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RE: Dark Times Collaboration - Turning Point - My loudest mix ever :P

in #music3 years ago

Not much dynamics on there, but if that is what the band wants then fair enough. I know some people think it's gone too far with loudness as people try to stand out on the radio, but don't they limit it anyway? On Soundcloud it looks a little more varied.

Rock on!

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Hey @steevc , yes , you are correct but still the loudness war is not really over. Most streaming services will turn down your mix if you exceed -14 LUFS . This was actually caused by Metallica on their Death Magnetic album , which was so loud it didn't sound good anymore , the amount of artifacts and distortion in there is a little too much. Nonetheless , the mixing engineer behind the album is one of my heroes : Andrew Scheps , and a trademark of his mixes is that they are very loud . He is very versatile though , he goes from Metallica to Adele and everything in between hahaha.

Now , perceived loudness is a thing and now mastering engineers have their tricks and trades to sound ''louder'' than others as they will get turned down to -14 LUFS anyways if they exceed that.

I honestly don't pay much attention to loudness in my mixes , in the end that's the job for the mastering engineer . I just go as loud as I think it feels fine if using my analog summer , if I stay 100% digital , it even matters less.. in a floating point enviroment , as long as you stay away from digital 0 , the volume you print the final mix makes almost no difference

So, if I am printing and the meters are kind of in the ballpark of -3db to -6db on the master fader .. it's all fine and ready to get to mastering.

This particular track I ''pseudo mastered'' myself so I just pushed it as hard as I could , and honestly I feel i went a little too far :P

With my recordings I just try to ensure nothing distorts that shouldn't. I have not got into the intricacies of mastering, but I know that is an art in itself. I remember the controversy over the Metallica album.

!LUV

There's usually not a lot of dynamic variation on this kind of music unless the band purposely puts in a relatively quiet part...

I know :) I don't mind a bit of metal, but I need more variety.

Hey Amber , yup , that's quite true , Heavy metal tends to abuse compression , and it's getting worse with more modern bands . I have a love/hate relationship with that approach of mixing , you can get it nice and aggressive but might sacrifice other subtle things . It's always trying to find a happy medium for me .

I think that's why I prefer progressive metal and symphonic metal, there's a lot more dynamic variety in those types of music, while still being heavy.