Mastering Deep Dive - Achieving Competitive Loudness and Elevate vs Pro-L2
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- In this video (suitable for all DAWs--not just Bitwig) I explain my approach to mastering dance/bass music to "competitive" loudness levels. Yes, you should mix into your mastering chain! (And I explain why). I also do a side-by-side comparison of two popular mastering limiters among the EDM community (Elevate vs Pro-L2), and demonstrate why Elevate is a very powerful limiter for helping you achieve competitive loudness without destroying your mix.
If you enjoyed this video, please do me a solid and not only like the video (and subscribe to my channel), but also give me a follow on SoundCloud and Spotify. Thanks!
/ baphometrix
open.spotify.c...
Bruh, I've spent the last 10 years learning everything I know about digital audio producing/engineering on RUclips, and I swear on everything.. this is the ONLY channel that truly emparts the "secret" or what seems to be secret knowledge on how to mix and master to be truly successful.
Every channel seems to repeat the same information over and over, but it never seems to go beyond 5th grade level. The information in this channel is like being close friends with a true audio engineer. The day I found this channel was the day I FINALLY transcended into the inner circle. It only took me 10 years to find this information! Swear I f***ing love this damn channel.
What he said * (^2)...
YES, I've been in the same boat for over a decade and it's so frustrating. Even stuff you'd pay for doesn't include this kind of info. There's no actual PROCESS. I appreciate it more than words can even say. It's ridiculous really that, considering all the other info "everyone already knows" about producing... it's these loudness tricks that seem to be impossible to find unless you know the right people in your community/scene or have friends that are supremely smart and into this stuff. But even then, their ability to quantify it in this way is rarely this understandable and obtainable.
"Tricks" isn't even a good way to put it. I guess I really mean essential tips!
@@badnrad nailed it!
Ive been trying to learn to mix and master since the days before youtube, when it was really hard to find any resources on the subject.
But this is honestly one of the best sources of advanced mixing tips I have found.
Absolutely insane how different the groove was with the hi hats... wow
Pure genius! I prefer this form Netflix! :)
Thanks you!
Thank you for putting this video together! It inspired me to dig deep into my existing Pro-L workflow, investigate what I liked about it and look at places where I can absolutely leverage Elevate as a direct replacement for improving my mixes.
I love how you explained this. Damn. And I believe in one of the old videos you did mention how pro L 2 had supposedly wrongly named their knobs where lookahead was the real Attack absolutely blew my mind to think bout it like that. Thanks for what you do man I’m so looking forward to learning more with you this the kind of tutorial you don’t find online for real
I can see why the Elevate Limiter is much more transparent and sounds louder. I'm actually quite surprised. I still think the Pro L2 has a benefit in terms of loudness when you have a well-balanced mix to begin with...which takes a good amount of work to begin with. So, there's that. But that Elevate Limiter is something else. This test kind of sold me. I think you'd benefit from putting a light clipper on the input first, followed by a waveshaper, and then put a limiter on that. I think you can get a more apparent loudness on top of the RMS level. Whatever...awesome video.
Yeah the chain you described is literally what i use for my masters and it sounds amazing, so clean and loud with a low rms
In the Elevate Vs Pro-L comparison, the Attack and release timings are way different. Youre at a fast speed response on Elevate (5ms), while youre pushing 275ms for the Pro-L attack, No wonder it sounds different.
that was a REALLY good video and indeed indepth! Producing DnB for about 6 years now and also switched from Ozone to Pro-L (not the new one). actually at first ozone sounded more clear and the Pro-L more smooth till I discovered that with the look-ahead the pro-L tries so not distort at all cost… also the hard transients, so you actually have to "force" Pro-L to clip the transient more before the limiter kicks in by lowering the look ahaid. Furthermore you can lengthen the attack and shorten the release. I have very extreme settings: Look-Ahead (0ms), Attack (~300ms), release (30ms). Sure might not work for everyone but for me it does :) Big up!!
That mastering tutorial recorded in the kitchen while your wife is cooking diner is the best in years. I really appreciate that. I can smell the food through my screen, it is soothing. Your channel is underrated and this should change soon. You got my sub hands down. Hopefully you enjoyed a well deserved cool diner after this. Cheers from France.
i love the fact that you choose to talk further from the mic before actually talk. All tutorials like these should be made like you are doing it.Thank you !!
there was so many "ah ha!" - it makes sense moments in this from start to finish, huge lesson, thank you so much!
Awesome vid. Elevate is a beast, you've inspired me to experiment more with t
Really excellent Tutorial, you sure know what ur talkin' about, thx very much !
great video, and these tips do not just apply to bass music, this is useful and important for every genre!
Wow, I totally agree that it's important to use the limiter early when you're choosing the kick and snare (and the other percussion elements, usually). Only then can you know you'll not be frustrated later, at the end!
Meaning, using Limiter in the Mix, compare, and then take it out again for the master?
This is a really informative video and very well explained. I own both but I never liked Pro-L or my Limitless or any limiters for that matter because of what they do to transients. I've always followed them with something like Waves Transx to make up for transient loss. Elevate is the first limiter I ended up getting use out of because it's fantastic for dealing with transients.
I'm so glad I picked elevate bundle 😁
Tbh... Fabfilter with those different modes gives in some character to the sound I tend to use it more on the bus groups to saturate some things a bit... While I keep elevate on my master
That was really helpful, thank you so much!
so much love for this
Really appreciate your analysis here. I've just started studying Elevate and certainly, it seems quite comprehensive.
My favorite limiter these days is elevate. I usually click the custom button and stick with the frequency bands that gives you. Then, I sometimes increase the transient emphasis for the couple lowest bands and also the EQ. The rest I usually leave in default, but if I find some frequencies that need adjustment, I can do it. Usually, though, it's better to go back into the mix and fix issues there. My other favorite limiter is TC Electronic MD4. It just, very much like elevate, gives that "radio pop" sound. Or, as I like to say, "that sound" that I hear in my favorite EDM and pop songs. Usually, I prefer a little bit of clipping before the limiter. That's one thing I don't like about elevate: you can't put the clipper (saturator) before the limiter. But no big deal; I put Standard Clip in the chain. I also like the fact that elevate gives you the individual tools too (the individual plugins). I find that transient shaping (bitwig has a great one) is often very important early in percussion design.
I just love how you said True Peak does not matter because I know that also. I been mixing and mastering since the 90's and then went and got my degree at Fulsail University back in 2003 when they were teaching Nuendo as that industry standard but anyways that's exactly how I do my digital mastering with the plugin on as I'm mixing but I also have a lot of rack mount gear for my Analog mastering and I still say Analog pumps more in the car and digital is good for online! My opinion. Thanks for the video though
Thank for the knowledge man, it's a blessing. Hope you get everything you're working for x
Great video, thank you. Been using elevate for years. Love it. Pro L sounded better on iPad speakers than elevate but on my monitors elevate sounded better.
Incredibly enlightening. Thanks!✌🏽
Yes! OMG, somebody else finally said it! Go look at commercial tracks! They have over 0dB true peaks! That's the way the pros do it, and if you think that's not right, you just haven't looked.
Wow, just wow! Thank you. So subtle, so perfect!
Thanks, never considered a different limiter than my ozone / Plugin Alliance vst. This limiter to opened a new world due to the surgical precision on different bands. I had any terrbile mix that seems not fixabel, elevate saved it 100%. They only downside the steep prize.
Excellent video
The ProL sounded louder but the Elevate more transparent. I wonder how much farther you could’ve pushed the Elevate.
yessss, been waiting for this topic :)))))
Excellent tut! Thank you
great and detailed analysis
L2, to me, sounded overall livelier with more low freq energy 🤷🏻♂️ I swear even it’s snare sounded more “open.” I could really hear the compression/limiting in elevate. I can’t believe we’re hearing this in such opposite ways. haha. i’m also in my car (environment). but hey…that’s where I listen to most music 🤷🏻♂️ I AGREE WITH YOUR HI HAT ASSESSMENT THOUGH.
Masterclass! Thanks!
Apples and oranges ... Elevate has all the post functions, such as transient control etc., which are all switched on in your test. These are the default settings, but the comparison would have been fairer if you had turned off all these settings. That's why the Elevate sounds better, because in contrast to the L2 in the example here, it doesn't have a "pure" limiter function.
Thank you for this. would you use Elevate on your drum buss, or do you put it on the mastering chain and mix the rest of the song with these settings?
Excellent. Doing that Seth Drake workshop right now, finding pro-L tricky when really pushing luffs. I will say dynamic mode in pro-L is excellent for loudness and not fucking transients but you gotta be careful of distortion. Don't forget liberal oversampling
really great stuff, been making music 10+ years and youve explained things in a way counter to what most people do (just because someone on youtube told them to do it). Great stuff. Please can you do a video on why most kicks and snares wont be able to get pushed to -7LUFS (you said that was a whole other discussion in itself around the 30min mark). Would love to learn more about this.
Thanks again
Well.... the real answer to that question is somewhat complex and revolves around good arrangement and good mixing. The short, simple answer is that even the "fat sausage" kicks and snares that you often find in sample packs can indeed be used in a song that you can successfully push VERY loud (even louder than -7 LUFS). But to do this requires an approach to arrangement and mixing that is nuanced and difficult to explain. The best clue I can give you in this format is to say that if a heavy, overcompressed and already-clipped-to-its-breaking-point kick and snare sample are literally the loudest elements in your entire mixbus (master track), and *everything else* is carefully sequenced and mixed to sit NEXT to the kick/snare but not also ON TOP of the kick/snare, then you can get very very loud.
@@Baphometrix Thanks for the reply I think I understand, so good mixing will help. I make DnB/ Neurofunk, so quite often the kick overlaps the bass. I Now bounce out my sub bass separately from the main bass and use short gaps and fades on the audio sample so that the kicks low end does not play at the same time as the sub bass. is this a suitable way to do it as well? since the sub is completely cut out when each kick hits (by visually chopping the subs audio out and fading it in)
@@SwitchUpBroadcast Yes, you're on the right track! Imagine a super loud track that looks like one fat sausage end-to-end. If you already have *some* sounds (like a heavy, overcompressed and clipped-to-the-breaking-point kick sample) that are already themselves a short little segment of this "one fat sausage end to end", the trick is to ask yourself how to avoid summing anything else with that kick sample. It's already filling up all the headroom to the top of the track's potential loudness, right? So what are techniques you can use to avoid overlapping anything else with that heavy kick sample? If you *do* overlap something with that kick, the summed peaks will go way over the "ceiling" for your track, and then you have to squash that summed result back down, with clippers or limiters, etc. That's when sound starts "to fall apart" and the kick starts sounding *distorted and soft* instead of full and loud and heavy.
@@Baphometrix I understand. Thank you. And thanks for the videos.
Will be going over the rest in your channel over the next few days.
Would love a video showing how you go about matching your track to the refrence track, from more of a frequency perspective (since you've already covered loudness)
Would be cool to see how you approach filling the frequency range to match that of your reference track.
@@SwitchUpBroadcast There isn't much to say about this other than "use a spectrum analyzer in which you can set the slope to 3.0, which looks like a horizontal line when you feed pink noise into it". Then the trick is to ensure that most of your song, even in the quiet sections, are filling out a lot of that frequency spectrum EVENLY (aka "your waveform looks mostly 'flat across').
In a referencing plugin like Metric AB (my favorite), you can set the slope of its spectrum meter to 3.0. And then you can see how nearly all of your good reference tracks will have a spectral balance that looks "horizontal and flat across" for the most part. And especially in the loudest high-energy sections (the drops or choruses).
If your spectrum analyzer doesn't allow you to set the slope, look around for another one. MAnalyzer (from Melda) and SPAN (from Voxengo) are both free and both let you set the slope.
Elivate has some amazing adaptive parameters going on. I think Pro L is more of a “basic” limiter. Definitely makes me want Elivate though! Thanks for this series bro, it’s really got me thinking! H
You need soft clipping and saturation (sometimes even applied separately on each track) to reach -4/-5 Lufs, limiting will just not do the trick. Edit: also, your sub-100Hz frequencies should have pretty much 0 dynamic range if you want to reach those Lufs levels with good powerful bass
Yes. This is why there were no less than 3 different saturators (which work by clipping) in the mixbus and mastering chains I briefly show at the end. And that's not including the upstream clippers/saturators that will be on group busses and individual tracks as needed in a full project. It's all about about creating the right amount of crest factor AND the right leveling of mix elements as you head into the final stages of clipping/limiting on the mixbus. Okay, granted, Oxford Inflator isn't strictly a clipper/saturator, but it has the same effect in the end, so I consider it as basically a saturator.
@@Baphometrix yes, basically any kind of soft wave shapping does the trick you're right!
Please post timestamp (chapters) of topics. I didn't see one in the comments. Thanks!!
I find latency also affects the time when a control is changed and when that change is heard.
You should’ve put the Pro L2 on Punchy or All setting. The snare would’ve reacted, totally different on the settings. They are very genre specific settings.
NIce share ! I'd like to have your opinion about the Invisible limiter and the TR5 stealth Limiter ..have you ever tried them ?
I have no direct hands-on experience with either one.
“I’m gonna talk”
ok, so we're obviously not talking about "Dark Side if the Moon" or "Midnight Mushrumps" here... lol
what happened to the good old days with music with wide dynamic ranges?
If you compare Elevate and ProL2, may be compare the same processing, and disable the transient shaper of Elevate ? proL3 has no transient shaper.
Thanks for the awesome video, I am really interested in how/where you go that FX selector set up?
It's a unique feature in the DAW called "Bitwig Studio"
@@Baphometrix Okay thank you, I totally thought that was Live when I first watched the video, TBH I was watching it as a secondary task.
Have you played around with Transparent mode in L2? It tends to be my default for the same reasons you like Elevate. Its noticeably crisper to my ears; especially with 8x oversampling . I don't have elevate so haven't compared.
I used to just use "Modern" without thinking too much about it. But these days I tend to try out different algorithms and several different Mastering plugins to see which one suits the song material the best. It takes a while to learn what to listen for, though. As a newer producer you struggle hard enough just to hit competitive loudness without killing the mix entirely. ^.^ Once you get over that hump then you can start learning to hear the differences between various mastering plugins.
Late to the party, but i use "Transparent" mode on Pro-L as well with longer Attack time and it really gives more punch than "modern" mode.
Did I miss the part where you talk about true peak limiting?
great vid, but I don't agree about ignoring true peak and setting the ceiling to 0.0 db. It might be fine on a decent converter and when played back as wav, but go ahead and convert your 0.0-ceiling-wav to 320 kBit mp3 and look at the peak levels then. They might be more than 3-4 db louder now. Now push that through a consumer dac and listen closely. You are "mushing" your transients and loosing punch because of uncontrolled distortion.
Now go further and make a 160 kBit mp3 from your over 0db True peak master and listen to that and check the peak levels...
Not toalking about 128 kBit, which is Soundcloud-quality.
I would never go over -0.1 db True Peak (I personally never go over -0.3 db) if you want a somewhat consistent sound quality from your music, as all the other factors you can not control. But you can control your sound up to almost 0 db.
You're not wrong. But neither am I, lol. I analyze a LOT of reference tracks and many--most--of them don't care about true peak at all. They master right up to 0 dBFS sample peak.
But yes, absolutely. Keeping your masters at roughly -0.5 or -1.0 True Peak will result in fewer/no ISPs when transcoded to lossy formats such as MP3 or AAC. No question. BUT you'll lose nearly a full 1.0 LUFS or more by attempting to stay under those True Peak constraints. Which is probably why very few producers will let their mastering engineers do that.
Talk to any mastering engineer and they'll tell you how every lone producer and every label team will say "make it louder. It's gotta be as loud as this other artist XYZ."
Yeah I’m going to have to compare this in my studio too as I’m sceptical! Imo the standards for mixing and mastering are absolutely awful in the EDM world, possibly because of the DIY nature of the genre. So, many top artists don’t have gorgeous sounding mixes in this genre. Shame! I wouldn’t use what they do as my guide, but rather purely what sounds good
So I am very curious to stick my fav edm masters into a DAW and see the read outs. Perhaps he’s right! But whenever I’ve gone to professional mastering engineers, they’ve capped it at -0.1db
I too was always taught to keep it from peaking because the sonic results become unpredictable once you go past 0 (unlike a tailored distortion). But perhaps that’s old advice
@@thatb7708 In my experience -0,3 db FS is enough to not have ISPs with 320 kBit mp3s. No need to go lower. And I don't think that -0,3 db less loudness make such a difference considering that you are not risking clipping cheaper converters and keeping the integrity of your sound :)
Curious about your findings after your analyses.
@@amertrnovac975 hi does turning true peak on or off effect loudness or transients? What are the benefits of turning true peak off in your limiter?
@@ralsten Hej Jack, this is just my opinion, but how I understand it is that true peak limiting will also account for the peaks over 0 dB that can occur during Digital to Analog Conversion. If true peak limiting is turned off you could potentially clip the DA converter of the playback system during playback. This also means that some transients might get clipped which you may or may not like. I for my part always use True Peak Limiting because I like to know that the sound will not get additionally 'processed' by the playback system. Basically you rule out the variable of the DA converter of the playback system. Loudness-wise you lose maybe 0.2 db of loudness when using TP Limiting, which is negligible IMHO.
Hi, I'm having trouble seeing the entire plugin in pro tools. I get cut off at the bottom. Lower. Could you tell me why this happens. I appreciate an answer. Greetings and thanks.
My guess is that it's related to screen-scaling and hi density monitor support by either ProTools or Eventide. I'd reach out to their tech support and report the issue you're seeing.
Thanks for this, what about invisible limiter? What's more, Could you make a video about how achieve the best low/sub like pro tracks and how achieve separation and clarity of each instrument in the mix.
Invisible Limiter became a popular limiter with some producers in louder genres mainly because of its unique ability to set a ceiling value ABOVE 0 dBFS. This enables you to effectively add some additional hard clipping to the top of the mastered waveform (because any signal over 0 dBFS will be hard clipped). It's a perfectly good limiter in other respects, but I don't personally use it much because it's very "old school" with archaic and not-useful metering of its action on the signal.
As for achieving "best low/sub" sound "like pro tracks", there are lots and lots of good videos out there about the various techniques for doing so. I tend to make videos about stuff I never see anyone else explain on RUclips. The basic concept is simple: laptop speakers, built in speakers on TV screens, phone speakers, and a lot of bluetooth "brick" speakers can't really put out signal below 100 Hz because the speakers are so tiny and literally can't "push the air volume" needed to make your sub audible to the listener. So you must SOMEHOW add additional things above 100 Hz that are part of your "sub" sound. There are SO MANY ways to do this. Look for videos about "making good subs" and similar search phrases.
Hi, how heavy is this plugin, thinking about buying it, but Im not sure, thanks.
Thank you for this extremely informative tutorial!
What according to you should the limiter's final output be set at? Should it be at - 1.0 db to prevent distortion / unwanted artifacts when the master is uploaded to streaming services which result in lossy encoding ?
If you plan to upload a master to the various streaming services, then yes, if you want the LEAST amount of degradation from the lossy encoding process, setting a True Peak ceiling at -1.0 dB on your limiter is advisable. In practice, though, you might be happy with this ONLY if you're making a relatively dynamic song. In the genres where competitive loudness is important, you will typically find that to hit -7 LUFS integrated across your loudest drop and NOT destroy your mix, you have to run the ceiling pretty much at 0 dBFS sample peak. And in this case, the True Peak values will often be in the +1 to +2 range. So think about what it means to set the ceiling on your limiter to -1.0 TP in this scenario.... You'd effectively be turning the track down by as much as -3 LU to stay under that "ideal" ceiling. This would mean you'd need to crush that limiter for another full 3 dB of gain reduction. Which will probably squash your mix into a lifeless paste.
This "problem" is one of the reasons you see loud electronic and pop songs not giving two cents about the True Peak value. It's why I see so many of my reference tracks clearly hitting a 0 or -0.1 sample peak ceiling and the True Peaks up in the +1, +2, and +3 range. So..... it's a trade off. Squash your mix into a lifeless paste to make a lossy encoding process a LITTLE less terrible than it already is? Or make the best master you can and just understand that lossy encoding generally sucks and will make your track sound not nearly as good as lossless. For myself, if I'm making a song that *needs* to be competitively loud, I ignore True Peak if necesary, and I set my ceiling as high as 0 sample peak if necessary. Emphasis on the "if necessary"--I'll always start out with the limiter's ceiling set at -1 TP. But I might need to relax that if I'm having trouble making the master loud enough without too much damage. But if I'm making a song destined for Spotify and NOT needing to play in the loudness war? Then yes I set the limiter at -1 TP and just make my master sound as loud and good as possible for that particular song. You can hear an example of this in my song "Freya" (by "DubSkald", which is my other artist name when I'm not making bangers). That song is hitting more like -10 LUFS in the loudest sections, and the limiter ceiling was at -1.0.
@@Baphometrix once again, thank you for this information - the internet can be a confusing place but things have started making a lot more sense after watching your tutorials!
I've been working on this deep house master which sounds fairly good as a wav file, but the hi hats start coming apart and sounding horribly shrill - accompanied by random clicks & pops - when I upload it to Soundcloud to test the impact of encoding. My limiter is set at an output of -1 dbTP and it's not exceeding 4 db of gain reduction, so I'm quite confused if there's something wrong with the mix or if it's just the lossy encoding.
@@godofinsanity14 It's hard to say. Hats are hard to get right, and it's easy to end up with a lot of harsh resonances lurking in them. SoundCloud is... meh? Do you have another way to make MP3s locally and test them out?
@@Baphometrix I ended up using the codec preview feature on Ozone to find the problem in the mix - turns out there were some harsh resonances in the 14k - 20k region which got tamed after I used a steep high cut filter. The hats became a bit thinner but well, at least those glitchy clicks are gone!
I have to say trying to hear the difference on youtube (though I'm also listening with bluetooth aptx-HD earbuds) is pretty much imperceptible. There's so much filtering happening to the lossy formats to truly KNOW the difference that isn't also being contaminated by the lossy encoding filtering.
Really cool tutorial, though! As a mastering engineer I've enjoyed a lot of limiter shootouts, and there are a few great ones put together in some mastering forums that Bob Katz have done, as well as others.
I think it's your bluetooth earbuds getting in the way. You need to listen to producer tutorials with good headphones or good studio monitors. The things I demonstrate are clear as day to me even through RUclips.
@@Baphometrix Listened again on proper headphones now that I'm back in my studio, and still not getting a "dramatic" difference. Is it perceptible? Barely, yes. I'd still be so inclined as to pull a rip of the stream off to see what the effect of the encoding is on the audio output.
@@NeologicStudios Nothing much I can say in response to "I can't hear a dramatic difference". If you're cool with a limiter than has to do 8 dB of gain reduction to hit the same integrated LUFS as a different limiter that needs to do only 6.7 dB of gain reduction to hit the same LUFS, and if you're cool with the limiter doing 8 dB of gain reduction also having audibly squashed transients on both the snare and the high hats, then you're cool with it. :)
@@NeologicStudios Okay, here's what I recommend you try (after thinking about my last answer to your latest comment). Go to the 41:40 mark (link ruclips.net/video/OKvG6aqiYeI/видео.html ) and listen close to the timbre and envelope of the snare as I demonstrate too much transient emphasis vs. too little transient emphasis in Elevate. The change in the snare is more drastic and obvious in those examples. If you acustom your ear/brain to "hear" that specific difference, go back and listen to the earlier comparisons between Elevate and Pro-L and see if you can detect the same type of difference in the snare. It's far more subtle, and yes, RUclips lossy compression codecs do mask it a *tiny* bit, but the difference is still there and still quite audible to an ear that's trained to hear what over-compression and over-limiting sounds like.
In my fully treated studio (+-3dB full spectrum) on Neumann monitors, the difference is night and day. It's insane! Been using Pro-L2 for a long time, but now I might switch. :) I used to use several limiters/clippers and used the L2 at the end of my chain for just ~2dB final gain reduction.
Does anyone notice the sound metric ab imparts on Low mids
You are doing 6.3db of gain reduction on Elevate and 8 db on Pro L2. Of course they are going to sound different.
Same input gain, same output LUFS. Different internal algorithms to achieve these results because two different internal limiter processes. The actual GR values are dependent on the internal limiter process AND the accuracy of the limiter's metering. FWIW, I'm not a fan of Elevate's metering. I find it buggy and not very informative.
@@Baphometrix I remixed a song recently using your CTZ method on a customer's song. Customer was very pleased with result. Told me to replace old version with new version.
@@southernman2 What is the CTZ method?
@@a2bs333 (Clip To Zero)
Look in Baphometrix's You Tube channel. It's easy to find the ctz method.
very cool beat, "minimal dubstep;-)"
thanks for the video. Any thoughts on the new smart limit by sonible?
Not a fan in its current state. It has potential to be good, but first they need to enable us to turn off True Peak limiting and instead use Sample Peak limiting. Also the corner frequency on their "Bass" knob is set too high, so the energy it steals from the sub region FFTs to do its transparency magic elsewhere in the spectrum is too aggressive and cannot be put back with the bass knob. Basically, it's a terrible limiter for bass-heavy music at present. They might fix these things, though, so maybe someday?
😎 - 3 lufs gang
thanks for the vids have you done a deep dive into Sublab?
Not a deep dive but I've mentioned it here and there.
The snare has way more detail with Elevate, to my ears. Could this be the detail re-integration it uses?
Yep. Specifically in the Transient and Clipper sections. This blog post by Dan Gillespie explains why the Clipper section is so magical: www.newfangledaudio.com/post/saturate-1-7-0-preserving-detail-while-clipping
Where could one find that "FX SELECTOR" plugin he is using?
Oh, it's Bitwig. Got it. Thanks!
22:14 22:50
When should we use true peak limiting in pro l???
In my opinion, never. Nobody "in the know" cares about True Peak values. They're almost always too short and ephemeral to worry about. You'll pretty much never _hear_ any distortion from intersample peaks if the mix is even close to decent.
Thank you Baphometrix! Do you allready got a video of the Kick and snare/clap Coexistence and mixing them or how to see that there is no further coexistence of those two?
Thank you again for your lessons! [edit] have you videos where you get much deeper in context with what you have talked about the last 5minutes in this video?
i owe you some bucks man... let me know your donationemail!
Thanks Broose. No donations; I'm not a pro RUclipsr trying to earn some extra scratch off of RUclips. I just share knowledge to help other producers (when I can find a little spare time). As to your question about snares/claps when they sit right on top of a kick hit, that's actually somewhat simple. When you have something like a four-on-the-floor steady beat song (think "house", etc.) with both a kick *and* a snare/clap hitting together on the backbeats of each bar, yeah you have to do some special things to keep the transients from really summing up to huge peaks on those back beats. There are four basic strategies in such songs:
A. Choose your kick and snare carefully. Usually the kick is the main sound holding down both the down and back beats, and the snare should be fairly "mellow" and not "piercing".
B. Level your snare/clap *much* lower than usual. You want just enough volume on them to make them audible on top of the kick. In many cases it can sound like just a slightly different, sharper-sounding kick. So for example, normally I gainstage my kick to hit at -12 peak and my snare to also hit at -12 peak. But if I'm doing a steady beat song that also has a snare/clap, I might instead level that snare/clap so that it's hitting at more like -18 to -24 peak by itself.
C. Use a clipper plugin on your combined kick/snare group. (Many of us bass music producers have special processing on the combined sound of only the kick and snare, because they're two of the most important sounds in nearly every bass music project.) You do this by making a special group/bus for just your kick and snare, then using a clipper to shear off the summed peaks of the kick and snare when they hit together. The end result should be your kicks alone and your summed kick/snare hits both peaking at the same level on the group/bus meter.
D. Use EQ slotting to dip some of the kick energy where the snare fundamental and snare's important harmonics are sitting, and conversely also dip the snare in the spectrum where the most important aspects of the kick are happening.
Baphometrix your personality is somehow outstanding in a very Philantrophysticated meaning!
thank you
The subbass is placed in that Kick-and Clap/snarebus, too right? or do you send the kick and the snare into a bus and aligning the subphase afterwards (with busing the subbass and the kick at notime)?
@@BrooseWayniac Good question. So.... the first thing to remember is that every "group" in Bitwig (or Ableton) is itself a bus. This is why in Bitwig and Ableton (since v10), it's kinda pointless to make special standalone "bus" tracks and set up all sorts of crazy routing from track to track, eventually all summing up to the master (or mixbus) track. Instead, you just think of logical ways to group your tracks and then apply as much processing to the GROUPs as possible rather than to individual tracks.
An approach like that enables you to, for example, put ONE sidechain ducking device onto a single Group track, and thereby duck ALL the tracks inside that group.
Okay so with that setup, in my projects I duck the sub to the kick. And I duck all of my "Drop Sounds" to both my kick and my snare. So that means on my sub track (or sub Group, if I have multiple different subs in the project), I put a ducker into which I've sidechained my kick. And then over on my "Drop Sounds" group, I put TWO duckers: one into which I've sidechained my kick, and the other into which I've sidechained my snare.
Hope that helps. :)
25:00 why elevate better
I TOTALLY agree that it is necessary to master up around at least -6LUFS to achieve the required density and "that sound." I'm sorry, but all those who say this isn't necessary or that the user can just turn up the volume do not understand.
am I the only one who prefers the Pro L2 in comparison?
Honestly, you're not alone. It kinda depends on the material/genre, and also on the specifics of the mix. Elevate's default-ish settings will tend to reduce the sub/low energy by a wee bit, but that's why they give you control over spectral bands, so you can tell it to leave that spectral region alone.
At the end of the day, Pro-L2 is VERY capable, sounds great, and most importantly is easy to use with excellent metering options.
I personally just AB compare both limiters and try a few things and decide which one I like better for a specific project.
Baphometrix thank you. I was curious at the elevate because of the discount they have. I am already using Pro L2.
Thank you for doing this.
i dunno man.. the elephant in the room is some very expensive software i wont mention.
I don't understand why you're running this test at +8db input on elevate and +10 db input on pro L... am i missing something?
That's exactly the kind of difference i hear, that "one has a higher input". If this was a blind test, that's the answer i would give...
Also, it seems that this is reflected in the displayed gain reduction for both plugins
The two tracks are at -7 LUFS...
i think that's part of the point, he's getting the exact same lufs on both but L2 needs to be pushed harder than Elavate
@@shonjojelvey_beats8394 why he needs to do that if the two versions are the same Loudness ...?
@@chriskozeer he had to push Elevate by 8 db to get -7 LUFS. He had to push ProL2 by 10 db to get -7 LUFS. They're two different pieces of software and handle the material differently.
Who needs dynamic range nowadays. It is not really important in music
Wow pro L2 is gross