Production Advice

The most popular post on my site right now is this one:

How to make your music loud

The video above is a “sequel” to that post, in a way, because it demonstrates many of the techniques I talk about in the original post.

(I’m not saying you should make your music really loud, by the way – far from it. But if that’s what you’re going to do, I’d prefer you to make a good job of it : )

The video was inspired by an email from Brendan Zacharias, a musician and producer who recently bought a copy of my eBook and video package Mastering with Multiband Compression.

(Multiband compression can be an invaluable tool for getting loud, punchy mixes without crushing the life out of your mix – to find out more, click here.)

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Wow.

When I accepted an invitation from the AES to go and speak at their regional convention in Mexico City during the Sound:Check Expo, I thought “it’ll be an adventure”.

I didn’t realise quite how right I was…

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Some of you will know about the Home Mastering Masterclass already. It’s an 8-week online course, where you get to be a fly on the wall of my home studio, and hopefully learn something in the process – you can read all about it here, or just watch the trailer above.

The next course starts this Friday, 5th April – and if you sign up before then you can get an excellent 33% discount.

I’ve run the course twice before, and both times it’s been a great success – the members have loved it, and hopefully you will, too !

And every time I run it, a message comes through clearer and clearer – mastering is simple. We all like to make it complicated, but the truth is, in essence the process is very simple:

That’s it !

Well OK, it’s a little more complicated than that – I wrote about the process in more detail here. But it really is true – at it’s heart, mastering is a simple process, and the more we keep that in mind, the better it’s likely to turn out.

Which doesn’t mean there isn’t a mass of information on the Home Mastering Masterclass course to help you do the best job you can of it, though !

So please check out the trailer, or click here for more information to see if you want to find out more – and perhaps I’ll see you on the course !

And either way, remember – if mastering ends up getting too complicated, you may be doing it wrong !

So, the top prize in the 2013 Dynamic Range Day competition is…

an SSL Buss Compressor.

Wait, what ?!?

The prize in a competititon intended to raise awareness of the loudness wars is… a compressor ?

Exactly the kind of tool that was used to make many of those crushed, distorted “casulaties” in the first place ?

Right.

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Dave Grohl’s Sound City movie is fantastic – anyone reading this blog will love it. Grab it now !

(I do have some reservations about the film, which were expressed really clearly in this post from Tape Op magazine – but it’s still a great watch.)

BUT

At the end of the film, we see Dave recording an album inspired by Sound City Studios – and sadly the amazing analogue sound Dave loves so much and talks about into the film hasn’t survived 100% intact onto the final CD.

Not because of some imaginary intrinsic flaw in digital audio, but because of the Loudness Wars… again.

Take a look at the video to see what I mean – and if you agree with my viewpoint, please help spread the word by sharing it wherever and whenever you can !

You can hear the whole Sound City album here.

 
It’s almost time for Dynamic Range Day again, and as usual I’m getting some questions.

One of the most common is – “So you say you’re against the Loudness Wars, but you give an award to albums that measure only DR8 – why don’t you ask for more dynamics than that ?”

In other words, shouldn’t we be campaigning for far more dynamic range, for higher DR values – DR14, say, like the Pleasurize Music campaign ?

I wrote an answer to this a while ago in a post called It’s not about the numbers, but here I want to take a different approach, using… more numbers.

The limitations of the TT Meter

The image above shows the loudness values of Steven Wilson’s awesome new album “The Raven That Refused To Sing“. As you can see, it’s very dynamic – the loud sections are “loud”, with a crest factor of only 8dB or so, but there’s still plenty of variety and contrast throughout.

But it only measures as DR9. That’s only one dB off the DR8 minimum we recommend. So how can the album be as great dynamically as I say it is ?

The answer lies in the limitations of the “DR” value as calculated by the Offline TT Meter.

The truth is, it’s a VERY blunt instrument.

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