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If he adhered to the EBU R128 loudness standards then his music should sound mostly quiet. That specification leaves a very wide dynamic range and if it's music, which often has a very consistent level throughout, then the music would be mastered quite low compared to other music you're accustomed to--that specification actually encourages you to turn your volume up so that levels are well represented (quiet sounds quiet, loud sounds loud, etc.)--like the CALM Act, the specification is designed to make audio programming that has very little dynamic range (or highly compressed audio as is the case with commercial breaks) very quiet--this helps it maintain consistency with dynamic programming like a film or TV show.

Excellent song, very fun to listen to. I especially liked the style change at 0:50.

My brother was passing by and told me this sounds like comedy stand-up music, heh. Really enjoying the final version, Markus. While I still think a vibraphone could be appropriate at a certain point, I get that you prefer limiting your instrument choices. And yet you manage to hold my attention all the way. Also, I know I said this before, but I commend you on your source choice. It shows that you have good taste in music and a bit of class when it comes to you and your chiptunes : ) This will stay in my morning playlist. Superb stuff.

I'm not a fan of RMS for certain things, for sure, same with LU measurements. I only mentioned the CALM Act and Mastered for iTunes because Brandon inquired as to why someone would want a ceiling under -0.8dB--I only mentioned it as an example of a legitimate specification where you would want to control your peak values. As you've mentioned, RMS doesn't inform us about how loud it will sound--but I think also pushing for an RMS value can be a very messy way of asserting a total dynamic range for a project. That's why I try to encourage people to use their ears and even more, I will HEAVILY encourage newbies to use a reference recording. So if you're mixing a rock project, maybe you'll pick a FooFighters' track as a reference--go back and forth and try to achieve the results you enjoy as a music listener. I think there are a lot of great opportunities to learn from using a reference track over just adhering to a guideline.

Sooo glad to see FF8 getting the rework treatment! I feel that it is Uematsu's best FF soundtrack. Very excited to see what ends up on the final version! Keep up the awesome work guys

sup man. sorry for the delay. mid-april sounds good

I did specifically mention that the numbers are dependent on what the content of the music is, or at least tried to imply it. I wasn't trying to say -10 dB is a catch-all. To me, when I listen to that mix, I'm not surprised when you tell me it is -6 dB RMS. I also don't think it's too loud given the content. But do -6 dB RMS on say, a contemporary jazz trio, and I certainly would find it too loud and quashed (and have an unpleasing amount of harmonic distortion given that it's on pure acoustic instruments). But the RMS isn't of direct importance, the crest factor is (and it's dependent on RMS, obviously, these systems aren't linear); even if I turned my speakers down a small crest factor is still loud. Maybe not sound pressure wise but certainly dynamic range wise. dB SPL is a whole different aspect of loudness; but sound pressure is something you can't control no matter what. You don't know what sound pressure output a person's headphones/speakers are, so it's not worth mixing for, at least to me. (Unless it's for a specific sound system, car, venue, etc.) I also would venture to disagree simply because when people are new and try things themselves by ear they will almost always have bad results and have to be given feedback and try to reduce the effects until feedback says it's okay; whereas explaining how crest factor and RMS play into "pumping" and limiting => harmonic distortion (maybe you don't have to give concrete numbers like "shoot for 6 or 8") makes them able to see what happens when they change the numbers around. It's more about how the sound behaves when you change the numbers to me that's the important learning aspect, less about fixing specific numbers like -13 or -10 and creating so-to-speak archetypical loudness profiles to aim for. But that's just a math student's approach to it. Keep in mind this is mainly fueled by the consideration that dynamics processing isn't a linear system. It's very hard to just intuit things by ear when you're new in the dynamics world, compared to say, turning feedback down on a delay or changing an EQ gain.

Totally agreed, Nabeel! This can also be a really frustrating position--I've had projects where I had to match the audio levels of another audio professional who slammed the sound beyond my comfort zone and had to resign myself to delivering what I feel is low quality audio because of the harmonic distortion introduced from crushing the dynamic range. At the same time, there's definitely a preference and I will also admit that some music handles the distortion pretty well--square waves are comprised of odd-ordered harmonics--so some music which already features a lot of odd-ordered harmonic distortion can take it more.

If it works well, go for it, but I wouldn't worry too much about hitting RMS numbers, trust your ear whenever you can--listen on a wide variety of speakers. One of the things that is really important to remember when you start cutting off peaks in your music is that any time you shave off a waveform, you begin squaring your wave-shape and this increases the amount of harmonic distortion in your program material. Sometimes this is desirable, sometimes it is not, and in these cases, trust your ear--take baby steps as you begin your mastering process--and constantly A/B things.

I think this (any serious discussion on audio tools) is a good discussion to have and people should not fear being corrected or clarified--neither should people feel glory for wielding knowledge but rather they should feel encouraged to assist each other in revealing the function and procedures of the tools we all love and use. We have an opportunity to ensure a strong community where everyone improves simply by participating--simply by engaging--and we lose or miss that opportunity when we attack people for not knowing or belittle people for explaining to the community how much (or little) they may know about a subject. Knowledge is really just an ever expanding grasp of what is happening and it is in our human nature to continue to act upon what we understand at any given time we understand though our understanding may grow tomorrow--if we're lucky--and change our subsequent agency. In this way, we are all in this together and we all benefit from assisting each other. Now, for the very oddly specific (and seemingly misinterpreted) post about my input, APZX, I'm not sure why you confused me with Brandon Strader--I can only assume that you didn't really read carefully since you harp on about distinguishing Full Scale measurement vs. True Peak when I did not specify Full Scale measurement as the peak limit measurement (even suggesting that would be silly since it is a peak value we're discussing). With regards to my comparison between a limiter and a compressor, all I can say is that I choose my words carefully (though I cannot ensure you will read them with the same care). So let's work together on this, yeah? os·ten·si·bly äˈstensiblē,əˈstensiblē/ adverb adverb: ostensibly apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.

In the absence of our curated guides forum that disappeared at some point I forgot that only things tagged as "tutorial" are to be treated like ones, so I guess I overreacted. I really don't understand why the whole broadcast loudness standard thing came in either, seems way irrelevant to me. My entire deal is that if you want to explain (or, really, if you want to learn) how limiters work, you need to become familiar with notions of loudness and dynamic range. Put simply, loudness is not a result of high peaks (high instants of energy) but rather how that energy sustains over time. If a single has loud drum transients but not much else and it's a sparse signal, it's perceptually still quieter. When we compress things (and when we limit them, which is just a more extreme version), we reduce their dynamic range. That means we shove the peaks down closer to where the average signal energy is. So what happens then? The whole thing is quieter, but it is more "sustained" so to speak. So then we jack the whole thing up because we gained some headroom, and now the signal is much louder, because it has more sustained, constant energy. This is where RMS comes in. RMS isn't a direct measurement of loudness, but it is much more accurate than straight peak values for telling you how "strong" the signal is. Think of it like an average (it's not exactly, but I don't want to give a math lesson). So when you limit things, what you're doing is squashing higher peaks and giving everything the same relative energy (the degree of which depends on your threshold). The distance between your highest peak and your average energy (how your transient/peaks compare to your sustained energy) is called your crest factor, and that's really what we mean by dynamic range. When we use limiters on the signal, we want to consider the numbers like RMS and crest factor of the signal. If the RMS is too high, or the crest factor is too small, that's the "pumping" we hear. Good transparent limiting gets our RMS up while maintaining a level of dynamic range we can still perceive as not being squished out. For instance, in the old days when engineers were really trying to push the loudness war, there were metal albums that would get mastered at like -8 dB RMS. They sounded squashed and terrible, honestly, but in metal, that's kind of the expectation. It's gotta be loud and harsh. But compare that to classic rock? You want those numbers to be different, RMS to be much lower; get that crest factor back, have the nice distance between transients and sustained energy. It's more organic that way. The indisputable fact is that compression of any kind squashes transients, it turns drum into mush and kills tightness, same goes for any instrument. Of course in modern day, you still want it to be kinda loud, but definitely not as pumped as metal or EDM. When I did more electronic/breakbeaty stuff, I would push it to -10dB RMS, and even that was a bit much. Now I go between -13 and -12 for most stuff because I work more with acoustic samples instead of synths and processed layers. So while using your ears is great, it doesn't help newbies in particular, because dynamics processing takes a good ear. Going by some reference numbers gets them closer to the result, faster.

I miss when the average post on this site wasn't from an egomaniac looking to stroke their e-dick. Hey, Maestro. You should ask your counselor about how you can politely correct people without sounding like a complete asshole 20 year old who speaks like he has 35 years experience. Advice is cheap - you can take it or leave it. Nobody should be ultimately relying on posts by hobbyists on a random internet forum for professional music advice anyway. In that thread about YoungProdigy's FL Studio problems you talked about things that are "bad form" in public settings. Apparently, you don't consider going on a profanity-laden tirade against someone who made a post you don't like on the internet to be "bad form". We get it, you think you're hot-shit because you intern or whatever for Impact Soundworks. Why a software company would want to have someone with your attitude representing them is a mystery, but why don't you put all your knowledge to use and write an all-encompassing guide so that you can at least spare us your patronizing posts. Jesus Christ...it was Dan Reynolds who was talking about the CALM act, which is a U.S. regulation about the volume of commericials in broadasting if you're going to make a long post like this throwing around terminology for the sake of pseudo-intellectualism irrelevant to the topic at hand, at least read and properly quote people. Why is anyone even talking about this? Strader's post is talking about increasing loudness while limiting the output in music production. No guide I have seen anywhere else on the internet talks about the difference between dBTP or dBFS, whittaker-shannon interpolation and certainly not the CALM act because it is irrelevant information to most people looking to use a limiter on their music. IF YOU DON'T LIKE BRANDON'S POST, TRY THIS: 1) Ignore it. 2) Politely correct him or add to/build off of his post 3) Say, "Thank you for sharing this with us Brandon. I hope it helps someone out there!" I don't even give a shit if I get banned for mini-modding at this point. This site used to be the best around for useful advice and feedback and it felt like everyone worked as a team to help each other but guys like you are degrading it into holier-than-thou pissing-matches that don't help anyone and no one else seems to have the balls to call you out on it.

Mmm, my entry isn't unusual, I just (at the time) only had individual cool sounding parts written out, and I needed to figure out a way to piece them together cohesively (trickier than it sounds). Believe it or not, that's just my music making process, lately - come up with cool riffs, figure out what would make sense, as far as assembly goes, build bridging material based on the riffs, then mix/master. I think people will find I went all out, this round, it's pretty fuckin' good.

I'm guessing the energy was not found, since I don't have an entry, and there remain only 45 minutes. Should be interesting anyway, since both Gario and Aleix have said this was an unusual entry for them.

I didn't know a better place to post this. I don't like navigating new forums or making accounts, but I did so solely so I could tell the artists that created this album how much I appreciate their time/work/dedication that was involved in creating an album that remixed my favorite game soundtrack of all time. And thanks to the crew of OCR that allowed this amazing collab to happen. I'm sure there are hundreds of other people who think the same, but just don't want to go through the effort to let you all know how amazing an experience you guys brought forth. Maybe, just maybe, in a decade or so, I'll have the fortitude to try this kind of thing myself to create content for my next favorite game and make a fan like myself. Again, Thanks

Thanks for the encouragement, man. Super-congrats on the certification and new client! Hope you get lots of enjoyment out of that.

have not received an email, nope! I'm doing stronglifts 5x5 for the next 3 months to see how it goes; I am pretty interested to see what squatting 3 times a week does.

I have to ask what your plan is to juggle the three albums you've started recruiting for... as someone who's directed and seen an album through to completion in the past, it took 3 years of constant effort in planning, recruiting, critiquing, and coordinating to get it done. To be blunt, you don't have much of a history with this community and from my perspective, you've posted several times starting up a remix project without really putting any thought into a cohesive tracklist, a theme or style for the album, or recruiting anywhere else within the community. Not to say that just posting a thread to gauge interest is against the rules or anything, but I've been down this road before and it literally consumed my life for 3 years while I was working on the Donkey Kong Country 3 project alone. Three albums at once is an insane and unmanageable undertaking for anyone, let alone someone who is pretty new to the community. It's not as simple as finding a nice soundtrack and waiting for the music to roll in. Not by any stretch. I don't want to discourage you if you really are serious about working on a community album project, but based on the fact that you've started up 3 separate projects over the past month, I get the feeling you haven't thought through just how much of a commitment it is. And at the very least, if you are going to do that, to be successful you really need to put a bit more effort into your post than you have here or on your other two projects, or work on establishing yourself in the community a bit more first. I'm sorry to be a dick but I feel like you need a bit of a reality check when it comes to the album projects you're starting. Hope I'm not overstepping my bounds and you understand where I'm coming from!