I hope you enjoyed this one! Here are the videos I recommend watching next: ✅ Watch Part 2: The Full Mastering Session: ruclips.net/video/xnTpwu0YbU0/видео.html ✅ How to Build the ULTIMATE DIY Acoustic Sound Panels for Music Studios: ruclips.net/video/ECazGzutkV8/видео.html ✅ DMAX SuperCubes 5 Ultra-Nearfields Review: ruclips.net/video/yzopMQBlTZY/видео.html ✅ Interview with Nicholas Di Lorenzo @Panorama_Mastering: ruclips.net/video/hm93gDqOYis/видео.html ✅ Panorama Mixing & Mastering Video on iZotope RX: ruclips.net/video/rbWvG5fuV0Q/видео.html
Great walk through! Thanks for sharing. At 9:10 to avoid normalising you can de-clip more than -8; just use the slider in the viewfinder screen (click on the number) rather than inside the plugin.
Cheers Nicholas. Thanks so much for sharing this process in RX. I'm just following in your footsteps. And I appreciate the tip on De-Clip. Funny how easy it is to overlook things like that. Thanks mate.
That procaster mic sounds sooooo good for your voice during your tutorial. Your videos are just awesome man. Thanks for your wealth of knowledge and sharing with us. You’re a champion 🔥
Stop first all those flowers just makes the mind smile. Great start to creating. Beautiful flowers. Okay, I'm listening to the main part of the video, mastering prep.❤❤❤❤❤
Hey man, thank you very much for taking the time of showing us your processes. It is very informational, and there are not a lot of trustable sources out there. In internet, everybody knows everything and nothing at the same time. The work you did on RX as part of the mastering process is something that I don't see people discuss too much, most people would go straight to the DAW. You are very professional, and I look up to your work and career with utter admiration. Keep it up!
Great tutorial. I gave it a shot on a really short piece, to get the hang of it. My biggest take away was... if I'm not getting paid to do this, I'm just throwing Gold Clip on it next time...lol. It was good to get a better understanding of the RX program, and I'll probably give it another shot. I think I sucked the life out of the track by being a little too heavy handed though. Keep them coming.
Glad you liked this one. Yeah, it's really only necessary in genres like dnb and other bass music where they're being engineered like crazy for insane levels of loudness. You'd better believe this pays off there. But it is painstaking. I use this technique, plus Gold Clip, plus a limiter. Soon I'll be using multi-band clipping as well, as part of the mastering process to reduce intermodulation distortion when you dig into the RMS a bit more with a soft clipper. I'm just waiting for the perfect multi-band clipper to be released ;)
be aware when using phase rotation on a whole mix!!! it comes with sideeffects. Applying phase rotation basically applies a delay to lower frequencies, meaning the lower part of your snare for example will be delayed in relation to its higher frequencies (the transients) which will result in a less tighter sound. applying it on a whole mix is dangerous as you alter the tightness of your whole mix... however it is useful in some scenario's like creating your own drum samples for example.
Thanks Durk! I appreciate that. I remember back when we were doing lessons and you taught me about using manual clip fades instead of sidechain ducking to the drums. It was always cleaner doing it by hand. This is kinda similar but with limiting. Cheers!
Thank you! 🤗. It was a huge life goal to purchase a property like this and get it all dialled in. Very grateful for what we have. Plants make all the difference in the world.
Hey hey. Funny you should mention that, because I work with Sonible quite a bit and I'm just about to include smart:limit in an upcoming video. Also note that all limiters, no matter what technology they use, cause some distortion when you are pushing things loud. It's just a matter of how much distortion they create and if you hear it. smart:limit is one of the best in terms of minimizing distortion - or so I hear - and I'm excited to check it out. Stay tuned for the video. Cheers!
@@warpacademy I am excited for it. Thanks. It is just AI-Powered, that is why It ensures that It does not produce distortion or at least harsh distortion because distortion itself can contribute to clarity such as in Metal songs. Pro Metal bands use some kind of distortion that is not harsh, maybe they address something at the level of hardware or at the level of software and good mastering. In the meantime, what do you think about generative music quality upscaling, not just AI analysis? For example, I use UVR to DeReverb and DeEcho samples, and It is quite impressive and It discarded all the paid solutions even though It introduces some clicks, but it can be easily fixed later with RX.
Thank you for the information. All new commercial international songs I think they are awfully distorted on final master. They have much loudness, hard bass, closed sound and drums hit so hard. Also they lack of dynamics. I don't know in which way they master the new songs all famous engineers but here in Greece, they increase much the lows or cut the highs because they prefer much bass for the fact that the majority people listen from mobile phones or tablets with small earbuds. And put the loudness ill so much,around -7LUFS
There’s certainly a ton of trashy sounding loud songs out there. Especially now that some people are releasing music in the -1 to -3 LUFS range. I find there is a sweet spot where you can get to for the right level of containment for the sound you want and avoid most of the audible distortion.
Hey hey. I’ve never used UVR before. I do that stuff with plugins and for the most part get good results. The Sonible pure plugins and smart:de-ess are very good. For the generative up scaling, I would ask why? What is the benefit of upping the bit depth and sample rate? It’s been well documented in research that people cannot detect an audible increase in quality in blinded tests beyond 44.1 kHz 16 bit PCM.
Right?! As I was doing this I was thinking the same thing. I mean, a limiter with lookahead is attempting to do this. But it has artifacts. There are definitely some new AI "loudening" tools that are attempting this too. It'll be interesting to try them out as they evolve. Cheers!
Love the video! Question: I know you didn't actually use the Phase tool, but would you be able to explain (or do a video on) how you would've if the track needed it?
Thanks! Happy to answer the question. I won't make a video on this yet because I think there are already 2 good videos by other RUclipsrs. Watch this one on asymmetrical waveforms by @MixbusTv: ruclips.net/video/swRpqzWmiTc/видео.html&pp=ygUQaXpvdG9wZSByeCBwaGFzZQ%3D%3D. And then watch this one on using the Phase tool, but heed David's advice from the first video and use extreme caution on ever doing this to a whole mix: ruclips.net/video/SuYFWeXuErI/видео.html&pp=ygUQaXpvdG9wZSByeCBwaGFzZQ%3D%3D
Thanks for the comment! Not a dumb question at all. RX is intense. I’m not using the de clip for any processing. I’m just using it as a visual reference to draw out where I think my threshold should be. It’s just drawing down to show me what peaks may go over it. And then I manually gain them relative to that imaginary threshold.
Hey Christian. Do you mean the floor to ceiling acoustic modules? If so, I have a full video on that: ruclips.net/video/NYew5ZqGM7Q/видео.html. You can build them for about $250 USD each. Super easy, great results. Cheers!
Why would you do this over just using a compressor or softclip at the de-clip's threshold? I don't understand why you couldn't just do an automatic gain reduction that would do practically the same thing? Honest question
Hey Andy. Thanks for the question. There's a really good reason. Compressors create artifacts due to their attack and release, and really they are not the correct tool to reign in tiny micro-transients. Their attack time doesn't let them act quickly enough. A clipper would be a better tool because it acts immediately. BUT, all clippers generate distortion. They can generate a lot of distortion if you're clipping very much. If you watch part 2 of the video, you'll see that I do use a soft-clipper, and a compressor on the actual mater. But by reducing this outlier peaks before those effects, I clean up the signal so that the clipper and compressor don't freak out and generate distortion of artifacts. It's way cleaner to spread the gain reduction load over multiple phases like this. The best limiter is no limiter.
I'm coming back to this video to watch it again and I'm not sure to understand something: Your mix before mastering is around -0,5 db or -6db as "everybody" recommend? Sorry if you asnwered already to this question.
Hey hey. There’s no magic amount of headroom you need in your mix. Just make sure it isn’t clipping. The mastering engineer can simply turn it up or down. Don’t normalize your mix export all the way up to 0 dB though as you can’t tell if it’s clipped or just normalized. The -6 dB headroom thing is just a nice solid amount to have but it comes from analog and isn’t relevant for digital mastering. Watch this video where I explain it more fully: Headroom, Gain Staging & Clipping in 32 Bit Digital Audio [Mixing Tutorial] ruclips.net/video/CGRusg9GnAg/видео.html
Now there’s someone who’s paying attention! This is exactly the thought process I went though. Good question. Clippers are distortion devices. That’s what they do. They are not first and foremost intended for gain reduction, that is imply a side effect. So whenever you clip you get distortion. It’s just that I’m able to tuck and hide and mask the distortion in a clean way that you don’t hear it, or that the saturation is pleasing and desirable. This technique of manually gaining things is more what a limiter is trying to do. It’s trying to be transparent and not cause distortion. Do you see how the intent of the device matters? Thing is, limiters are not fully transparent especially on fast material like this. They pump and produce artifacts. So manually gain in is a way of achieving what a limiter seeks to but with none of the artifacts. Also it’s not a one or the other for me. I hard clip in my mixes, I hard clip my busses, then I manually gain in RX and then clip and limit the master. You must do all of these very carefully and small amounts per stage or you will destroy the song. Less is more in many cases. In this case I did not do the mix so there was no clipping in the mix.
Yes I recently saw, I’m more anxious to hear someone’s perspective on Fidelity and detail retrieval against the MM 500 since everyone swears that they sound better than the price that you pay. I am a MM-500 owner also.
Quick answer, the Verums certainly outperform their price point. Nothing in that price point even comes close. If I had to choose between the MM-500s and the Verum 1 I would choose the MM-500 though. Superior build quality, the chassis and fit is nicer and more refined, the cabling is far superior. They have a great sound stage (natural), fast transient response, excellent frequency response. But they're far more expensive. The Verums sound to me like they have deeper bass extension. Larger membranes will do that.
Hey, just for my understanding. Are the peaks on the full mixed track still that much even after applying hard clipping for the single tracks? And what did cause the right track to have so much more louder peaks than the left one? Does it have something to do with stereo enhancing and panning? Thanks, I enjoy you tutorials a lot!
Hey hey. Thanks for the questions. Regarding peaks, no. If clippers were used in the mix the peaks would not be this high. Given that this is a more gentle song and not an EDM banger, there's not much need to clip everything on a track by track level. In any case, I didn't do the mix so I couldn't clip tracks and was limited to what could be done on the master alone. I was able to use this manual limiting process, and then used soft-clipping on the mastering chain, which got the job done nicely. The right track had higher peaks I think because of the hard-panned guitar on that side. So you're correct that it has to do with panning. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@warpacademy oh. okay. since RX is doing its processing in floating point, it does to me make more sense to export in floating point 🙂 even the mix itself I think is better off in floating point. Fixed point is better suited for the master file. My 2 cent!
There’s zero benefit in exporting to 32 bit float for a file that was only 16 bit input IMO. The only processing that is happening is gaining samples down. Super simple. I just keep it 16 all the way through. Same thing with the sample rate. It was delivered at 44.1. No reason to up sample it and then down sample back.
@@warpacademy as soon as you make any processing in RX (or in a DAW), things 'switch' to floating point. In your case, even if you've "only" gained down some samples, those samples are in floating point notation within RX. If you export in 16 (or 24) bits, you then introduce truncation distortion. It can be argued that 24 bit truncation is essentially inaudible (even though some people claim they can hear it vs. dithering), but 16 bit truncation -- which happens at around - 90dBFS -- is well within the audible range (the ear's dynamic range is about 115dB).
I treat this kind of thing the same way I treat aliasing. If I don't hear it, I don't try and "fix" it. Some people obsessively use oversampling in every plugin because they are hyper concerned with hearing aliasing, when in fact aliasing is often completely masked. Also, you should never dither more than once. You would only ever apply in the final stage of mastering. This is not the final stage in mastering. It's just prep. To hear it from the mouths of the experts, I will quote a section about dithering called "Myths and Facts" from the FabFilter Pro-L2 manual: "Myths and facts Theoretically, dithering the best way to retain as much resolution as possible when quantizing your audio. However, in the real world, dithering often has little to no audible effect. Here are a few things to keep in mind: Although loudness normalization is becoming more and more common, much of today's music is still mastered at quite loud (if not ridiculously loud) average levels, leaving very little dynamics in the final result. This already masks the small level of distortion due to quantization, so dithering probably won't have any audible effect. A lot of audio recordings already have a relatively high noise floor, due to the use of microphones, amplifiers, analog outboard, mixing consoles etc. In that case, dithering will have no beneficial effect at all; it will just increase the existing noise floor. Dithering should only be used as the final stage of audio processing/mastering. With any further processing, like gain changes, applying effects, or converting to yet another bit depth, the effects of dithering will be lost. If your host offers a post-gain effect insert slot on the master channel, use this slot for FabFilter Pro-L 2 when dithering is enabled. Dithering more than once doesn't make any sense. It will just increase the overall noise level in your audio. When mastering for lossy formats as AAC/MP3, dithering doesn't make much sense."
i have a question about this process in regards to how ive been making my own music..i use the skrillex tiered mastering template for production.."bus mastering" some call it. im running saturators as clippers with the out gain inverse to the in into an l2 or smart limit. then into chain group summing of high and low chains then premaster then master sometimes the chains do nothing at all but they are there if i need to go hard. in such a setup would it still benefit me to bounce everything somehow even if im working at mastering levels? is this more for dynamic music? is what im doing even good? it sure seems to work great as i advance my understanding of it. i spent the last couple years learning this way of doing things but it makes me unable to follow a lot of standard advice. sorry for the long comment. not many people on the internet have the answer because its not a common topic
Hey hey. Thanks for the comment. Using a bussing process in your mixing is definitely a good idea. What is this Skrillex template you're talking about? Link me to it and I'll check it out. He doesn't mix or master his music, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. Perhaps it's someone else who's created a template based off how they think he's working? Your comment about "Using saturators as clippers." Saturators and clippers are not the same thing. Don't swap in a saturator where a clipper is the right tool. The difference between them is that a clipper will not affect the signal below the clipper ceiling (for a hard clipper) or it will not affect a signal below the termination of the knee (for a soft-clipper); saturators do. A saturator will affect the entire signal, including low level information. Their transfer functions are different as most saturators will inflate low level information.
@@warpacademy sorry i mean the ableton specific saturator device i should have specified as to nolt mislead others. something i picked up from subntronics livestream taht he does. here is a link there where i got my templates and how they were created ruclips.net/video/VdOGSh3Rmak/видео.html
@@warpacademy sorry i mean the ableton specific saturator device i should have specified as to not mislead others. something i picked up from subtronics livestream that he does. i think its cutting out my comment when i try to post the URL to you but its the ahee video BUS MASTERING LIKE SKRILLEX EXPLAINED IN ABLETON
@@warpacademy i tried using freeclip and other clippers but having the the option to also add color that im familiar with while not using a ton of cpu seems ideal in the end but again im not a pro at all
Thanks for the link, got it. That template is not actually how Skrillex works because he doesn't mix or master his newer music. Luca Pretolesi does from Studio DMI and I can guarantee you that Luca doesn't work like that. He does use a submixing structure, but it's not that simple. It's also not about ramming everything into FabFilter Pro-L2 or any other limiter, on a bus level, or the master either. Using a limiter with True Peak limiting on (like he demonstrates in the video) is a bad idea if you're mixing for clean loudness. Regarding saturators, yes you can add color using the Ableton Saturator. But what if you don't need color? What if you just want it loud with no unnecessary harmonics added? What if you don't want to dig into the RMS of the signal? Saturation is part of the process when you want to change the tone. But if you just want clean, loudness, you need to understand hard clipping. Watch this: ruclips.net/video/5sAm7McrkA0/видео.html.
Vesper question, how would a novice know where to draw that line. Suppose if there are some great parts a tiny bit higher. Will the final part of the Mastering makeup for a part that needs that boost. I hope I am explaining myself correctly. Maybe, I need to watch the video over. Hmhmhm. Thank you. 🙋😃👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Good question! For a novice just ignore this totally. Go and create and have fun. Work with a mastering enginner for your stuff and let them handle this type of thing.
Hey hey. The phase tool will analyze peaks throughout the song and suggest a fixed phase rotation position that could increase headroom. Or you can make a selection and analyze that specifically. It's not common that you would use it on an entire mix, and in general I wouldn't use it unless I had a passage in the mix where there was a very asymmetrical waveform that I wanted to address.
I would really recommend watching this video first, before you consider using the Phase tool like that guy in the Adam video: ruclips.net/video/dAzjq6vldkc/видео.html
@warpacademy yup I was starting to get a little happy with phase correcting. Looking at every multi track channel before mixing, kind of just experimenting with it. Probably overkilling and possibly doing damage. As I was playing around, I noticed the option in rx to apply "adaptive" correction to the audio. I'm curious if you have a preference over adaptive or not?
It is. Have you ever recorded audio in a big reflective space like a living room or kitchen with glass? There's only so much you can do with audio cleanup tools. Listen to the difference in audio as I move into the studio room. I wanted to show you some of the rest of my house, so I recorded bits of this one out of the studio. The result is imperfect audio, but I'm good with it.
I am a HUGE advocate of clipping, so watch part 2 of this video where I actually master the song and use a clipper first in chain. This is mastering PREP and using manual gain reduction like this dramatically reduces the need for clipping. This is 100% distortion free, a clipper is not. First of all, if you're clipping your master you'd better be very careful and if you clip very much you'll ruin a song like this. EDM, sure, you can get away with more, but not in more exposed, gentle music like this. I would advocate clipping in the MIX more, and clipping the master less. On the master, clipping introduces intermodulation. Watch this before you go and clip your master: @MixbuTV video on intermodulation: ruclips.net/video/0zTHis71jZI/видео.html
This is why you hire a mastering enginner. Most artists or producers don’t have the interest or patience in this level of detail. But someone who takes the time to do this will always be able to make cleaner, higher fidelity masters than someone who just rams it into a limiter. I’m a perfectionist, interested in the absolute best result and I take the time to explore techniques that can yield the extra 5% or even 1% improvement. That’s why people work with me vs just uploading it to LANDR.
@@warpacademy To be honest, I wasn’t interested in who you are, RUclips recommended this video to me. But if you're a mastering engineer who approaches your job like this, then that's worthy of respect. True, I can’t imagine where you get the time for all this, and you also release a video. Perfectionism is also characteristic of me, and I begin to suffer from such signal processing methods, due to the fact that I get caught up in the little things that need to be corrected, and if I haven’t done everything perfectly, I will be very uncomfortable psychologically, and to do it perfectly will take a lot of time and strength That's why I avoid this kind of approach. Thanks for the video by the way, it's useful.
Thanks for the kind words and for sharing a bit about your experience as well. I totally get it. When you're writing music, it's hard to find the time for all these little tricks. Especially when they're time consuming. And I will say that lots of great masters have been made without doing things like this. It's not 100% necessary so don't sweat it if it stresses you out. But I always look for an edge and how to push the envelope, especially when it lets me get my masters cleaner. For me, it makes sense to take the time because I'm an engineer professionally. For artists and producers, I don't think this makes sense. What does make sense is building a team and making sure someone on the team is able to attend to the details to free you up to just be creative and write music. All the best!
My honest opinion, is that this is not the first thing you should do before mastering. I personally would recommend just sitting and listening to the song in its entirety. I wouldn't want to fill my head with all this over analytical 'left brain' stuff. It's about emotion first, for me. With good ears and a good setup you will pick up on any issues as you go along. A lot of these 'issues' will be ironed out with processing, imo.
Agreed! I do sit and listen to the song first. I just didn’t make people listen to it in the video for brevity. After that, this is the first step. Being analytical as well as artistically minded is part of being a mastering engineer. This is what a limiter is doing under the hood, by the way. This is just cleaner. Artists and producers can lead with emotion. As an enginner you have to consider the details and the science just as much as everything else.
@warpacademy Definitely. I just think it's best to lead with listening, and feeling what the music is trying to communicate, rather than leading with analytical data probing. But the principles are important nonetheless, and, only through practising and developing a broad knowledge of all the technical aspects, can one free one's mind of concern by them, I reckon
Ima be honest, If your video audio was actually mixed when you or team did the editing I would have stayed to listen because I'm always looking to gain knowledge.. first impressions are everything 🙌 not trying to offend and if I did I apologize, just thought it might be helpful to kno
The audio in the intro is mastered, you should have heard it before I processed it. It was just recorded in a very reflective space, my kitchen, as I was starting the video in a more casual setting outside my studio. Listen to the audio further in when I move into the studio and you'll hear a huge difference. Try working with some audio that was recorded in similar spaces, process it, play around, and you'll hear what it's like processing audio from radically different acoustic environments. You cannot totally suppress room reflections from a reflective space without making the audio sound rubbish and watery from the processing artifacts. I'm very aware that the audio sounds different in the intro from the studio shots.
Why someone to master at -6.9 LUFS or something like these? Drums hit so hard then and other elements are disappeared, cannot hear the details. Even Spotify then normalizes at -14 it sounds overcompressed. I stopped my subscription on Spotify for this reason. Why not to master from the start at -12 -14? Older songs were far better and they had dynamics and details. The other negative is that many songs nowadays tend to be like lofi without high end, for example Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X etc.
If you like the sound of that much dynamic’s then this isn’t the channel for you in all honesty. I like a more contained sound and I engineer modern music in genres where it’s normal to be in the -10 to -6 LUFS range. So I teach techniques for how to achieve that and still sound great. Sounds like you’re more after the purist master sound. That’s not my thing but it’s very subjective and I’m sure you can find lots of people preaching the “dynamic range is everything” stance.
@@warpacademy thank you so much At least to make at -10LUFS and not flat waveform. Then to make a master that has high end and not only low and mids. Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and some other, I don't listen highs. And they don't have detailed sound as older songs have.
My pleasure. If you want to hear loud music that also has incredible high end detail listen to some music from KOAN Sound. Their newer stuff. Just because something is loud doesn’t mean it has to lack high end. Lossy compression from streaming can cause HF loss for sure though. Cheers!
@@warpacademy Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish etc as I hear they don't have high end. Even on vinyls of a friend of mine, I listen hard bass and dull sound. In older Songs even I listen on spotify or RUclips I can clearly listen the high end and the details of songs
I expect then that those songs lack high end simply because they were mixed that way and it has nothing to do with loudness. EQ and spectral balance of a mix stuff.
This is a deep dive channel not an Instagram Reel. I talk about all about the intricacies and details of audio engineering. That takes time and an attention span.
![The Best Limiter for Loud, Aggressive Music? [DnB, EDM, Bass Music]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Yp3Q4g6Vtjw/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Best Limiter for Loud, Aggressive Music? [DnB, EDM, Bass Music]](/img/tr.png)
I hope you enjoyed this one! Here are the videos I recommend watching next:
✅ Watch Part 2: The Full Mastering Session: ruclips.net/video/xnTpwu0YbU0/видео.html
✅ How to Build the ULTIMATE DIY Acoustic Sound Panels for Music Studios: ruclips.net/video/ECazGzutkV8/видео.html
✅ DMAX SuperCubes 5 Ultra-Nearfields Review: ruclips.net/video/yzopMQBlTZY/видео.html
✅ Interview with Nicholas Di Lorenzo @Panorama_Mastering: ruclips.net/video/hm93gDqOYis/видео.html
✅ Panorama Mixing & Mastering Video on iZotope RX: ruclips.net/video/rbWvG5fuV0Q/видео.html
Great walk through! Thanks for sharing.
At 9:10 to avoid normalising you can de-clip more than -8; just use the slider in the viewfinder screen (click on the number) rather than inside the plugin.
Cheers Nicholas. Thanks so much for sharing this process in RX. I'm just following in your footsteps. And I appreciate the tip on De-Clip. Funny how easy it is to overlook things like that. Thanks mate.
Or mouse-scroll over the number. (possibly with a key modifier for finer scrolling)
Or click the "+" sign.
So many ways to de-clip a cat! :)
Thanks for the tips! I always like keyboard shortcuts.
That procaster mic sounds sooooo good for your voice during your tutorial. Your videos are just awesome man. Thanks for your wealth of knowledge and sharing with us. You’re a champion 🔥
I appreciate that! My pleasure. It's a great mic. I love all the stuff from Rode. Cheers!
Stop first all those flowers just makes the mind smile. Great start to creating. Beautiful flowers. Okay, I'm listening to the main part of the video, mastering prep.❤❤❤❤❤
Thank you so much 😊
Hey man, thank you very much for taking the time of showing us your processes. It is very informational, and there are not a lot of trustable sources out there. In internet, everybody knows everything and nothing at the same time. The work you did on RX as part of the mastering process is something that I don't see people discuss too much, most people would go straight to the DAW. You are very professional, and I look up to your work and career with utter admiration. Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind words and for supporting the channel. Glad to hear about your experiences. Stay in touch!
Just disovered your channel - super dilligent, fantastic reviews and the production quality is A1! Thanks for these!
Welcome aboard! Subscribe and stay in touch.
Me too. You are awesome!
Great view! That is so important when working long hours. Just got RX it seem amazing, and I love it’s also offline so we can go granular! 😊
Thanks! I love that view while I'm working. Glad to hear you got RX. Hope you enjoy it! It's nerd territory for sure.
I've discovered the channel yesterday and I reaaaally enjoy it. Thank u!
Welcome aboard. Thanks very much!
Great tutorial. I gave it a shot on a really short piece, to get the hang of it. My biggest take away was... if I'm not getting paid to do this, I'm just throwing Gold Clip on it next time...lol. It was good to get a better understanding of the RX program, and I'll probably give it another shot. I think I sucked the life out of the track by being a little too heavy handed though. Keep them coming.
Glad you liked this one. Yeah, it's really only necessary in genres like dnb and other bass music where they're being engineered like crazy for insane levels of loudness. You'd better believe this pays off there. But it is painstaking.
I use this technique, plus Gold Clip, plus a limiter. Soon I'll be using multi-band clipping as well, as part of the mastering process to reduce intermodulation distortion when you dig into the RMS a bit more with a soft clipper. I'm just waiting for the perfect multi-band clipper to be released ;)
no matter how advanced technology gets, there is always lots of manual work required
Sure thing. If you want the best results you gotta be willing to roll up your sleeves.
be aware when using phase rotation on a whole mix!!! it comes with sideeffects. Applying phase rotation basically applies a delay to lower frequencies, meaning the lower part of your snare for example will be delayed in relation to its higher frequencies (the transients) which will result in a less tighter sound. applying it on a whole mix is dangerous as you alter the tightness of your whole mix... however it is useful in some scenario's like creating your own drum samples for example.
Agreed. That’s why I didn’t use it ;) I do, however, use it for analysis sometimes.
Great stuff as always Drew!
Thanks Durk! I appreciate that. I remember back when we were doing lessons and you taught me about using manual clip fades instead of sidechain ducking to the drums. It was always cleaner doing it by hand. This is kinda similar but with limiting. Cheers!
Beautiful house! Love all the plants
Thank you! 🤗. It was a huge life goal to purchase a property like this and get it all dialled in. Very grateful for what we have. Plants make all the difference in the world.
I use Sonible smart:limiter It does not produce distortion but still It depends on the quality of the sample being remastered.
Hey hey. Funny you should mention that, because I work with Sonible quite a bit and I'm just about to include smart:limit in an upcoming video. Also note that all limiters, no matter what technology they use, cause some distortion when you are pushing things loud. It's just a matter of how much distortion they create and if you hear it. smart:limit is one of the best in terms of minimizing distortion - or so I hear - and I'm excited to check it out. Stay tuned for the video. Cheers!
@@warpacademy I am excited for it. Thanks. It is just AI-Powered, that is why It ensures that It does not produce distortion or at least harsh distortion because distortion itself can contribute to clarity such as in Metal songs. Pro Metal bands use some kind of distortion that is not harsh, maybe they address something at the level of hardware or at the level of software and good mastering.
In the meantime, what do you think about generative music quality upscaling, not just AI analysis? For example, I use UVR to DeReverb and DeEcho samples, and It is quite impressive and It discarded all the paid solutions even though It introduces some clicks, but it can be easily fixed later with RX.
Thank you for the information.
All new commercial international songs I think they are awfully distorted on final master. They have much loudness, hard bass, closed sound and drums hit so hard. Also they lack of dynamics.
I don't know in which way they master the new songs all famous engineers but here in Greece, they increase much the lows or cut the highs because they prefer much bass for the fact that the majority people listen from mobile phones or tablets with small earbuds.
And put the loudness ill so much,around -7LUFS
There’s certainly a ton of trashy sounding loud songs out there. Especially now that some people are releasing music in the -1 to -3 LUFS range. I find there is a sweet spot where you can get to for the right level of containment for the sound you want and avoid most of the audible distortion.
Hey hey. I’ve never used UVR before. I do that stuff with plugins and for the most part get good results. The Sonible pure plugins and smart:de-ess are very good.
For the generative up scaling, I would ask why? What is the benefit of upping the bit depth and sample rate? It’s been well documented in research that people cannot detect an audible increase in quality in blinded tests beyond 44.1 kHz 16 bit PCM.
I can’t help but think, “how is there not software to auto-re-draw overs?”
Right?! As I was doing this I was thinking the same thing. I mean, a limiter with lookahead is attempting to do this. But it has artifacts. There are definitely some new AI "loudening" tools that are attempting this too. It'll be interesting to try them out as they evolve. Cheers!
@@warpacademy what about "loudness control" function? is it the same?
I learned it from Nick too
Right on.
Thanks !!!!!
You're welcome!
Love the video! Question: I know you didn't actually use the Phase tool, but would you be able to explain (or do a video on) how you would've if the track needed it?
Thanks! Happy to answer the question. I won't make a video on this yet because I think there are already 2 good videos by other RUclipsrs. Watch this one on asymmetrical waveforms by @MixbusTv: ruclips.net/video/swRpqzWmiTc/видео.html&pp=ygUQaXpvdG9wZSByeCBwaGFzZQ%3D%3D.
And then watch this one on using the Phase tool, but heed David's advice from the first video and use extreme caution on ever doing this to a whole mix: ruclips.net/video/SuYFWeXuErI/видео.html&pp=ygUQaXpvdG9wZSByeCBwaGFzZQ%3D%3D
@@warpacademy Thanks so much - that's exactly what I was looking for!
My pleasure.
Very nice home setup
Thank you! It's nice to have this space to work in.
Great tip
Glad it was helpful!
First of all, thanks for your valuable content. Maybe is a dumb question but i don´t understand how i set up the de-clip, at what level !
Thanks for the comment! Not a dumb question at all. RX is intense. I’m not using the de clip for any processing. I’m just using it as a visual reference to draw out where I think my threshold should be. It’s just drawing down to show me what peaks may go over it. And then I manually gain them relative to that imaginary threshold.
Oh I would love to build those walls in my new place, hope it will be cheap haha
Hey Christian. Do you mean the floor to ceiling acoustic modules? If so, I have a full video on that: ruclips.net/video/NYew5ZqGM7Q/видео.html.
You can build them for about $250 USD each. Super easy, great results. Cheers!
@@warpacademy great! Thanks
You're welcome. We also have a studio design and acoustics forum on our Discord server. Come join up: discord.gg/ZwNgZteGKw
Why would you do this over just using a compressor or softclip at the de-clip's threshold? I don't understand why you couldn't just do an automatic gain reduction that would do practically the same thing? Honest question
Hey Andy. Thanks for the question. There's a really good reason. Compressors create artifacts due to their attack and release, and really they are not the correct tool to reign in tiny micro-transients. Their attack time doesn't let them act quickly enough.
A clipper would be a better tool because it acts immediately. BUT, all clippers generate distortion. They can generate a lot of distortion if you're clipping very much. If you watch part 2 of the video, you'll see that I do use a soft-clipper, and a compressor on the actual mater. But by reducing this outlier peaks before those effects, I clean up the signal so that the clipper and compressor don't freak out and generate distortion of artifacts.
It's way cleaner to spread the gain reduction load over multiple phases like this. The best limiter is no limiter.
I'm coming back to this video to watch it again and I'm not sure to understand something: Your mix before mastering is around -0,5 db or -6db as "everybody" recommend? Sorry if you asnwered already to this question.
Hey hey. There’s no magic amount of headroom you need in your mix. Just make sure it isn’t clipping. The mastering engineer can simply turn it up or down. Don’t normalize your mix export all the way up to 0 dB though as you can’t tell if it’s clipped or just normalized.
The -6 dB headroom thing is just a nice solid amount to have but it comes from analog and isn’t relevant for digital mastering.
Watch this video where I explain it more fully: Headroom, Gain Staging & Clipping in 32 Bit Digital Audio [Mixing Tutorial]
ruclips.net/video/CGRusg9GnAg/видео.html
@@warpacademy Thank you!
My pleasure.
Why wouldn't you just use a hard clip while mixing instead of manually editing in RX10? Wouldn't it give a similar result?
Now there’s someone who’s paying attention! This is exactly the thought process I went though. Good question.
Clippers are distortion devices. That’s what they do. They are not first and foremost intended for gain reduction, that is imply a side effect. So whenever you clip you get distortion. It’s just that I’m able to tuck and hide and mask the distortion in a clean way that you don’t hear it, or that the saturation is pleasing and desirable.
This technique of manually gaining things is more what a limiter is trying to do. It’s trying to be transparent and not cause distortion. Do you see how the intent of the device matters?
Thing is, limiters are not fully transparent especially on fast material like this. They pump and produce artifacts. So manually gain in is a way of achieving what a limiter seeks to but with none of the artifacts.
Also it’s not a one or the other for me. I hard clip in my mixes, I hard clip my busses, then I manually gain in RX and then clip and limit the master. You must do all of these very carefully and small amounts per stage or you will destroy the song. Less is more in many cases.
In this case I did not do the mix so there was no clipping in the mix.
🔥🔥🔥
Can we get a review of the VERUM 1 to MM-500?
I’ll consider that. Although Verum is launching the version 2 now so it may be better to get the new ones.
Yes I recently saw, I’m more anxious to hear someone’s perspective on Fidelity and detail retrieval against the MM 500 since everyone swears that they sound better than the price that you pay. I am a MM-500 owner also.
Quick answer, the Verums certainly outperform their price point. Nothing in that price point even comes close. If I had to choose between the MM-500s and the Verum 1 I would choose the MM-500 though. Superior build quality, the chassis and fit is nicer and more refined, the cabling is far superior. They have a great sound stage (natural), fast transient response, excellent frequency response. But they're far more expensive.
The Verums sound to me like they have deeper bass extension. Larger membranes will do that.
Excellent thanks for the quick and dirty review! That’s all I needed.
My pleasure.
Hey, just for my understanding. Are the peaks on the full mixed track still that much even after applying hard clipping for the single tracks?
And what did cause the right track to have so much more louder peaks than the left one? Does it have something to do with stereo enhancing and panning?
Thanks, I enjoy you tutorials a lot!
Hey hey. Thanks for the questions. Regarding peaks, no. If clippers were used in the mix the peaks would not be this high. Given that this is a more gentle song and not an EDM banger, there's not much need to clip everything on a track by track level. In any case, I didn't do the mix so I couldn't clip tracks and was limited to what could be done on the master alone. I was able to use this manual limiting process, and then used soft-clipping on the mastering chain, which got the job done nicely.
The right track had higher peaks I think because of the hard-panned guitar on that side. So you're correct that it has to do with panning.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@warpacademy i see, thanks for clarification!
My pleasure.
Hey there. Did you really export to 16 bits, or was it just for the video shooting?
I did export to 16. The mix was delivered at 16. Normally I would work at 24 / 48 kHz.
@@warpacademy oh. okay. since RX is doing its processing in floating point, it does to me make more sense to export in floating point 🙂 even the mix itself I think is better off in floating point. Fixed point is better suited for the master file. My 2 cent!
There’s zero benefit in exporting to 32 bit float for a file that was only 16 bit input IMO. The only processing that is happening is gaining samples down. Super simple. I just keep it 16 all the way through. Same thing with the sample rate. It was delivered at 44.1. No reason to up sample it and then down sample back.
@@warpacademy as soon as you make any processing in RX (or in a DAW), things 'switch' to floating point. In your case, even if you've "only" gained down some samples, those samples are in floating point notation within RX. If you export in 16 (or 24) bits, you then introduce truncation distortion.
It can be argued that 24 bit truncation is essentially inaudible (even though some people claim they can hear it vs. dithering), but 16 bit truncation -- which happens at around - 90dBFS -- is well within the audible range (the ear's dynamic range is about 115dB).
I treat this kind of thing the same way I treat aliasing. If I don't hear it, I don't try and "fix" it. Some people obsessively use oversampling in every plugin because they are hyper concerned with hearing aliasing, when in fact aliasing is often completely masked.
Also, you should never dither more than once. You would only ever apply in the final stage of mastering. This is not the final stage in mastering. It's just prep.
To hear it from the mouths of the experts, I will quote a section about dithering called "Myths and Facts" from the FabFilter Pro-L2 manual:
"Myths and facts
Theoretically, dithering the best way to retain as much resolution as possible when quantizing your audio. However, in the real world, dithering often has little to no audible effect. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Although loudness normalization is becoming more and more common, much of today's music is still mastered at quite loud (if not ridiculously loud) average levels, leaving very little dynamics in the final result. This already masks the small level of distortion due to quantization, so dithering probably won't have any audible effect.
A lot of audio recordings already have a relatively high noise floor, due to the use of microphones, amplifiers, analog outboard, mixing consoles etc. In that case, dithering will have no beneficial effect at all; it will just increase the existing noise floor.
Dithering should only be used as the final stage of audio processing/mastering. With any further processing, like gain changes, applying effects, or converting to yet another bit depth, the effects of dithering will be lost. If your host offers a post-gain effect insert slot on the master channel, use this slot for FabFilter Pro-L 2 when dithering is enabled.
Dithering more than once doesn't make any sense. It will just increase the overall noise level in your audio.
When mastering for lossy formats as AAC/MP3, dithering doesn't make much sense."
i have a question about this process in regards to how ive been making my own music..i use the skrillex tiered mastering template for production.."bus mastering" some call it. im running saturators as clippers with the out gain inverse to the in into an l2 or smart limit. then into chain group summing of high and low chains then premaster then master sometimes the chains do nothing at all but they are there if i need to go hard. in such a setup would it still benefit me to bounce everything somehow even if im working at mastering levels? is this more for dynamic music? is what im doing even good? it sure seems to work great as i advance my understanding of it. i spent the last couple years learning this way of doing things but it makes me unable to follow a lot of standard advice. sorry for the long comment. not many people on the internet have the answer because its not a common topic
Hey hey. Thanks for the comment. Using a bussing process in your mixing is definitely a good idea. What is this Skrillex template you're talking about? Link me to it and I'll check it out. He doesn't mix or master his music, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. Perhaps it's someone else who's created a template based off how they think he's working?
Your comment about "Using saturators as clippers." Saturators and clippers are not the same thing. Don't swap in a saturator where a clipper is the right tool. The difference between them is that a clipper will not affect the signal below the clipper ceiling (for a hard clipper) or it will not affect a signal below the termination of the knee (for a soft-clipper); saturators do. A saturator will affect the entire signal, including low level information. Their transfer functions are different as most saturators will inflate low level information.
@@warpacademy sorry i mean the ableton specific saturator device i should have specified as to nolt mislead others. something i picked up from subntronics livestream taht he does. here is a link there where i got my templates and how they were created ruclips.net/video/VdOGSh3Rmak/видео.html
@@warpacademy sorry i mean the ableton specific saturator device i should have specified as to not mislead others. something i picked up from subtronics livestream that he does. i think its cutting out my comment when i try to post the URL to you but its the ahee video BUS MASTERING LIKE SKRILLEX EXPLAINED IN ABLETON
@@warpacademy i tried using freeclip and other clippers but having the the option to also add color that im familiar with while not using a ton of cpu seems ideal in the end but again im not a pro at all
Thanks for the link, got it. That template is not actually how Skrillex works because he doesn't mix or master his newer music. Luca Pretolesi does from Studio DMI and I can guarantee you that Luca doesn't work like that. He does use a submixing structure, but it's not that simple. It's also not about ramming everything into FabFilter Pro-L2 or any other limiter, on a bus level, or the master either. Using a limiter with True Peak limiting on (like he demonstrates in the video) is a bad idea if you're mixing for clean loudness.
Regarding saturators, yes you can add color using the Ableton Saturator. But what if you don't need color? What if you just want it loud with no unnecessary harmonics added? What if you don't want to dig into the RMS of the signal? Saturation is part of the process when you want to change the tone. But if you just want clean, loudness, you need to understand hard clipping. Watch this: ruclips.net/video/5sAm7McrkA0/видео.html.
Vesper question, how would a novice know where to draw that line. Suppose if there are some great parts a tiny bit higher. Will the final part of the Mastering makeup for a part that needs that boost. I hope I am explaining myself correctly. Maybe, I need to watch the video over. Hmhmhm. Thank you. 🙋😃👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Good question! For a novice just ignore this totally. Go and create and have fun. Work with a mastering enginner for your stuff and let them handle this type of thing.
@@warpacademy okay... Thank you very much. But I would like to learn just enough. I will need to tell the Mastering engineer something.
Ah yes, it is good to learn a bit and be fluent enough to communicate with the engineer. Cheers Paula!
How do you use the phase tool?
Hey hey. The phase tool will analyze peaks throughout the song and suggest a fixed phase rotation position that could increase headroom. Or you can make a selection and analyze that specifically. It's not common that you would use it on an entire mix, and in general I wouldn't use it unless I had a passage in the mix where there was a very asymmetrical waveform that I wanted to address.
Good to know, thanks 👍
This video provides a good explanation of how to use this tool: ruclips.net/video/SuYFWeXuErI/видео.html
I would really recommend watching this video first, before you consider using the Phase tool like that guy in the Adam video: ruclips.net/video/dAzjq6vldkc/видео.html
@warpacademy yup I was starting to get a little happy with phase correcting. Looking at every multi track channel before mixing, kind of just experimenting with it. Probably overkilling and possibly doing damage.
As I was playing around, I noticed the option in rx to apply "adaptive" correction to the audio. I'm curious if you have a preference over adaptive or not?
Speech sound in intro needs a Mastering
It is. Have you ever recorded audio in a big reflective space like a living room or kitchen with glass? There's only so much you can do with audio cleanup tools. Listen to the difference in audio as I move into the studio room. I wanted to show you some of the rest of my house, so I recorded bits of this one out of the studio. The result is imperfect audio, but I'm good with it.
The best way is to use CLIPPER
I am a HUGE advocate of clipping, so watch part 2 of this video where I actually master the song and use a clipper first in chain. This is mastering PREP and using manual gain reduction like this dramatically reduces the need for clipping. This is 100% distortion free, a clipper is not.
First of all, if you're clipping your master you'd better be very careful and if you clip very much you'll ruin a song like this. EDM, sure, you can get away with more, but not in more exposed, gentle music like this.
I would advocate clipping in the MIX more, and clipping the master less. On the master, clipping introduces intermodulation. Watch this before you go and clip your master: @MixbuTV video on intermodulation: ruclips.net/video/0zTHis71jZI/видео.html
Manually adjusting each peak is terrible. The result will probably be good, but it is too time-consuming and too tedious.
This is why you hire a mastering enginner. Most artists or producers don’t have the interest or patience in this level of detail. But someone who takes the time to do this will always be able to make cleaner, higher fidelity masters than someone who just rams it into a limiter.
I’m a perfectionist, interested in the absolute best result and I take the time to explore techniques that can yield the extra 5% or even 1% improvement. That’s why people work with me vs just uploading it to LANDR.
@@warpacademy To be honest, I wasn’t interested in who you are, RUclips recommended this video to me.
But if you're a mastering engineer who approaches your job like this, then that's worthy of respect.
True, I can’t imagine where you get the time for all this, and you also release a video.
Perfectionism is also characteristic of me, and I begin to suffer from such signal processing methods, due to the fact that I get caught up in the little things that need to be corrected, and if I haven’t done everything perfectly, I will be very uncomfortable psychologically, and to do it perfectly will take a lot of time and strength That's why I avoid this kind of approach.
Thanks for the video by the way, it's useful.
Thanks for the kind words and for sharing a bit about your experience as well. I totally get it. When you're writing music, it's hard to find the time for all these little tricks. Especially when they're time consuming. And I will say that lots of great masters have been made without doing things like this. It's not 100% necessary so don't sweat it if it stresses you out.
But I always look for an edge and how to push the envelope, especially when it lets me get my masters cleaner. For me, it makes sense to take the time because I'm an engineer professionally. For artists and producers, I don't think this makes sense. What does make sense is building a team and making sure someone on the team is able to attend to the details to free you up to just be creative and write music.
All the best!
@@warpacademy I agree.
Thank you for a short pleasant conversation.
Cheers and all the best with your music!
My honest opinion, is that this is not the first thing you should do before mastering. I personally would recommend just sitting and listening to the song in its entirety. I wouldn't want to fill my head with all this over analytical 'left brain' stuff. It's about emotion first, for me. With good ears and a good setup you will pick up on any issues as you go along. A lot of these 'issues' will be ironed out with processing, imo.
Agreed! I do sit and listen to the song first. I just didn’t make people listen to it in the video for brevity. After that, this is the first step.
Being analytical as well as artistically minded is part of being a mastering engineer. This is what a limiter is doing under the hood, by the way. This is just cleaner.
Artists and producers can lead with emotion. As an enginner you have to consider the details and the science just as much as everything else.
@warpacademy Definitely. I just think it's best to lead with listening, and feeling what the music is trying to communicate, rather than leading with analytical data probing. But the principles are important nonetheless, and, only through practising and developing a broad knowledge of all the technical aspects, can one free one's mind of concern by them, I reckon
Totally. Great perspective to take. Cheers!
Ima be honest, If your video audio was actually mixed when you or team did the editing I would have stayed to listen because I'm always looking to gain knowledge.. first impressions are everything 🙌 not trying to offend and if I did I apologize, just thought it might be helpful to kno
The audio in the intro is mastered, you should have heard it before I processed it. It was just recorded in a very reflective space, my kitchen, as I was starting the video in a more casual setting outside my studio. Listen to the audio further in when I move into the studio and you'll hear a huge difference. Try working with some audio that was recorded in similar spaces, process it, play around, and you'll hear what it's like processing audio from radically different acoustic environments. You cannot totally suppress room reflections from a reflective space without making the audio sound rubbish and watery from the processing artifacts. I'm very aware that the audio sounds different in the intro from the studio shots.
Why someone to master at -6.9 LUFS or something like these? Drums hit so hard then and other elements are disappeared, cannot hear the details. Even Spotify then normalizes at -14 it sounds overcompressed. I stopped my subscription on Spotify for this reason.
Why not to master from the start at -12 -14?
Older songs were far better and they had dynamics and details.
The other negative is that many songs nowadays tend to be like lofi without high end, for example Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X etc.
If you like the sound of that much dynamic’s then this isn’t the channel for you in all honesty. I like a more contained sound and I engineer modern music in genres where it’s normal to be in the -10 to -6 LUFS range. So I teach techniques for how to achieve that and still sound great.
Sounds like you’re more after the purist master sound. That’s not my thing but it’s very subjective and I’m sure you can find lots of people preaching the “dynamic range is everything” stance.
@@warpacademy thank you so much
At least to make at -10LUFS and not flat waveform. Then to make a master that has high end and not only low and mids. Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and some other, I don't listen highs. And they don't have detailed sound as older songs have.
My pleasure. If you want to hear loud music that also has incredible high end detail listen to some music from KOAN Sound. Their newer stuff. Just because something is loud doesn’t mean it has to lack high end. Lossy compression from streaming can cause HF loss for sure though. Cheers!
@@warpacademy Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish etc as I hear they don't have high end. Even on vinyls of a friend of mine, I listen hard bass and dull sound.
In older Songs even I listen on spotify or RUclips I can clearly listen the high end and the details of songs
I expect then that those songs lack high end simply because they were mixed that way and it has nothing to do with loudness. EQ and spectral balance of a mix stuff.
❤lovly video
Thanks!
I don't see a picture of Trudeau, what is important in a communist country.
:/
Get to the point man
This is a deep dive channel not an Instagram Reel. I talk about all about the intricacies and details of audio engineering. That takes time and an attention span.