The Song Fight Bulletin Board

roymond wrote:Also, it's important to keep the master track effects/plugins disabled during all recording/mixing. And in a digital set-up, keep the levels well below peak at all times, which will make the final mix much easier.

Yes, this is good advice. I don't even add the plug-in until I am done with everything else.

I read an article in Sound-on-Sound that recommended setting all tracks no higher than -12 db to start mixing.

Steve Durand wrote:

roymond wrote:Also, it's important to keep the master track effects/plugins disabled during all recording/mixing. And in a digital set-up, keep the levels well below peak at all times, which will make the final mix much easier.

Yes, this is good advice. I don't even add the plug-in until I am done with everything else.

I read an article in Sound-on-Sound that recommended setting all tracks no higher than -12 db to start mixing.

Why is this a problem?
Could this be why I get bleed over? I actually haven't cared about the bleed over because it's like analog a bit and warms up the mix. But I've tried to grab a piece from one spot and move it to another with a different drum beat, and that doesn't work because it gets real nasty.

Billy's Little Trip wrote: This makes sense. I have been adding my reverb to the individual track because some parts seem to need it more. But an overall reverb would make it feel like it's all on the same stage.

Make an effects bus for the reverb, and separately adjust what amount of each track gets sent to the bus.

Billy's Little Trip wrote:

Steve Durand wrote:

roymond wrote:Also, it's important to keep the master track effects/plugins disabled during all recording/mixing. And in a digital set-up, keep the levels well below peak at all times, which will make the final mix much easier.

Yes, this is good advice. I don't even add the plug-in until I am done with everything else.

I read an article in Sound-on-Sound that recommended setting all tracks no higher than -12 db to start mixing.

Why is this a problem?
Could this be why I get bleed over? I actually haven't cared about the bleed over because it's like analog a bit and warms up the mix. But I've tried to grab a piece from one spot and move it to another with a different drum beat, and that doesn't work because it gets real nasty.

Well, the combined mix when all tracks are fully saturated (or near peak digitally) is that your master mix will be totally peaking out. Keep them down and you'll be truer to the mark in the master out and not have to limit (...as much). With digital recording (at decent bit rates) your noise floor is so low you can afford to crank up later if needed.

Good to know. I do stay out of the red, but I push it to the max.

roymond wrote:Also, it's important to keep the master track effects/plugins disabled during all recording/mixing.

I mostly agree, but I do like to mix with a compressor on the master channel. As with all things in mxing, EMWVA (everyones millage will vary always).

I'm looking into mastering again. What a quagmire! I'm currently interested in mastering in order to distribute music to digital music streaming services. Different services seem to have different guidelines. Song Fight and Nur Ein have _no_ guidelines, haha. There are definitely folks in our community who master their tracks really really loud. But what I keep reading and hearing is that doing so will not produce a good result on streaming services. Here are a couple examples, not trying to single people out but just curious how/why folks arrive at their end result and if they're targeting specific distribution destinations with different mastering settings, etc.

To try to understand better what results folks are producing I'm using the YouLean Loudness Meter 2 with its "Spotify" preset which is tailored to the loudness/mastering guidelines Spotify publicizes on their Web site. One thing that I think it interesting is that I've read and heard that when the true peak goes over -1.0dB, which in these two tracks it seems to do basically continuously, that's going to result in potentially audible distortion in the files that Spotify etc. actually wind up streaming, the reason being that while you may send them your uncompressed or losslessly compressed file they turn around and make lossy compressed derivatives that are what listeners actually hear, and the various compression codecs may introduce audible artifacts above certain thresholds. Also of interest is the dynamic range which supposedly if it gets lower than 8 results in a really heavily compressed sound.
For some reference:



Also I wonder if publishing some mastering guidelines for Song Fight might be helpful for folks? And I wonder if enforcing some requirements would be helpful in terms of leveling the playing field, or more trouble than it's worth ... ?

Here's a chart with some different possible mastering scenarios.

https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/l ... -streaming

I guess maybe Song Fight/Nur Ein is not really "streaming" in some ways...? Do folks tend to download the songs and put them in their music libraries? And listen to them on mp3 players or phones or burn them to CD or something? Personally I rarely download songs of Song Fight/Nur Ein, and I generally just play them off the Web pages.

Adam! wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 12, 2008 1:45 pm

roymond wrote:Also, it's important to keep the master track effects/plugins disabled during all recording/mixing.

I mostly agree, but I do like to mix with a compressor on the master channel. As with all things in mxing, EMWVA (everyones millage will vary always).

Hi All,
I was going to say the same thing. I tend to start my mix with no compression on my master bus, but once I get it going most of the way, I'll add it in and continue to tweak. Since I only export the one Mp3 for Songfight, I don't need to have additional steps, and it this allows me to mix what the final product will sound like.

Ken

Lunkhead wrote: ↑

Sun Jul 12, 2020 10:14 am

Do folks tend to download the songs and put them in their music libraries? And listen to them on mp3 players or phones or burn them to CD or something?

I download the songs I think I'll enjoy hearing again. They pop up on shuffle amidst the rest of my collection. I listen on my phone, streamed from home PC via Airsonic. Replay Gain takes care of any issues of source loudness.

Anyone care to describe their process? In all my years here, I've only ever mixed down all tracks to two, mailed it in. You guys mastering on that final two track version? Thats my next "phase" I'm just starting. I've two compressors and Pulteq style EQ Im incorporating. I'd be interested in anyone's steps if they care to share.

I know levels will come up in a manner that may make me cringe. As a 4-track cassette guy long ago, it was always about standing those VU meters straight up and letting them flick into the red as they needed.

I'll take a deep breath.

I'm just trying to put a maximizer on my master buss and check the levels coming out of it. Nothing fancy, no outboard gear (per usual for me), no mastering service, etc.

SoundCloud announced a new feature that they built in partnership with Dolby. It's an automated mastering service, a la what Ozone's auto mastering or some of the online auto mastering services provide, built right into SoundCloud. It's $5/track or if you're a "Pro" subscriber you can master 3 tracks per month for free and then pay "only" $4/track for more tracks after that. I just tried it out and the way it works is, you select a short clip of your track, preferably a section with good dynamic range and the Dolby algoriithm analyzes the clip. Then you get to a screen where you can play the clip in a loop and A/B between the original and the mastered versions. You also get to choose four "flavors" (one bass heavy, one mid heavy, one treble heavy, one with a balance) of tonal coloring for the mastering algorithm as well as a 0-100% slider that lets you choose the amount of tonal coloring you want to mix in, along with the loudness management which I guess is always applied. Not sure I fully understand that bit, I think the UI could be a little clearer there. Once you've got things set the way you like in the preview, you move on to the "purchase" screen. I've got a Pro account so I just used up one of my free tracks for the month, but presumably you could enter payment info there. Next is the processing of the full track and then you get a screen where you can listen to the full track and A/B between the original and the mastered versions. You can also download the mastered file. I had upload a WAV so I got to download a WAV. Not sure how it works with other upload formats. I now see an icon labelled "This track is mastered" on the track page and I think the audio that's playing for the track now is the mastered version, not the original. I'll try to do it again and maybe present the before/after examples. Although, I had already tried to "master" this track myself before uploading it, so the Dolby mastering actually _reduced_ the loudness I think. Oops! You'd want to upload and try this on a completely unmastered track or at least make sure there is headroom so that your track doesn't get turned down.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/busi ... -mastering
https://creators.soundcloud.com/mastering-on-soundcloud

You should see the "Master" button now if you go to any of your tracks on SoundCloud.

And related to produces mixes that are deliberately _not_ mastered so they can be mastered as a subsequent step, this guide was interesting:

https://www.sageaudio.com/blog/pre-mast ... mix-be.php

At What Volume Should I Mix?

This brings us back to our original question.

So long as your mixes give the mastering engineer room to work, and cover your noise floor, then you’re in a good range.

I recommend mixing at -23 dB LUFS, or having your peaks be between -18dB and -3dB. This will allow the mastering engineer the opportunity to process your song, without having to resort to turning it down.

Paco Del Stinko wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 13, 2020 7:34 pm

Anyone care to describe their process?

I "master" two separate ways. For songfight or.. well, anything other than something going to spotify etc.,

I use Reaper for my DAW. I almost always track on a Boss BR-900, usually using on board effects for guitar etc., Sometimes I use real amps/cabinets etc., but it's rare. On my master bus I have the following plugins loaded by default but all the effects are off by default.
Kjaerhus Classic Compressor
Klanghelm MJUC
ReaEQ
Voxengo Span
Audio Assault - HQ-2 Hybrid EQ
*Voxengo Tube Amp
*Ferric TDS
*Audio Assault RM-2 analog channel
*Blackwater Reverb
Ozone 8 Elements
Loudmax limiter
*Youlean loudness meter 2 (free)

After I'm done mixing, I will click the master bus effects to on which only turn on those above there with the asterisk. I've been using Ozone 8 a lot recently as there is a a couple of presets that sound pretty good stock (and of course, I can tweak from there) but it also has that mastering assistant. For songfight of late, I've just been letting the assistant do it's thing, adjusting the level to get pretty close to -14 LUFS (even though I've not released anything to spotify this year, I use that level) and then I'm usually done.

Further notes: I use a very light hand on most of these plugins. If I can hear the effect I back it back a bit. Including the tube amp, Ferric TDS, RM-2. The idea is to add a bit of saturation/thickness/warmness/whatever other buzzword that won't quite capture what I'm going for to the mix. The sum of the parts should be noticeable but the individual bits not so much. That RM-2, for instance, has just a bit of drive with all the other settings level (bass,mid,treble) and the output down enough to make the volume level the same as with it off. I also sometimes like to use multiple compressors or different compressors. So the Kjaerhus and MJUC are seldom used but usually when I'm needing something specific. (I like the MJUC a lot but it does tend to darken the track a bit... maybe more pronounced on the bottom end.)

For a while I was using the Waves AR TG Mastering plugin but I found it to be a bit harsh. I'm sure mostly due to my impatience and inability to find the sweet spots quickly.

For tracks going to Spotify, I will never turn on the master bus effects. I'll mix down and export as a WAV file then start a new mastering project and use a very similar method as stated above except I tweak the plugins. A little more or less drive from the RM-2. I'll tweak the (relatively) small amount of reverb I introduce at the mastering stage. (It's been mentioned my tracks are relatively dry before.) But I'll be using a reference track (which I should probably do more of for the songfight entries, but I'm lazy) and try to hit a sound. Also, probably the one biggest improvement I made was using reference tracks. I aim my mixing to it then I aim my "mastering" to it and I almost always have a much better sounding track when I compare it to what I usually do.

And now that I've typed all that out, I'm sure that I'll be embarrassed when someone points out an obvious flaw, but maybe that'll get me to reexamine what I do and experiment with other techniques... Ah, who am I kidding?

If I can ask a dumb question, what’s the benefit of printing a track to master it rather than just doing it on the master bus of your track?

***

My process so far, which is always evolving as I learn more things, is to do as much in the mix on individual tracks as I can, then to put Linear Phase EQ, Multiband Compression and an Ad Limiter on the master bus and tweak them until I like it. I tend to keep the Ad Limiter pretty soft. I also put a stereo to mono width thingy on there that I turn off and on throughout mixing to hear what it’s sounding like in mono.

Just watched this video this morning which may be helpful. (Pretty much everything I’ve learned so far I’ve learned from this channel.)

These days my process for "mastering" my tracks (quotes because it's not really mastering, just setting the final volume) has become very minimal: no leveling, no limiting, no eq, no stereo widening, no sonic maximizing, no mid-side processing, no harmonic exciting, and heaven forbid no multiband anything. The only thing I use is GClip, a simple, free, cross-platform soft-clipper. I always use the same settings (Soft-knee: 8%, Oversampling: OFF) to knock about 2-3 dB off my loudest peaks. Unlike limiting or compression this type of processing leaves the mix's dynamics intact at the cost of introducing more total harmonic distortion, so be careful.

How much overhead to leave is an interesting question. I set my output level at -0.1dB, which is not particularly safe: if you take my Rear Window track that Lunkhead used as an example above, after decoding the MP3 it has a peak of +0.7dB ABOVE full scale! A lossier encoding would produce even higher peaks. Most MP3 players handle this gracefully, but if I was targeting something like Spotify I'd stick to their guidelines and normalize to -1dB.

One simple, lossless way that SongFight (or, more plausibly, Nur Ein) could "level" the loudness playing field is to use the ReplayGain standard: scan the mp3s and write the ReplayGain values to their ID3 tags, then implement a player that respects these values. I think that would make the listening experience much better for people using the site and disincentivize turning your songs into mush with a limiter.

My process these days is generally:

1. Get the mix sounding clear on its own, with all of the notch EQ and effects and so on in place, but not worrying about overall volume
2. Apply Logic's "broadcast ready" preset
3. Add a YouLean Loudness Meter instance to the end, and fiddle with the "broadcast ready" preset's adaptive limiter until it satisfies the Spotify target (-14dB LUFS integrated, true peak of -1dB)

If I want to be extra fiddly, between steps 2 and 3 I'll play my track alongside another track that I want to use as an EQ reference and then adjust the global EQ to try to make it match up more or less the same (i.e. I can't hear either track particularly well over the other one in any particular frequency band). I don't do that very often though.

Oh and the reason I target Spotify is because among the major services, they have the most aggressive LUFS target. Generally anything louder than -14dB they'll turn the volume down on to match, and anything lower than -14dB they'll turn up to match as long as it doesn't exceed the true peak of -1dB.

I also use iTunes Sound Check (which does the same thing) when I listen to my music, so I don't have to keep adjusting my volume level. I'm extremely over the "loudness war" and I 100% agree with Spotify's practices here.

crumpart wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 18, 2020 3:48 am

What’s the benefit of printing a track to master it rather than just doing it on the master bus of your track?

I have a mixing template and then the mastering template. The only real difference is that the mastering template has some reference tracks pre-loaded and instead of using those saved presets on the master bus, I tend to add them/tweak them one at a time to try and build up to the final sound. Also, it mimics sending the track to a mastering engineer. Although, to be honest, sometimes I have to adjust levels etc., then re-render and that can be time consuming. The idea is that I commit to something and then "send it off" to myself for the tweaks and references and overall sound. When I was releasing my solo album I wanted the "mastering" to be pretty consistent across all the songs. Having a stereo mix of each one that I then spend time "mastering" is a decent way to make sure that I'm getting a similar vibe.

I also may tweak the fade out or add a bit of silence to the end of a track so that the standard 3 seconds (or whatever you use) between tracks on your disc can be adjusted. (For instance, on "Life Without You" by Stevie Ray Vaughan on the Sky Is Crying posthumous album... I need an extra four or five seconds before the next track and I never get it.)

So I guess it's as much a mental trick as anything else. Also, I don't often get a lot of compliments on my mixing skills (although it does happen sometimes) so take everything I do with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I use landr.com and find it excellent.