[Dana Nielsen]

Beautiful, P-Money! Giving me Jonatha Brooke vibes. Dynamic, emotive performance, and love the twists and turns in the chord progression. Way to capture a special moment! 💜🎚️

[Dana Nielsen]

PS – I’ll have a listen to your new mix tomorrow when back in the studio

[Dana Nielsen]

Hey Michael! Huge welcome, man! 🎉. Stoked you’re here.

And great work on this mix – thanks for sharing with us!

I think you’re totally on the right track and things are sounding really good already 🤘

My initial thoughts are:

• The snare and perc elements feel loud, bright, and super-stereo-wide. They sound awesome like that(!), but I have a hunch they’re the culprit. Like … I want the vocal to occupy that loud/bright/wide space, which the snare and perc are currently dominating.
• With that in mind, try darkening or turning down the perc elements, experimenting with a less-super-stereoized snare for better mono translation.
• Then try turning up the vocal so that it’s as loud as – or a touch louder than – the kick and snare.

If your Realistics have arrived from Ebay (🥳) you might notice that vocals and snare are sometimes represented a bit louder on those speakers due to their limited bandwidth. That’s normal – just something to keep in mind and learn to roll with.

As for loudness, you’re lookin pretty good already! That said if you really want it louder I’m sure that’s possible with a bit more limiting or clipping. You could try adding a console emulation (driven aggressively) before your limiter to reign-in or shave-off some of the transient peaks, which will allow you to drive your brick-wall mastering limiter even harder with less artifacts, since it won’t have to work as hard now that some of the most egregious transients have been tamed.

Pasting a few links below that I found within the Mix Protégé search bar (top) and AI tool (bottom-right of page), which might offer additional help and context related to loudness, lufs, etc.

Great work, Michael, and glad to have ya in the MP fam!

Best,

Dana

https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/zoom-replay-member-meetup-and-qa-dec-13-2024/

https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/troubleshooting-spotify-track-sounding-quieter-than-expected/

https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/silent-killer-low-end-mix-help/

[Dana Nielsen]

You are on the right track man! And yeah it’s fascinating stuff, trying to get our “hearing the world with our ears” experience to translate to speakers – not to mention, speakers of all sizes.

One note I should mention: This type of limiter automation during mastering is, for me, kinda a last resort. That’s not to say I’m ever ashamed to do it, hahaha; I just try to work out all my automation and dynamics within the mix before it gets to mastering or mastering limiters etc., otherwise it feels like you’re still “mixing” during the mastering process.

On that note, regarding your vibraphone and Pro-L2: it’s true, low-mid vibes energy will interact differently with the limiter than will a guitar pick transient. Try adjusting the Attack (faster), Release (slower) and/or Lookahead (longer). Also, try every single Mode or Flavor or whatever they call it – i.e. Modern, Transparent, Aggressive, etc. I try every one of these modes on every single mix. Typically, one of them is a clear winner, and they’re all really different.

BUT! ….

I’d venture to guess the solution is in your mix, not the Pro-L2 settings. Without hearing what you’re hearing, I’d suggest two things:

1. Apply some compression to the vibes stereo track in your mix so you’re not forcing the limiter to work so hard. If the low-mids of the instrument are the culprit, then you could even try a multi-band Pro-MB or a low-mid dynamic band of Pro-Q4 trained on the trouble frequencies of the vibraphone, so that it’s only triggering compression when those problematic notes/range come into play.

2. Use less limiting on your master. Keep the music in mind – you’re two people playing ambient jazz in the woods, not Metallica lol. If you’re getting distortion from Pro-L2 you must be trying to make the music VERY loud, which in this grenre I don’t think you need. Change the Pro-L2 meter to “Loudness” and try shooting for something btwn -14 and -10 LUFS – that should be plenty loud for this style of music.

Hope these tips make sense and are helpful! Keep us posted on your song and your mastering adventures! If helpful, maybe take a peek at the MixLab “Mastering for Spotify” replay 😉😘

[Dana Nielsen]

Heck yeah man! No rules. No fear. Whatever it takes to shape the dynamics and manifest your sonic vision!

I always try my best to bake those “master bus” automation moves into the mix – that way, if someone else is mastering, I won’t be dependent upon them for those micro moves, and they can just focus on tone and macro dynamics, i.e. the overall limiting.

That said … sometimes your carefully crafted mix dynamics (i.e. quiet verse, loud chorus) will get flattened out by limiters used in mastering. After all, that’s the limiter’s job – to reduce dynamics and increase loudness.

So when needed, I will automate the OUTPUT gain of the last limiter on the mix buss or mastering chain to achieve the specific dynamic shape I want. Rick Rubin calls this technique the “slippery fader.” He might say something to me like, “maybe try some slippery fader on those choruses so they really jump out.”

While you could achieve this by physically/manually riding a fader or knob, this is one instance where (gasp!) I prefer using a mouse instead of a fader. If the limiter’s output for my loud choruses is at 0db, for example, I will change my track settings to view the limiter’s output automation, select my verse sections, and trim them down to like -1.5db. Then I’ll audition the volume change and make sure the automation breakpoints are exactly where they should be – musically – to disguise the sudden moves.

Here’s a short playlist I made a while back demonstrating the “slippery fader” technique. The first song by Green Day is the first time I ever noticed this trick in the wild, back when we were in high school. The second song by Pom Poms is a mix of mine where I employed the same trick.

Enjoy and good luck “slippin'” those faders!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bZXOPJ4869mJVLFqlGGqV?si=f0c5e98ec6964ec3

[Dana Nielsen]

💜😂

[Dana Nielsen]

“Mix like Greg! … If I could mix like Greg!” lol – totally works!

[Dana Nielsen]

😂

[Dana Nielsen]

Hey Mike!

This new mix sounds great on my laptop w/ headphones (I’m traveling at the moment) – nice work!

I spent a bit of time comparing it to other top 40, hip hop and r&b tracks, and it feels pretty loud, bumpin and competitive! 🙌🤓🤘

[Dana Nielsen]

Awesome, Mike! Once you get your adapter cables for the speakers I like to push them together so they sound like one “mono” speaker, and then situate them on the other side of the room or off to the side, way out of the sweet spot, to give the impression of listening from afar. Kinda like when I’m listening to my Sonos Move speaker in the kitchen while cooking.

I’ve never seen that MWTM Jaycen video, nor did I know he’s a HEAT fan, but we’re on the same page, tonally, with that setting, haha. I play around with the setting on every session to see what I like. But yeah, 9 times out of 10 I end up with the main knob around 9:00 and the tone knob around 3:00, give or take. Also interesting re vocal setting — 9 out of 10 times, similarly, I don’t end up using HEAT on the vocals. I will say, however, I’m almost never setting my HEAT-enabled channels to “Pre”. Once in a while I will if I feel like Post is too crunchy, but that’s pretty rare. I’m a big HEAT fan tho, for decades, on almost every mix.

Loudness and normalization and mastering and all that is a tricky nut to crack. If you make your master loud AF for non-normalized listeners (or CD, Bandcamp, etc.), will it be penalized and quieter when normalized on DSPs? And if you’re mastering for normalized playback, will you sound quiet against other tracks for folks (like me) who listen with normalization turned off?

There are no simple answers yet there are dozens of compromises – each compromise feeling like a loss. Amiright?

Here are a collection of things I know and have observed:

1. No one masters to normalization spec (-14 LUFS etc.). Not that I can tell. I listen to everything with normalization off, and am always watching my TC Electronic Clarity M meter (optical in), and everyone’s masters are loud AF. The loudness war rages on. At least in stereo mixing for albums. (not so for film, TV, immersive, ATMOS, etc. .. those industries and specs will reject files that don’t follow the RULES haha)
2. ADPTR Streamliner is a wonderful, powerful, feature-packed tool you can use while mixing or mastering – in realtime – to audition your loud masters “through” various codecs and normalization specs. Highly recommended if you’re committed to (obsessed with? 😵‍💫) cracking the loudness vs. normalization cheat code.
3. Izotope RX also has some incredible analysis tools that can help identify areas where your audio file might be penalized and/or areas where you could make some gains. Unlike Streamliner, RX’s loudness tools are more “rendered analysis” rather than real-time. My friend Dale Becker has a very informative walkthrough of some of these features here. This is a fantastic video for anyone interested in learning more about loudness and DSP normalization!
4. Everyone struggles with this conundrum. Even the pro-est mixers and fanciest mastering engineers. So just try to enjoy the obsessed, passionate, quest for knowledge on the subject. Become continually more aware of how normalization might affect the perceived loudness of your mixes and masters. Keep that growing treasure-trove of normalization-information handy in the back of your mind as just ONE of the million things to consider when deciding that you are FINISHED with your mix or master. But… all that to say …and I mean it…
5. DON’T LET LUFS RUIN YOUR LIFE! F#$k ’em. Kick those LUFS to the curb! Normalize THIS: 🖕😂.

Seriously, just do what’s best for the music; make it as loud as feels right to you for the given genre, checking it against non-normalized reference mixes done by our heroes; and then call it a job well done. I’d take “the best” mix over “the loudest” mix every day of the week. And I think most listeners will too. 😊

[Dana Nielsen]

“Geese motifs are SOOO last summer”

Hahaha – I seriously nearly spit out my coffee, @-PT

Great verby tips, too. Sounds like some fun things to try – u rule!

[Dana Nielsen]

As my dear friend, mentor, and absolutely SLAYING producer/mixer/engineer, Greg Fidelman would say: “I’m not afraid.”

As in ‘woah, Greg, you have a tape emulation, a console emulation, a compressor, HEAT, a Pro-L2 AND a God Particle on your mixbus??’

Greg: ‘yeah why not? I’m not afraid.’

Hahaha. I love it. To be clear, that signal chain listed above is completely made up by me. But the sentiment stands, and I’ve stood by it, in his honor, forever and ever amen.

Try EVERYTHING. Experiment endlessly. Don’t knock something till you’ve tried it. Mix like no one’s watching. Make the insecure Gearspace peanut gallery living rent-free in your sub-conscience SQUIRM and GASP at the horrors of your ‘novice’ ingenuity! Have fun! No rules!!

There is literally only one thing that matters: DOES IT SOUND GOOD?

If so, fear not.

[Dana Nielsen]

@dave! Heck yeah man – no rules!! Well … one rule: “just make it sound awesome by any means necessary”! 🤘⚡️

[Dana Nielsen]

Thanks, brother @-PT! And thank you again for all your incredible wisdom here in this thread and throughout Mix Protégé!! ⚡️💡🤍

[Dana Nielsen]

Awe, that means so much @JLew – thank YOU for sharing your files and your beautiful music with us all!!

Can’t wait to hear and see your finished video release!! 😍🍁