your perception on the mix. my mixing and production decisions were a lot more accurate, minimal and intentional, which served me well in the mastering process. the frequency output was flatter and the dynamics felt more even, making it harder for the master to clip at louder volumes.

i know i’ve already talked about the mixing and mastering process already along with limiting and compressing. now that you’ve read those (or so i assume) i’m gonna write to try and apply your knowledge to this specific issue: how the fuck do you get loud masters? first, let me rehash some tips in the mixing/mastering process that are necessary for getting your master to be loud.

• get a good mix. this should be priority. you should try to get your mix to sound good on its own. during this, you want to have headroom so you aren’t paying any conscious mind to if a particular sound is hitting the roof or not - you are solely concerned about how good it sounds. you might also want to have a very clean low-end. make sure that the only thing residing in the bottom end is one sub frequency and its harmonics, and nothing else. this doesn’t mean turn the sub up - you actually want to make sure this is quiet enough to where you can still hear (and having the room cleared for it will help with presence - you’ll notice G Jones subs are actually not at all loud compared to other references, but they are very clear which make them feel heavy and subby). because lower frequencies require the most power to be as audible to the human ear as other sounds, they are most often the culprit for audible distortion in the master process. make sure this is balanced out, or quiet down and clean your sub. for more info on the mixing process i wrote about it in the grimoire in this patreon.

• remove everything on the master during the production/mixing process. this is important because like i said if you have a compressor or a limiter on the master and the signals that are going into it are above threshold, you aren’t getting a good representation on how your transients are actually behaving behind the limiter.

• once the production and mix is complete, raise the volume accordingly. see how the master sounds at your desired LUFs, let’s say -6 for example. at this stage you still shouldn’t have any limiting or compression on the master. at the same time, you are simply analyzing how it sounds at this level, then ask yourself what and when is it distorting, if it is? if you are getting undesired distortion, you want to fix the culprit in the mix and not the master. so set your volume back to mix level and adjust the culprit. 

  • if you have clashing dynamics, try sidechaining one thing to the other. do this in a correctional manner - this means that the average listener shouldn’t notice a difference in the composition creatively, and it should actually be a transparent change as to fix the mix from a technical perspective. often times i find that my vocals clash with the kick - they are two very alpha sounds that require the whole god damn space. so what i like to do is sidechain ONLY the lower band of the vocals to the kick so that the power output is steady in the master, but the vocals remain present. if done correctly, this should remove distortion issues without compromising on the sound of the vocals.

  • if a sound or bus is too dynamic for the desired loudness to have no undesired distortion, it may help to apply a compressor to that sound or bus. make sure the settings are low for a transparent result, so you are correcting the sound without compromising the composition.

• in very rare occasions, i will apply compression on the master to lightly control the overall dynamics. typically, the threshold shouldn’t be very low, but this is just to help even out parts of the song in case the composition reaches a section where it’s just a wall of sound. in other sections, it should just barely go over threshold (maybe only the kick and snare transients go over). the compression should also be slow enough so that it’s transparent - the average listener shouldn’t be able to hear it.

• in even rarer occasions (especially in EDM), i will apply a limiter, or even automate it to certain sections. this is more often in warmer or darker tracks where the sub and low mids become the star of the show (this applies for the mix i did for Rezz x Cable - Glass Veins). before the clap or hats came in i found it necessary to place a limiter there because the sub and mids would have created very audible distortion either way, and the only way to get the desired loudness without the distortion was to automate that limiter. a limiter on the master is also common throughout in case i am mixing an instrumental track, where punchy transients of an edm track isn’t a priority as much as the slow swells of, say, a baroque quartet.

  • it’s important to play around with the time on the limiter because there’s a certain length where it’s just uncanny valley. you want it fast enough so the loudness is the same while compromising only some transients, or you want it slow so that the transients are maintained but the loudness is compromised. anything in between is just shakey dynamic nonsense, which results in a non-corrective, audible limiter and that’s not what we want in a master.

• nowadays, i never use an eq or multiband compressor on the master. unless i am lazy and i know that the client has 1 or 2 revisions left in them. but as a mixing engineer there is no place to be lazy.

• finally, it’s common for me to cut the lows (around 15-20hz) - which is useful in case your sounds have positive or negative bias (cough vinyl distortion cough), or alternates between the two (if for whatever reason your juno plugin outputs 5hz and below, which does happen). if your waveform has a bias towards a positive or negative direction, your master will have less room for amplitude and thus more prone for distortion. what i will also do - if it sounds good - is mono the bass. if you find that your sub is going in and out in mono, you might have a sound that has multiple voices and the sub is phasing each other out (such as supersaw basslines or basslines with chorus on them). go back in the mix and clean that shit up.

now that you have these in the back of your head, these are some things to also take note of specifically for louder mixes/masters.

• as mentioned before, lower frequencies take a lot of power. adjusting this area even slightly can strongly determine whether or not you’ll hear audible distortion once it’s clipping. if you want louder mixes you’re going to have to sacrifice those lower frequencies. but make sure it’s clear so that your bass is perceived as loud when it technically isn’t.

• don’t take your top end for granted, especially your transients. having these loud enough in the mix can give  listeners the illusion that it’s louder to the ear than it reads in LUFs. a perfect example are any newer productions by Skrillex or Virtual Riot. while the rest of the mix is warm, controlled and contains lots of breathing room, the top end can be pushed liberally because those frequencies don’t really distort the rest of the mix nearly as much as low end in a clipped master. a lot of their productions at -7 LUFs sound just as loud if not louder than a muddy wall of sound that sits at -5. obviously don’t push them hard enough where it’s painful to listen to, and also be selective about what highs to push so that it’s pleasing to listen to.

• also, use metering tools. i shouldn’t rly give this tip cuz i should really get you guys to train your ears, but i like knowing how hard i’m pushing my waveform compared to other tracks. i’d say the most use i get out of metering is a really fast spectrometer where i’m monitoring the low end. i have a threshold bar sitting at -3dB because i know that if a sub is hitting above that level i usually have some distortion problems in the mastering process, so that’s a sign to turn it down to clean it up.

i’m probably gonna get some tomatoes thrown at me w this post i.e. loudness wars, and loudness normalization on streaming platforms. obviously you’ll lose some dynamic fidelity the louder you go, but my personal philosophy is that doesn’t matter how loud your music is as long as it sounds great at any volume. of course you can save all your bits in the dynamic depth by normalizing your waveform if you wanna be a dynamic purist, but i think you’d be shooting yourself in the foot if no one can notice a difference in the bits you saved vs what you clipped.

that’s about it really. if you have any questions or suggestions on what you want to know obviously just shoot a comment.

oh also if you want dubstep masters, ignore all the tips, ott on the master (first) then raise the gain to oblivion.