this was very informative. i never was really good at mastering, i had some techniques but nothing precise. now i can mix my techniques and what i've learned here to create my own signature sound...

Well, I see most problems have been solved. Again, for most modern music genres, I think you should have a RMS between -15 dB and -10 dB.

Thanks for keeping this thread moving guys! I'm aiming at -12 RMS for my songs. I think it sounds great. I've seen some people get their songs even LOUDER than commercial loudness - what is that like, +10 RMS?! lol

hmmm good stuff. I always had this problem too . On our album some songs are really loud and some songs not so much! n the whole mixing with low volume thing i gotta do that cuz i did have that problem as well lol .. but RMS is new to me?? i got some WAVE plugins that have rms on it but i never knew what it meant … I always just liked to mix my beats n leave the loudness for the final mastering when u actually do a song to it..

Hi! I just saw this a sbomb topic of the week and decided to throw some words.

I was having this kind of questions years ago, but when i found the book "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz, the same guy who proposed the K-System (K-20, K-20 and K-12). If you are gonna be mastering your tracks, i strongly suggest buying that book. Believe me, it is a good book, when u are interested in mastering.

I would tell you there is a way around this, but i don't believe there is other way then getting this information and let it gradualy become part of your mixing/mastering process. There is too much information on the book, that i can't pass it straight to you right now. I don't know it all, but my mastering became a lot better after i found out about K-system and read Bob Katz's book. Although i must give it up for the bros in WB, who already gave you a good headstart with lots of info in their responses. Way to go bros!

Here you have some links, with lots of information, that i'm sure wil lanswer a lot of your questions:

• An Integrated Approach to Metering, Monitoring, and Levelling Practices by Bob Katz http://www.aes.org/technical/docume...m?docID=65
• Level Practices PT.1 by Bob Katz  http://www.digido.com/level-practices-part-1.html
• Level Practices PT.2 (Includes the K-System) by Bob Katz http://www.digido.com/level-practic...ystem.html
• The Secret of the Mastering Engineer http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/k...tering.pdf
• Bob Katz About the "Loudness War" (Video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCd6MHlo_iA

I hope the information in this links help you, and other WB users get your mastering understanding better.

On another note, i see that you have a lot of tracks you want to master togheter. This is mastering in the true sense of the word. To make a project's tracks sound like they make part of a whole, and not feel like separate tracks from separate albums. And i would advice checking on Presonus Studio One for that kind of work. Why? No i'm not selling you a DAW, neither i represent them. But when u see this video, you will understand where i'm trying to get you ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l61fbaDvoOM  .

In that DAW, Studio One, you have a separate mastering section . In this section, you can master your tracks all at the same time (again, this is what you really call mastering a project). This way you can control the levels, EQ, etc in each track, but on the same project window. Then you export it as a CD, with all your song information, artwork, etc. I forgot to tell you also that in studio one, you can check your levels in different metering systems, including K-system.

I use FL Studio and Reason to produce. But i master my projects on studio one, for the many reason i stated above.

I hope you find any use for these. Keep doing your thing, because there is nothing like trial and error (laced with some knowledge of course).

One Love!

so u dont suggest using fl to master?

Posted By Nima T Productions on 31 Jul 2011 07:00 PM
so u dont suggest using fl to master?

I wouldn't say i won't suggest FL to master, because there is gonna be someone who is gonna misunderstad me, and that's not the point i wanna pass here. Neither i wanna go in a DAW war here. Being an FL user, as my knowledge of audio grew, i saw that i could complete different tasks with other softwares. I do that when these other softwares give me more confort (better workflow) to complete a certain task.

Let's say he has 10 tracks on one of his old albums. The ones he want to match the "levels" with his new tracks. Can u imagine what a pain in the butt would it be to A/B and try to "match the levels" of them all, in FL?

If you watched the video, you see that studio one has a dedicated window for this. Where you can A/B the levels of them all, in a single project. And remember mastering an album is not the same thing as mixing a track, although they use similar tools. When u are mastering an album, you want to make sure each song that makes part of the project, sounds like it doesen't have much difference in comparison to the others, without squashing them all to make them equal. One important note. Sometimes, the failure in this stage of the project  have to do with recording and mixing mistakes, or overuse of processing. You can't make a bad  recording of a sound,  and expect that you will fix it in the mix. Or mix something, and expect to correct the mixing mistakes when you are mastering. Get it right before!

So if you got them one after the other, in the order your project goes (Let's say from song 1 to song 10) then you can have a better perspective of the "sound" of that particular project. This is something you can do in Studio One, because it has that window dedicated to master you projects. And FL as we all know dont have this. FL is a audio production environment, that's not really specialized in mastering.It does what it does.

You could master an album in FL, but i bet you it would take more time then in an environment designed specially for this. And like someone stated here before, when your ears are tired you start messing up the mix or the mastering. So this saves time and ear fatigue. You are more likely to get it done faster then in FL.

Sometimes (quite a few) i export the stems from  a beat and load them in studio one. When i wanna have a good mix and i cant seem to get it where i want on FL, i do that. So let's say i have then mixes of 10 diferent songs, each one mixed from stems i exported from FL to mix in studio one. In studio one i can, when i'm in the mastering stage, go back to that one bassline in that one mix that is not sounding like the whole album project and tweak it a little more. And then come back to the mastering window (without exporting that song again) and just update the mastering project with one click. 

Many advantages on the mastering workflow, that i personally don't think FL Studio have. But, FL was not designed for mastering audio, neither is has a dedicated mastering section. So it does what it does!

hmm thats true! are you familiar with soundtrack pro?? I wanna start using that to master … but I always it came down to ur plugins.

Nima T, i never worked with soudtrack pro. It seems that's it's aimed towards video right!? But i believe you can use whatever fits your needs in audio production. My friends use nuendo to record and mix, and i was in Cubase by that time. But i never saw a problem on it (although they are DAWs from the same company). If u think a software got what u need, then go for it. But i will tell you if these DAW X performs a task with a better worflow then DAW Y, when my experience already thought me that.

The thing is to find the tool that will perform that task you need it to do. The most important is having the knowledge of what you are doing, that's why i suggested the bob katz book to him, also. Cause after you gain the knowledge, if a software got those features available, to perform that task, the information on that matter will be the most important tool. The basic principle is what guides you in the end. And like Miles Davis said, you gotta know the rules, before you break'em, lol.

Cheers!

P.S- I think i went a bit off topic. My apologies!

haha thats true u gotta know what ur doing! ill go buy that book too, its just hard reading books cuz im already in college so i hate books! lol rather learn from someone or trial n error. And yes soundtrack pro is linked to a video editing software but its actually pretty legit. It has a feature where it scans ur audio n tells u where u are clipping! i think thats pretty cool. but the thing i dont understand is that most of tech n9ne (my favorite rapper n also the best audio engineering) songs are way over 0 db but they sound great!! i dont get that ??? lol

what are you playing it in that says it is over 0db?

Posted By DjSOULjA on 30 Jul 2011 11:33 PM
this was very informative. i never was really good at mastering, i had some techniques but nothing precise. now i can mix my techniques and what i've learned here to create my own signature sound...

i was just thinking the same thing,  this a great question and i just learned a ton!  ... i must have read this thread 5 times through... something i realized is that i mix way too loud, having it up and then bringing it down is way less effective then starting low and bringing it up, time to go back and do some work .... oh and on a side note... your mix is at the mercy of your monitoring system ( crappy headphones/monitors = hampers your ability to mix effectively), u can't pick out those subtleties and really feel that broad range without "accurate" monitoring  however that is a whole 'nuther subject that I wont get down on...  the best thing is to do it to the best of your abilities and continue to learn and practice   , this is one of the areas that makes music so great and gives everyone their own style ... good luck

Posted By Pompey Productions on 03 Aug 2011 06:03 PM
what are you playing it in that says it is over 0db?

most of his albums man , the song just goes over 0db all throughout but it sounds really loud n clear , i mean its so loud that i cant even turn it all the way up cuz the whole studio would come down lol 

i'm asking, what are you playing it on that's telling you it's going over 0db.

on mixcraft, fl, and soundtrack pro

i know usually when i import anything into FL, it goes over 0db...but that doesn't mean the track is over 0db. this is something i'm really going to do a lot of research on, b/c folks say they are getting stuff over 0db. I'll probably be able to figure something out over this weekend. I'm going to start a thread about it once i get more solid information...but this thing is confusing. lol

What I do is first of all, when I start a project I turn down the master volume to 80%, and then I try to mix the track so it sounds like I want it, just quieter. Then I render it and master it in Audacity to make it peak at 0 dB and fix any mistakes that came in when rendering. Works fairly well.

I used to normalize all of my samples, which I found out later when i seriously found out my mixing stunk, was too much.
Everything was screaming and too loud which took away from the distinct sound of the sample.

Now that I have calmed down I try to follow the rules of mixing and mastering to the tee, always going back when i start a project and looking for what i should be doing to make it sound good.

Quick answer - too loud is when your mix hits over 0db. This will make your mix distort and sound horrible, unless you are going for that effect which I doubt! Keep it under 0db. It is a shame about the mastering budget - but hey, why not mix at the level you can, then just run a mastering plug over the master channel to bring volume up to 0db. There's loads of free and simple ways to get the max vol.

Joey I'm seeing you hit up all the threads today lol Glad to see people keeping this thread going