Lesson 3 - Jay-J - Mastering Lows, Comps and Limiter
Lesson 3 - Jay-J - Mastering Lows, Comps and Limiter
Lesson 3 - Jay-J - Mastering Lows, Comps and Limiter
All of these settings and examples and the workflow relies on a decent amount of
headroom in the track being mastered. In my mixing class we talk about ending up with
about 10 dB of headroom or the actual PEAKS of the loudest part of the song are no
louder than -10 the PEAKS! Not LUFS. Since headroom is the amount we are away from
0 or the difference between the loudest peaks in the song and zero dB in the digital
world.
So the FIRST things I do is make sure I have enough headroom to work with the master
and that the rest of my plug-ins will work the way they are intended - especially the
analog modeled ones as many plug ins today are designed to work internally more like
the analog world which s a much lower operating level internally - as the norm.
So bring in the song to be mastered and after all the session is set up I make
adjustments to the clip gain to make sure i'll be Starting with 10 dB of headroom if not
12
Making sure our low end is pulled together and downmixed to mono helps assure no
surprises on odd sound systems, can create a more defined and together low end and
works within the confines of sound.
Low frequencies are not Directional per say, we don't really get a sense of “Where it is
coming from, we just feel that it is present.
This adds a subtle smoothing and rounding of the transients, that analog texture I like
and have discussed, and It also works to push a bit up the lower parts of the song.
Notice how the Dry Mix is all the way up, this is the level of the Dry Signal. Like some
plugin where the Dy/Wet knob is set to just Dry. But then on this plugin, the makeup is
adding in the compressed signal. Like Mixing in a compressed signal on another track,
similar to old school parallel compression done on 1 dry track and 1 compressed track,
mixing in the compressed track to taste.
I usually end up with the compressed signal set at -10 - anywhere between -15 and -5
could work depending on what you hear. I usually don't set too much above -8 or below
-13, so just finessing the compressed signal a bit around the -10 starting point.
Apply Limiting
In order to make records as loud as they need to be nowadays, a Limiter must be used.
It's just not possible to achieve the levels of today without it. Many contemporary
productions are so loud in fact that for an unbalanced mix it’s almost impossible to
make the final as loud, and even a well-mixed song can often be difficult to reach the
extreme loudness of many releases.
Limiters are a specific area where the Tool itself Matters. We ask a lot of it when trying
to stay competitive releasing music today. A good tool can help achieve clean, clear
loudness, many are inferior. If relegated to only using Ableton here's some setting to try
- but this will be difficult to achieve a clean sounding high level output.
Stereo
L/R mode is 2 separate limiters - one for each channel - could affect the stereo
image
Lookahead 6 ms or 3ms
Heavy limiting and heavy bass will be cleaner with more lookahead
For gain, you will be adding enough to reach -10 LUFS on the master channel and will
now once again match the level of -10 LUFS we set for your reference tracks.
Music lately is consumed in a few ways almost all of which are lossy conversions,
mainly to save space and or file size.
This conversion process often leads to masters that are clipping when played back.
Have you noticed when dragging an mp3 into the DAW the file is clipping and or in the
red. This is because the conversion process eats up any headroom that was there.
A WAV or AIF file needs no file conversion so it has the most amount of headroom, but
even then there is some playback conversion when the file goes from Digital to Analog
or in the Digital to Analog Converter (DAC). This is why people bring the ceiling or
limiter output down a touch like .3 dB to add a little headroom for DAC.
Intersample peaks occur when a file is played back and some buildup BETWEEN the
digital sample rate plot points can occur on playback.
Picture from -
https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/inter-sample-and-true-peak-metering
Once we start to convert to actual Lossy conversion codecs or algorithms such as MP3
and MP4 / AAC That headroom gets eaten up even more.
Usually set at 24dB slope filter and around 30-40Hz, depending on what needs to be
controlled. That low is hard to hear on all but the best monitoring systems, so I rely on
my analytical tools to help me adjust below 40H. Span helps me see and the level
matched reference tracks offer me a guide.
Here we see 3 different reference tracks but a consistent average of where to adjust the
sub frequencies.