You're most welcome Angus. An absolute pleasure to work with you my friend. Wishing you all the best as you get this one out into the world. Much love!
huge respect for this. I watched a few mastering videos lately, and most are so obviously made by people how have little knowledge and even less experience.
@15:00 ish... You're discussing oversampling. Look forward to your full video regarding this topic, as I know Nicholas Di Lorenzo mentions that anytime he uses a clipper, he uses oversampling. He mentioned in one video (I'm paraphrasing here...) that by oversampling, "you're reducing the discrepancy between sample data vs true peak data by up to 3db, so overall more accurate processing". The point you bring up in this section of the video however, makes sense to me. Would love to learn more about this from you! Cheers *EDIT* I see in one of Nicholas's recent short videos he mentions your video/thoughts on oversampling and did some tests, which really helped.
Hey hey. Glad you saw Nicholas's video response to mine. If you didn't see my original video on oversampling in clippers, watch it here: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html. Cheers!
Great question. The potential for loudness comes primarily from the mixing stage. But also in production, where you choose, record, and design sounds. From the arrangement of the sounds on the timeline as well. I can only push a well done mix loud. If it's a mix that has not attended to managing peak levels, then there's only so much you can do in mastering before you start sacrificing low end or fidelity in general. In this master, the loudness is coming from the saturation stage in the HG-2MS, then the Pro-MB compressor, then the clipper, then the limiter. It's a multi-stage approach. You never make the limiter do it all. You'll get bad results like that. Thanks for watching and good luck with your music!
Great video. Thanx for sharing. But I would like 2 suggest to go deeper with intermodulation and why use or not oversampling. Thanx again & happy holidays! Regards from Bcn! 🤘🏼🥂
Thank you so much for the tip to turn off oversampling on clippers and limiters. I recently upgraded my monitoring and I can totally hear now how the oversampling sucks out transients.
Glad you stayed for that part of the video. That's a really key point, and really warrants its own separate video to go into the level of detail. Not only does oversampling cause more limiting, and all the negative things that come with that, as well as dull the transients, it also causes overshoots (an increase in peak level) from the downsampling process. Most people don't realize that anytime you downsample anything via SRC, you can create an increase in peak level. For this reason, you'll see a "post limiter" in most sample rate converters to deal with the peaks. But again, that's even more limiting.
Sure thing! It's actually one of my next planned videos to show it in a mix. I use clipping heavily in nearly every mix I work on, assuming it has micro-transients that can be fairly transparently contained using hard clipping. And I will often use soft-clipping on drums (sometimes in parallel) or other elements that lend themselves well to it.
Ah, thanks for that. So they're both emulations of the same hardware then. Interesting. Thanks for the tip! I've had some issues with Acustica plugins having code issues when used with Ableton Live so I've been steering clear. One of their plugins caused a 40% spike in CPU usage from a single instance in a clean session. Has me a bit cautious about trying their other plugins. Gold Clip does what I need it to and is very well coded.
Agreed fully. If a clipper doesn't have that, I'm not using it. BTW, Gold Clip and Orange Clip both do this brilliantly and I now prefer them to K-Clip by a long shot. Check them out. Schwabe Digital.
@@warpacademy great tip yes. I downloaded, installed and quickly got hooked, it just sounds and looks too tempting honestly, however, uninstalled it already before getting too used to it hahah since I won't spend that amount of money, even though it might be worth it. I'm still fine with the free version of Kazrog (I don't know why they did that to the visuales in Kclip 3, I prefer the free version. for now..
You're most welcome! And that is a very good question. Those details matter. Seeing as this song is intended for streaming sites first, and it will be compressed into a lossy format (which increases amplitude) I left the final limiter margin at -1 dB. I then ran it through codec simulators to see how it was sounding on various systems. If this was a song for DJ play, I would have run it up to -0.1 dB.
@@warpacademy Thanks for your quick reply… so then few questions 😜: - The -1db are you applying on your rended track thru the Limiter in your mastering fx chain? - For codec simulator, are you using Ozone f.e. or RX11? - How Is your workflow concerning the streaming LUFS levels? Are you mastering to have a LUFS close to your reference track and send that to the platform or are you mastering differently for platforms (or doing something special)? Maybe you mention that in another video but things/tools/rules/workflows change quickly 🙏🏼 - BTW, Great video about the streaming gain optimisation : « RX 11: Optimizing Billie Eilish and others for streaming with Dale Becker »
Hey hey. -For the final margin, I'm using the limiter output gain parameter. It's different on some limiters. Some call it "ceiling" and some call it "margin". For example, Pro-L2 calls it "Output" and DMG LImitless calls it "Ceiling", but in the Ableton Limiter, "ceiling" is actually the limiting threshold and decreasing ceiling will trigger more limiting. You have to be very aware of how your limiter works. Leaving 1 dB at the top or 2 dB at the top should create no change in the amount of limiting, only in the amount of post-limiting gain applied. -Codec sim: Ozone 11 or Streamliner. -LUFS: I don't master for any loudness target. LUFS can be fooled and heavily influenced by arrangement. I listen with my ears against reference tracks while working, but occasionally I'll look at the meters to see where I am. One of my mentors described it like driving a car. You look at the road and other cars on the road, and occasionally glance at the speedometer ;) -Thanks for the video link. Cheers!
last tip is gold, trying out several limiters, I once used Invisible Limiter and it sounded great on one track and then kinda using it on a template I figured that it didn't work for the next track, but then Pro L and Elephant worked best
Hi. Could you please go into detail on your DMG Limitless Settings? I love that limiter and want to know how to set it up for House and EDM tracks? Over sampling, the multi band settings, etc. thanks.
Hey hey. Sure, happy to. The settings of course vary based on the program material and loudness, but I can go over some general settings. Limitless is a multi-band limiter, so you have control over band independence. I set the Separation typically at 100%, which allows some (but not an extreme) amount of band independence. I typically use very small lookahead values, as Limitless doesn't distort easily when limiting peaks. Typically only 0.1 ms or so. For louder material I use no knee, and I set Dynamics around 25-30% (this prioritizes the gain reduction towards the transient vs. dynamic release aspects). For very loud material I set Stereo Linking to 0% for full dual mono behaviour, which can yield less artifacts when limiting more. Just make sure you don't have loud hard panned material that could tilt the stereo image (this rarely happens in most mixes anyways). There's a clipper in Limitless, but I don't use it. It's been more typical for me to more advanced mastering clippers like Gold Clip and to use them much earlier in the chain than right before the limiter. Also, Limitless doesn't use oversampling unless you use true peak limiting. I don't typically oversample limiters at all. And if I need to use TPL, then I'll do it in a second, separate limiter. Hope that helps. If there's anything else you want to know, just ask.
cool video. One question - You compensate the same amount on every band on multiband compressor - isnt that the same as just turning gain up as a whole? Would love to see this kind of video how you master different songs.
Hey Darius. Thanks for the question. In the MB compressor, using makeup gain in the presence of compression is not the same as simply turning up gain. Turing up gain would leave the dynamic range of the signal untouched. In this case, I'm shaping each band with compression, and using different attack, release, ratio, and ranges for each band. It was just a coincidence that I turned up each bands makeup gain by the same amount. The amount of makeup gain I use depends on the amount of compression I'm getting in each band. In this case, I was just being very gentle and each band only need a touch of makeup. Thanks for being a subscriber to the channel and all the best with your music!
It’s beneficial for 3 main things. 1 is reducing aliasing if there is actually audible aliasing. 2 is dulling overly sharp transients if those are a problem. 3 is complying with ISP / true peak limiting requirements.
Super interesting! One thing that caught my attention here is that you chose to keep the "link" activated between the in and out on the clipper. So is it correct to say that you're really only using the clipper to chop the transients rather than boost any loudness and leaning entirely on the limiter for that? I've often heard people talk about the "clipper into limiter" workflow and assumed that meant letting each of them carry a bit o the load for boosting signal. Also curious what your thoughts are on using multiple plugins to boost loudness vs making a single limiter work "too hard" (another tip I've come by often). Thanks for the content though, really detailed and clear.
Hey hey. Glad you enjoyed this one. Yes, I typically only use clipper that have an input / output gain link function. I like that workflow. It keeps you from making silly decisions because you've just boosted a ton of gain into the process and fooled your ears. You could also bring the ceiling down in Gold Clip or Orange Clip. That works great too. Some clippers (like K-Clip) attach the second non-oversampled hard clipping stage to the ceiling parameter. So you have to be careful with just pulling down the ceiling. In terms of the clipper into limiter approach, you have it right. Usually it's an attempt to spread the load between multiple devices and clean up stray peaks before they hit the limiter. But more recently I think it makes more sense to put the clipper first in chain, so it cleans up stray peaks before all the level sensitive plugins in the chain and not just the limiter. Refer to this new video on why you should't (and don't need to) push the mastering limiter very hard: th-cam.com/video/YpbV0INpHgc/w-d-xo.html And check out this video for lots more on using clippers: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html Cheers!
Enjoyed the video. Regarding clipping, is there a difference between pushing the input using the link option in Kclip as you demonstrate and turning the threshold down to meet the peaks?
Glad you liked this one. In K-Clip there is a "ceiling" control. It has 2 clipping circuits. This is a simple non-oversampled hard clipper with no control. The regular clipper stage can be softened and can be oversampled. For me, I would never use the ceiling control. I typically only use the more full featured clipping stage. But yes, you could pull down the ceiling control to hit peaks - I just wouldn't recommend that. Cheers!
Good question. I only consider true peaks (aka TPs, aka ISPs) if I’m uploading to a DSP (Spotify / Apple Music etc) that requires keeping TPs at a certain max. I never care about TPs when making loud DJ oriented music for .wav play. You need to understand what TPL is doing. It’s engaging at a minimum 4x oversampling. This can and does cause a lot more limiting, which also causes more distortion and dull transients and artifacts. The downsampling process also causes overs that need to be hard clipped post limiter which again causes more potential distortion. It’s debatable whether anyone even hears these theoretical “true peak overs” as distortion on DACs. Personally I have never heard one, not even on the hottest masters that read +2 or +3 true peak on a meter. Not on any of my playback systems. Not on my phone, car, multiple Bluetooth speakers, laptop or my 5 audio interfaces. Not a single one creates this issue, ever. But I always hear the effects of TPL damaging the music with more limiting. Or causing you to have to back off the limiter to allow for the extra level detection. So I pay it no mind. Unless the DSP or client asks for a TP master.
Thanks for the video. In the limiting stage you left 1:1 enabled on Pro-L2. Was this intentional, or do you disengage 1:1 before printing the final master.
Hey hey. Good catch and great question! I only activated unity loudness monitoring for the purposes of the video so the limited version didn't create a big loudness jump in the video. For the final render, I always deactivate that, and I would also adjust the final output ceiling down to account for things like lossy streaming compression amplitude noise, which I would simulate in Ozone Codec Preview or Streamliner. Cheers!
Hello, do you master within Ableton or is that chain used to create a premaster before sending out the track to master or mastering with another program?
Hey hey. I master in Ableton Live. The DAW you’re in matters little as long as it’s a VST plugin host. I never use native Ableton effects for mastering. You could master in Garage Band or Audacity if you really needed to. And this is the final master. This went straight out to distro as you see the session here.
They're different animals. Gold Clip is a mastering processor (or buss) with quite a few features not included in a regular clipper. It's also more heavy on processing. I also own K-Clip. In the past I used K-Clip as a lightweight track clipper for micro-clipping. But I swapped it out for the newer Orange Clip. Orange Clip is amazing, fast, lightweight, and sounds fantastic. I could use either K-Clip or Orange Clip as a track clipper, but much prefer Orange Clip. Faster workflow and better interface. For the master, I only use Gold Clip and I typically put it first in chain, or just before the limiter. Cheers!
I will never master my tracks but this video helped me to make better PreMasters. Especially that clipper is a great tip. I think I'm going to use Kclip on the busses before they reach the master chain
I use dedicated clipping (using K-Clip) all over my mixes. I use them on anything transient for sure. I adjust them so the gain reduction is transparent, only clipping several ms. The things I don't clip often or at all, are vocals, lead horns, and sub-bass. Everything else is fair game in the mix, but I only clip it if it can be done transparently. This makes the entire mix so loud that the amount of master clipping and limiting is often only a couple dB and the entire end result sounds much cleaner than a mix rammed into 6 dB of limiting on the master.
@@emmanuel.n8458 I am not limited myself. I know what I want to do and the time I have for more important things. My speciality is singing and writing music. Even that I've learned there are many things I do not know about the production part to have a great sound. Those are the most important things to me. The rest can be left up to people I know have been mastering for decade.
All of these plugins have 32 bit float processing or the ability to adjust input gain. Or in the HG2MS it has a density control. So really you just don’t want it clipping. Input levels are much less fussy than with analog or analog modeled gear.
Gotcha , its just some other tutorial i was watching, saying on the premaster channel gets gained it down to -20 on VU meter and cranks it up on the - 10 or limiter , basically top down mastering, not over power plugins that follow and gain stagin through them also hardware responds better if that makes sense! Thank you
That sounds like a mastering workflow that's relevant for people working out of the box on hardware. There's no reason to do that in the box, except possibly for analog modelled plugins.
When i use limiters i always hear they eat transients(ever when tehy work like limiters), some of them eat the low end. So i stil don't get why to use a limiter instead a clipper, i mean when u want to preserve all original sound made before? Or you use the limiters for color the sound and attenuate the transients?
If you use a clipper only you’ll get a ton of distortion. Limiters are more transparent for digging into the signal for more sustained sounds. I use both. Clip. And then limit. Only a couple dB on each.
@@warpacademy wait a sec, maybe i've explained bad(sorry for my english). I do usually like this, work a single sound: i eliminate the resonances, then i process the sound, then i mix it in the rest of mixdown. Sometimes happens this: the sound sounds well but it has some peak/s i can't eliminate without the change the sound, so i use a clipper only for cut that peak/s, without have any alterations on sound inself, usually are a couple of db. Same for the groups, i cut only peaks that can't be eleminated without alterate how the whole group sound. Same logic i use on master. I notice this with limiters: if i use a limiter on master/group i usually obtain softer transients, same happens with low end, meanwhile when i'm using a clipper on master it doesn't make any changes at same level of loudness, al my original mixdown sounds like it was made only with more loudness. So the limiter works after a clipper more like a "classic compressor", i mean it needs to shape other peaks also, meanwhile a clipper needs only to clip without alterate the sound inself? Another question, apart so loud masters people do now, what is the best level for you like rms/lufs for have a better dynamics and loudness compromiss in hard electronic music? I mean without follow the actual loudness wars and touching 0 rms or more at master. I remember around 12-15 years ago the compromiss between loudness and dynamics was around at -7rms.
Thanks for the clarification. There's a key thing to understand here. Limiters will contain and shave transients, but do so in a way that is as transparent as possible. However, when pushed, they can make the transients sound dull, especially if you use lookahead and oversampling. Clippers create distortion. They are different tools. When you use a clipper to only shave transients, it'll do so in a way that the transient often sounds a bit louder (and therefore more punchy) because of the little burst of distortion on the transients when the clipper shears it off. A hard clipper causes odd harmonics and aliasing at the transient, which will make it sound quite a bit brighter. A soft clipper causes warmer harmonics at the transient. In terms of what the best level is, I'm not able to answer that as it's entirely dependent on the genre and the individual song, the sound design, the mix etc. There is no universal number. You make the song sound good first. Don't try and target some level of loudness just because.
Hey Andix. That is certainly a good practice. Did you see in the intro that I turned down the master dramatically to bring the level closer to the pre-master? I certainly did not play a full loudness master next to the pre-master. They are quite close although not exactly matched. Then later in the video, in the section on the limiter, I used the Unity Gain function in Pro-L2 for an exact loudness matched comparison. Thanks for watching and all the best.
oversampling is strictly the processing and not the detecting of an input signal on virtually every single plugin ever made, and it certainly is QUALITY resolution based, it reduces truncation errors and aliasing, so what are you talking about?
Test it for yourself. Load up Pro-L2 and dial in limiting with no oversampling. Then add another Pro-L2 limiter behind it and oversample 16x. You will see more gain reduction. It absolutely causes the detector to read more peaks and triggers more limiting. It’s the exact same thing that happens with TP limiting which in Pro-L2 adds 8x oversampled limiting in an additional stage. Every mastering engineer is aware of this, which is why many of them avoid TPL. Also, don't take my word for it, I'll link you to 2 videos from people who are some of the most knowledgeable engineers and producers publishing videos on TH-cam: David Gnozzi from @mixbustv about oversampling limiters and dulling transients: th-cam.com/video/AtCnLW0i8x8/w-d-xo.html @Baphometrix about not oversampling clippers: th-cam.com/video/PR1o5LQzEB0/w-d-xo.html Also the argument that OS reduces aliasing is an odd one as aliasing is rarely audible but more limiting is certainly audible. It’s a bad trade off IMO.
@@warpacademy I'd very much love for you to delve into this topic in another video, as teased above. Definitely made my ears perk up hearing it being mentioned in this one. Curiosity piqued.
For sure. It's a very interesting topic. For me the journey started by getting DMG Limitless. I was searching for the oversampling feature in the limiter, searched the manual, and found zero mention of oversampling. I was sure it was an oversight or me not looking in the right place, so I contacted their tech support. Their answer floored me. They said they did not include oversampling in their limiter AT ALL (except in the clipping and TPL stages). Their main limiter cannot be oversampled. Their reply was "for accurate sample peak limiting you cannot use oversampling". That made complete sense to me when I thought it through. More limiting than is necessary can ruin a master. Oversampling causes detection of intersample peaks, which are higher in level, and causes the limiter to react to them. This is why so many MEs detest the sound of TPL. All it is is oversampling (in FF Pro-L2 it's done as a second stage limiter with 8x OS).
@@warpacademy I'm not intimately familiar with the fab filter limiter, that said if oversampling causes a limiters input sensing threshold to react differently to transients? Its simply a poorly designed plugin, And as a side, any time you can reduce truncation errors, aliasing and any other inexplicable digital space monkeys from your chain, you are removing the accumulative upper harmonic artifacts they create in the audible range, you do you bro
Clipping is a really great technique -and a much more appropriate technique for electronic music. Not as useful here as hard clipping introduces far too much distortion to be used very much in the context of this type of song with exposed vocals and organic instruments. As an engineer you have to know what tool to use in what context. I prefer to use hard clipping in a the mix for electronic master. There are a lot of reasons why you would not want to push a hard clipper very much on a master (intermodulation being one of the main reasons). I did several videos on clipping for electronic music that you might enjoy. This one on The Science of Clipping: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html and this one on how to Master Loud: th-cam.com/video/YpbV0INpHgc/w-d-xo.html
They’re both decent. I usually prefer Limitless over both of them. Not always tho. And Sonible smart:limit is great too. It’s good to test them out and see which ones you like on the specific program material.
Regarding my use of the word "Pro" in the video title... I actually struggled a bit with using that as I think it can be an overused buzzword. So I asked myself, what does it mean to be pro? My definition is someone who is doing this professionally, getting paid, making a living, and doing it frequently with a sizeable base of real clients. On reflection, I definitely fit that description which is why I used that word in the title. Your comment is rather ambiguous, so I'm not sure if what you're really meaning to say is that you think the master is "lifeless". If that's the case, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I generally only respect 2 types of people asserting opinions about my work: 1) My client - who as you can see, approved and loved the master, 2) Other professionals in the industry who are doing this type of work and have skin in the game and real world experience.
Here's what I recommend watching next: ✅ Our Full Mixing & Mastering Playlist ➤ th-cam.com/video/-zGVc8IF-gw/w-d-xo.html&pp=gAQBiAQB
✅ Build the ULTIMATE DIY Acoustic Panels ➤ th-cam.com/video/ECazGzutkV8/w-d-xo.html
Always a pleasure working with you! Thanks for the polish on this song 🙏🏼🙏🏼
You're most welcome Angus. An absolute pleasure to work with you my friend. Wishing you all the best as you get this one out into the world. Much love!
Huge respect for Vespers. Whatever he teaches is gonna be on point.
Thanks!
huge respect for this. I watched a few mastering videos lately, and most are so obviously made by people how have little knowledge and even less experience.
Glad you enjoyed this one. There’s a newer one I just posted last week too. I think you’ll enjoy that as well. Cheers!
@15:00 ish... You're discussing oversampling. Look forward to your full video regarding this topic, as I know Nicholas Di Lorenzo mentions that anytime he uses a clipper, he uses oversampling. He mentioned in one video (I'm paraphrasing here...) that by oversampling, "you're reducing the discrepancy between sample data vs true peak data by up to 3db, so overall more accurate processing". The point you bring up in this section of the video however, makes sense to me. Would love to learn more about this from you! Cheers
*EDIT* I see in one of Nicholas's recent short videos he mentions your video/thoughts on oversampling and did some tests, which really helped.
Hey hey. Glad you saw Nicholas's video response to mine. If you didn't see my original video on oversampling in clippers, watch it here: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html. Cheers!
Where do you get the loudness from? I’m very interested in this
Great question. The potential for loudness comes primarily from the mixing stage. But also in production, where you choose, record, and design sounds. From the arrangement of the sounds on the timeline as well.
I can only push a well done mix loud. If it's a mix that has not attended to managing peak levels, then there's only so much you can do in mastering before you start sacrificing low end or fidelity in general.
In this master, the loudness is coming from the saturation stage in the HG-2MS, then the Pro-MB compressor, then the clipper, then the limiter. It's a multi-stage approach. You never make the limiter do it all. You'll get bad results like that.
Thanks for watching and good luck with your music!
Thank you so much for answering my question! I totally understand!@@warpacademy
My pleasure.
Great video. Thanx for sharing.
But I would like 2 suggest to go deeper with intermodulation and why use or not oversampling.
Thanx again & happy holidays!
Regards from Bcn!
🤘🏼🥂
Thank you so much for the tip to turn off oversampling on clippers and limiters. I recently upgraded my monitoring and I can totally hear now how the oversampling sucks out transients.
Glad you stayed for that part of the video. That's a really key point, and really warrants its own separate video to go into the level of detail. Not only does oversampling cause more limiting, and all the negative things that come with that, as well as dull the transients, it also causes overshoots (an increase in peak level) from the downsampling process.
Most people don't realize that anytime you downsample anything via SRC, you can create an increase in peak level. For this reason, you'll see a "post limiter" in most sample rate converters to deal with the peaks. But again, that's even more limiting.
Super helpful. how often do you use clipping in your actual mix? Could you make a video detailing your use of clipping throughout a mix?
Sure thing! It's actually one of my next planned videos to show it in a mix. I use clipping heavily in nearly every mix I work on, assuming it has micro-transients that can be fairly transparently contained using hard clipping. And I will often use soft-clipping on drums (sometimes in parallel) or other elements that lend themselves well to it.
Loved it. Thank you! My fav clipper is Acustica Ash. Have you ever tried it?
Glad you enjoyed it. I haven't tried Ash. What about it makes you love it?
@@warpacademyash is the famous Lavry converter clip.. they sampled a bunch of them.. gold clip is a recreation of the lavry clip
Ah, thanks for that. So they're both emulations of the same hardware then. Interesting. Thanks for the tip! I've had some issues with Acustica plugins having code issues when used with Ableton Live so I've been steering clear. One of their plugins caused a 40% spike in CPU usage from a single instance in a clean session. Has me a bit cautious about trying their other plugins. Gold Clip does what I need it to and is very well coded.
12:00 Kazrog is really one of the few linking the output. I'm missing this in standard clip.
Agreed fully. If a clipper doesn't have that, I'm not using it. BTW, Gold Clip and Orange Clip both do this brilliantly and I now prefer them to K-Clip by a long shot. Check them out. Schwabe Digital.
@@warpacademy great tip yes. I downloaded, installed and quickly got hooked, it just sounds and looks too tempting honestly, however, uninstalled it already before getting too used to it hahah since I won't spend that amount of money, even though it might be worth it. I'm still fine with the free version of Kazrog (I don't know why they did that to the visuales in Kclip 3, I prefer the free version. for now..
K Clip is great too. Enjoy!
On Point! I use most of these plus inflator most times.
Right on. I heard good things about Inflator. Cheers!
Thank again for this great video. One (stupid maybe) question: on your final master rended track, your peak is 0db or -1db ? 🙏🏼
You're most welcome! And that is a very good question. Those details matter. Seeing as this song is intended for streaming sites first, and it will be compressed into a lossy format (which increases amplitude) I left the final limiter margin at -1 dB. I then ran it through codec simulators to see how it was sounding on various systems.
If this was a song for DJ play, I would have run it up to -0.1 dB.
@@warpacademy Thanks for your quick reply… so then few questions 😜:
- The -1db are you applying on your rended track thru the Limiter in your mastering fx chain?
- For codec simulator, are you using Ozone f.e. or RX11?
- How Is your workflow concerning the streaming LUFS levels? Are you mastering to have a LUFS close to your reference track and send that to the platform or are you mastering differently for platforms (or doing something special)? Maybe you mention that in another video but things/tools/rules/workflows change quickly 🙏🏼
- BTW, Great video about the streaming gain optimisation : « RX 11: Optimizing Billie Eilish and others for streaming with Dale Becker »
Hey hey.
-For the final margin, I'm using the limiter output gain parameter. It's different on some limiters. Some call it "ceiling" and some call it "margin". For example, Pro-L2 calls it "Output" and DMG LImitless calls it "Ceiling", but in the Ableton Limiter, "ceiling" is actually the limiting threshold and decreasing ceiling will trigger more limiting. You have to be very aware of how your limiter works. Leaving 1 dB at the top or 2 dB at the top should create no change in the amount of limiting, only in the amount of post-limiting gain applied.
-Codec sim: Ozone 11 or Streamliner.
-LUFS: I don't master for any loudness target. LUFS can be fooled and heavily influenced by arrangement. I listen with my ears against reference tracks while working, but occasionally I'll look at the meters to see where I am. One of my mentors described it like driving a car. You look at the road and other cars on the road, and occasionally glance at the speedometer ;)
-Thanks for the video link.
Cheers!
@@warpacademy Thank you. I use FF Pro L-2 so no pb. Thanks!!!
Right on. That's a great limiter.
last tip is gold, trying out several limiters, I once used Invisible Limiter and it sounded great on one track and then kinda using it on a template I figured that it didn't work for the next track, but then Pro L and Elephant worked best
Thanks for sharing! Yeah Invisible Limiter is anything but invisible. It's actually quite colored. Cheers!
Hi. Could you please go into detail on your DMG Limitless Settings? I love that limiter and want to know how to set it up for House and EDM tracks? Over sampling, the multi band settings, etc. thanks.
Hey hey. Sure, happy to. The settings of course vary based on the program material and loudness, but I can go over some general settings. Limitless is a multi-band limiter, so you have control over band independence. I set the Separation typically at 100%, which allows some (but not an extreme) amount of band independence. I typically use very small lookahead values, as Limitless doesn't distort easily when limiting peaks. Typically only 0.1 ms or so.
For louder material I use no knee, and I set Dynamics around 25-30% (this prioritizes the gain reduction towards the transient vs. dynamic release aspects). For very loud material I set Stereo Linking to 0% for full dual mono behaviour, which can yield less artifacts when limiting more. Just make sure you don't have loud hard panned material that could tilt the stereo image (this rarely happens in most mixes anyways).
There's a clipper in Limitless, but I don't use it. It's been more typical for me to more advanced mastering clippers like Gold Clip and to use them much earlier in the chain than right before the limiter.
Also, Limitless doesn't use oversampling unless you use true peak limiting. I don't typically oversample limiters at all. And if I need to use TPL, then I'll do it in a second, separate limiter. Hope that helps.
If there's anything else you want to know, just ask.
You have already prove your point because the production is great and excellent.
The song was an excellent project to work on. Angus is an excellent musician and producer.
Great work! 👍🏽
Do you prefer kclip to gold?
Thanks
They are very different. I have both. I prefer Gold Clip on the master and busses. And then Orange Clip on tracks. I no longer use K Clip.
cool video. One question - You compensate the same amount on every band on multiband compressor - isnt that the same as just turning gain up as a whole? Would love to see this kind of video how you master different songs.
Hey Darius. Thanks for the question. In the MB compressor, using makeup gain in the presence of compression is not the same as simply turning up gain. Turing up gain would leave the dynamic range of the signal untouched. In this case, I'm shaping each band with compression, and using different attack, release, ratio, and ranges for each band. It was just a coincidence that I turned up each bands makeup gain by the same amount. The amount of makeup gain I use depends on the amount of compression I'm getting in each band. In this case, I was just being very gentle and each band only need a touch of makeup.
Thanks for being a subscriber to the channel and all the best with your music!
I'd love to hear more opinions about oversampling. Particularly when it's beneficial
It’s beneficial for 3 main things. 1 is reducing aliasing if there is actually audible aliasing. 2 is dulling overly sharp transients if those are a problem. 3 is complying with ISP / true peak limiting requirements.
Super interesting! One thing that caught my attention here is that you chose to keep the "link" activated between the in and out on the clipper. So is it correct to say that you're really only using the clipper to chop the transients rather than boost any loudness and leaning entirely on the limiter for that? I've often heard people talk about the "clipper into limiter" workflow and assumed that meant letting each of them carry a bit o the load for boosting signal. Also curious what your thoughts are on using multiple plugins to boost loudness vs making a single limiter work "too hard" (another tip I've come by often).
Thanks for the content though, really detailed and clear.
Hey hey. Glad you enjoyed this one. Yes, I typically only use clipper that have an input / output gain link function. I like that workflow. It keeps you from making silly decisions because you've just boosted a ton of gain into the process and fooled your ears. You could also bring the ceiling down in Gold Clip or Orange Clip. That works great too. Some clippers (like K-Clip) attach the second non-oversampled hard clipping stage to the ceiling parameter. So you have to be careful with just pulling down the ceiling.
In terms of the clipper into limiter approach, you have it right. Usually it's an attempt to spread the load between multiple devices and clean up stray peaks before they hit the limiter. But more recently I think it makes more sense to put the clipper first in chain, so it cleans up stray peaks before all the level sensitive plugins in the chain and not just the limiter.
Refer to this new video on why you should't (and don't need to) push the mastering limiter very hard: th-cam.com/video/YpbV0INpHgc/w-d-xo.html
And check out this video for lots more on using clippers: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html
Cheers!
Enjoyed the video. Regarding clipping, is there a difference between pushing the input using the link option in Kclip as you demonstrate and turning the threshold down to meet the peaks?
Glad you liked this one. In K-Clip there is a "ceiling" control. It has 2 clipping circuits. This is a simple non-oversampled hard clipper with no control. The regular clipper stage can be softened and can be oversampled.
For me, I would never use the ceiling control. I typically only use the more full featured clipping stage. But yes, you could pull down the ceiling control to hit peaks - I just wouldn't recommend that. Cheers!
Incredibly informative video. Thanks so much for sharing this content, it is very helpful. 😊😊🙏🙏
You’re most welcome, glad it helped!
What are your thoughts on `true peak` options with limiters? Loving this type of content.
Good question. I only consider true peaks (aka TPs, aka ISPs) if I’m uploading to a DSP (Spotify / Apple Music etc) that requires keeping TPs at a certain max.
I never care about TPs when making loud DJ oriented music for .wav play.
You need to understand what TPL is doing. It’s engaging at a minimum 4x oversampling. This can and does cause a lot more limiting, which also causes more distortion and dull transients and artifacts. The downsampling process also causes overs that need to be hard clipped post limiter which again causes more potential distortion.
It’s debatable whether anyone even hears these theoretical “true peak overs” as distortion on DACs. Personally I have never heard one, not even on the hottest masters that read +2 or +3 true peak on a meter. Not on any of my playback systems. Not on my phone, car, multiple Bluetooth speakers, laptop or my 5 audio interfaces. Not a single one creates this issue, ever.
But I always hear the effects of TPL damaging the music with more limiting. Or causing you to have to back off the limiter to allow for the extra level detection.
So I pay it no mind. Unless the DSP or client asks for a TP master.
@@warpacademy Thanks for your response. This is great information, much appreciated!
My pleasure.
Thanks for the video. In the limiting stage you left 1:1 enabled on Pro-L2. Was this intentional, or do you disengage 1:1 before printing the final master.
Hey hey. Good catch and great question! I only activated unity loudness monitoring for the purposes of the video so the limited version didn't create a big loudness jump in the video. For the final render, I always deactivate that, and I would also adjust the final output ceiling down to account for things like lossy streaming compression amplitude noise, which I would simulate in Ozone Codec Preview or Streamliner. Cheers!
Hello, do you master within Ableton or is that chain used to create a premaster before sending out the track to master or mastering with another program?
Hey hey. I master in Ableton Live. The DAW you’re in matters little as long as it’s a VST plugin host. I never use native Ableton effects for mastering. You could master in Garage Band or Audacity if you really needed to.
And this is the final master. This went straight out to distro as you see the session here.
@@warpacademy Thank you so much for your response. Great video btw
Happy to help. All the best!
So do you prefer k clip or gold clip? Do you just use gold to start for micro transients, and k clip for pre-limiter boosting/taming?
They're different animals. Gold Clip is a mastering processor (or buss) with quite a few features not included in a regular clipper. It's also more heavy on processing. I also own K-Clip. In the past I used K-Clip as a lightweight track clipper for micro-clipping. But I swapped it out for the newer Orange Clip. Orange Clip is amazing, fast, lightweight, and sounds fantastic.
I could use either K-Clip or Orange Clip as a track clipper, but much prefer Orange Clip. Faster workflow and better interface.
For the master, I only use Gold Clip and I typically put it first in chain, or just before the limiter. Cheers!
I will never master my tracks but this video helped me to make better PreMasters. Especially that clipper is a great tip. I think I'm going to use Kclip on the busses before they reach the master chain
Great to hear! Happy it helped. Cheers!
Vesper if during mixing, EQ, and or Compression can we allow a tiny bit of clipping?
I use dedicated clipping (using K-Clip) all over my mixes. I use them on anything transient for sure. I adjust them so the gain reduction is transparent, only clipping several ms. The things I don't clip often or at all, are vocals, lead horns, and sub-bass. Everything else is fair game in the mix, but I only clip it if it can be done transparently. This makes the entire mix so loud that the amount of master clipping and limiting is often only a couple dB and the entire end result sounds much cleaner than a mix rammed into 6 dB of limiting on the master.
I do not plan to master. But I thought one day you need to learn something to tell someone what you want. Thank you
For sure. It's always good to understand the process. Cheers!
Real question is, why would you limit yourself ? With all techs available nowadays, mastering isnt difficult at all.
@@emmanuel.n8458 I am not limited myself. I know what I want to do and the time I have for more important things. My speciality is singing and writing music. Even that I've learned there are many things I do not know about the production part to have a great sound. Those are the most important things to me. The rest can be left up to people I know have been mastering for decade.
what level do you aim for on the input before all these plugins? thabks
All of these plugins have 32 bit float processing or the ability to adjust input gain. Or in the HG2MS it has a density control. So really you just don’t want it clipping. Input levels are much less fussy than with analog or analog modeled gear.
Gotcha , its just some other tutorial i was watching, saying on the premaster channel gets gained it down to -20 on VU meter and cranks it up on the - 10 or limiter , basically top down mastering, not over power plugins that follow and gain stagin through them also hardware responds better if that makes sense! Thank you
That sounds like a mastering workflow that's relevant for people working out of the box on hardware. There's no reason to do that in the box, except possibly for analog modelled plugins.
gotcha, I do happen to work with outboard gear , good to know for in the box though
Ah yes. That makes total sense.
Thank you for this❤
Any time!
When i use limiters i always hear they eat transients(ever when tehy work like limiters), some of them eat the low end. So i stil don't get why to use a limiter instead a clipper, i mean when u want to preserve all original sound made before? Or you use the limiters for color the sound and attenuate the transients?
If you use a clipper only you’ll get a ton of distortion. Limiters are more transparent for digging into the signal for more sustained sounds. I use both. Clip. And then limit. Only a couple dB on each.
@@warpacademy aaaah limiters are more about sustained sounds, clear now. Thanks for the answer, so usefull.
Hey hey. Not necessarily. But yes you can dig into the RMS / body of the signal more with a limiter.
@@warpacademy wait a sec, maybe i've explained bad(sorry for my english). I do usually like this, work a single sound: i eliminate the resonances, then i process the sound, then i mix it in the rest of mixdown. Sometimes happens this: the sound sounds well but it has some peak/s i can't eliminate without the change the sound, so i use a clipper only for cut that peak/s, without have any alterations on sound inself, usually are a couple of db. Same for the groups, i cut only peaks that can't be eleminated without alterate how the whole group sound. Same logic i use on master. I notice this with limiters: if i use a limiter on master/group i usually obtain softer transients, same happens with low end, meanwhile when i'm using a clipper on master it doesn't make any changes at same level of loudness, al my original mixdown sounds like it was made only with more loudness. So the limiter works after a clipper more like a "classic compressor", i mean it needs to shape other peaks also, meanwhile a clipper needs only to clip without alterate the sound inself?
Another question, apart so loud masters people do now, what is the best level for you like rms/lufs for have a better dynamics and loudness compromiss in hard electronic music? I mean without follow the actual loudness wars and touching 0 rms or more at master. I remember around 12-15 years ago the compromiss between loudness and dynamics was around at -7rms.
Thanks for the clarification. There's a key thing to understand here. Limiters will contain and shave transients, but do so in a way that is as transparent as possible. However, when pushed, they can make the transients sound dull, especially if you use lookahead and oversampling.
Clippers create distortion. They are different tools. When you use a clipper to only shave transients, it'll do so in a way that the transient often sounds a bit louder (and therefore more punchy) because of the little burst of distortion on the transients when the clipper shears it off.
A hard clipper causes odd harmonics and aliasing at the transient, which will make it sound quite a bit brighter. A soft clipper causes warmer harmonics at the transient.
In terms of what the best level is, I'm not able to answer that as it's entirely dependent on the genre and the individual song, the sound design, the mix etc. There is no universal number. You make the song sound good first. Don't try and target some level of loudness just because.
Great vocalist and you did wonderful.
Thanks very much! I know you're a vocalist, so that means a lot. Cheers!
@@warpacademy That put a smile on my smile about me being a vocalist. But you are welcome sir.
Cheers!
Very informative video in details thanks
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks, great video. Best/Mathias
You are welcome Mathias. Thanks for being a subscriber over the last few years. Cheers!
Please if you compare mastered and pre-master make same LUFS loudness..
Hey Andix. That is certainly a good practice. Did you see in the intro that I turned down the master dramatically to bring the level closer to the pre-master? I certainly did not play a full loudness master next to the pre-master. They are quite close although not exactly matched.
Then later in the video, in the section on the limiter, I used the Unity Gain function in Pro-L2 for an exact loudness matched comparison. Thanks for watching and all the best.
U are Gold Brother, Thank You!!!
You're welcome!
I really understand why headroom is so important. If you didn't have it there would be a problem.❤❤❤👍👍👍👍👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thanks for checking out the video Paula. Cheers!
@@warpacademy you are welcome. I appreciate these videos. They help me greatly.
Cheers Paula!
oversampling is strictly the processing and not the detecting of an input signal on virtually every single plugin ever made, and it certainly is QUALITY resolution based, it reduces truncation errors and aliasing, so what are you talking about?
Test it for yourself. Load up Pro-L2 and dial in limiting with no oversampling. Then add another Pro-L2 limiter behind it and oversample 16x. You will see more gain reduction. It absolutely causes the detector to read more peaks and triggers more limiting.
It’s the exact same thing that happens with TP limiting which in Pro-L2 adds 8x oversampled limiting in an additional stage. Every mastering engineer is aware of this, which is why many of them avoid TPL.
Also, don't take my word for it, I'll link you to 2 videos from people who are some of the most knowledgeable engineers and producers publishing videos on TH-cam:
David Gnozzi from @mixbustv about oversampling limiters and dulling transients: th-cam.com/video/AtCnLW0i8x8/w-d-xo.html
@Baphometrix about not oversampling clippers: th-cam.com/video/PR1o5LQzEB0/w-d-xo.html
Also the argument that OS reduces aliasing is an odd one as aliasing is rarely audible but more limiting is certainly audible. It’s a bad trade off IMO.
@@warpacademy I'd very much love for you to delve into this topic in another video, as teased above. Definitely made my ears perk up hearing it being mentioned in this one. Curiosity piqued.
I think your question was answered very well.
For sure. It's a very interesting topic. For me the journey started by getting DMG Limitless. I was searching for the oversampling feature in the limiter, searched the manual, and found zero mention of oversampling. I was sure it was an oversight or me not looking in the right place, so I contacted their tech support. Their answer floored me. They said they did not include oversampling in their limiter AT ALL (except in the clipping and TPL stages). Their main limiter cannot be oversampled. Their reply was "for accurate sample peak limiting you cannot use oversampling".
That made complete sense to me when I thought it through. More limiting than is necessary can ruin a master. Oversampling causes detection of intersample peaks, which are higher in level, and causes the limiter to react to them. This is why so many MEs detest the sound of TPL. All it is is oversampling (in FF Pro-L2 it's done as a second stage limiter with 8x OS).
@@warpacademy I'm not intimately familiar with the fab filter limiter, that said if oversampling causes a limiters input sensing threshold to react differently to transients? Its simply a poorly designed plugin, And as a side, any time you can reduce truncation errors, aliasing and any other inexplicable digital space monkeys from your chain, you are removing the accumulative upper harmonic artifacts they create in the audible range, you do you bro
🙌
Meanwhile some of the best electronic artists in the world slap a hard clipper on it and ship it 😂
Clipping is a really great technique -and a much more appropriate technique for electronic music. Not as useful here as hard clipping introduces far too much distortion to be used very much in the context of this type of song with exposed vocals and organic instruments.
As an engineer you have to know what tool to use in what context. I prefer to use hard clipping in a the mix for electronic master. There are a lot of reasons why you would not want to push a hard clipper very much on a master (intermodulation being one of the main reasons).
I did several videos on clipping for electronic music that you might enjoy. This one on The Science of Clipping: th-cam.com/video/5sAm7McrkA0/w-d-xo.html and this one on how to Master Loud: th-cam.com/video/YpbV0INpHgc/w-d-xo.html
Ozone maximizer >> pro l2
They’re both decent. I usually prefer Limitless over both of them. Not always tho. And Sonible smart:limit is great too. It’s good to test them out and see which ones you like on the specific program material.
no matter if your mastering is PRO when what you get is lifeless
What does that even mean?
Regarding my use of the word "Pro" in the video title... I actually struggled a bit with using that as I think it can be an overused buzzword. So I asked myself, what does it mean to be pro? My definition is someone who is doing this professionally, getting paid, making a living, and doing it frequently with a sizeable base of real clients. On reflection, I definitely fit that description which is why I used that word in the title.
Your comment is rather ambiguous, so I'm not sure if what you're really meaning to say is that you think the master is "lifeless". If that's the case, you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I generally only respect 2 types of people asserting opinions about my work: 1) My client - who as you can see, approved and loved the master, 2) Other professionals in the industry who are doing this type of work and have skin in the game and real world experience.