Making a mix sound louder

[Arcana]

Hey guys. I am wondering what suggestions and tips you can give me for making mixes sound louder. I have a mix where I'm already pushing all the levels to max, but yet it sounds relatively quieter compared to most other songs I have, including most OCR tracks.

As this is an electronica song, this relatively low level of volume is not acceptable.

I've been applying the tools that you common associate with mixing, such as raising levels, EQing, and compressing, but I'm not having success. Pretty much everything's being pushed to almost-clipping levels but yet it sounds like I'm listening to this song from ten yards away.

Can you guys help me out with a general process for making the perceived sound of a song louder?

As for the song itself, I can't post it because it's for a project and thus cannot be distributed.

Regards,

[Fishy]

Compression and limiting is the main trick to loudness.

What kind of ratios are you using in your compression. When you say everything is near clipping level, does it ever reach it?

If you look at the majority of modern music it will be really pushing a limiter. Open up something you think is loud and look at its waveform, then look at yours. It will probably be block of colour in comparison. Give it a go and show us what you see.

(For the record there's nothing wrong with quiet mixing, it's just not ever going to be suitable for radio-play or commercial use as they expect volume.)

[Arcana]

Well when I say near clipping, I lied. I actually meant "I use a limiter, without it my song is 4 db over peak" . I actually really wanted to mix the song without relying on the limiter, but even with it it sounds really quiet.

However none of the individual tracks approach clipping levels and none of them use limiters either.

the waveform of my song is pretty wide, with lots of peaks and valleys but I will do some Audacity stuff tonight and post it for discussion.

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[zircon]

Link to the track!

[PROTO·DOME]

Be careful that you don't have lots of inaudible frequencies- high and low. Those can be a contributor to clipping and the like; you don't really need them, unless you're planning on playing stuff to whales or bats.

[Kidd Cabbage]

More limiting

[Arcana]

Link to the track!

It's a project track and thus I don't want to make it available or else I'd link it here. BTW added a picture above in my post

[Fishy]

Hrm, hard to tell without hearing it why your track doesn't sound as loud as mine (if that is mine... I can't tell what track it is from that). It doesn't look like its being limited quite as hard but not very far off.

Can we get a clip of the loudest section at all? Even one bar would be enough probably.

[Rozovian]

Already been said, but cut unnecessary bass and limit peaks. I wouldn't worry about the peaks of individual tracks, just cut the output peaks and make sure to drop a low shelf or low cut on most tracks to get rid of unnecessary (or unnecessarily loud) lows.

[PrototypeRaptor]

my chain for obnoxiously super loud mixes (ex: electro house/club muzaks)

-saturation (console emulation, something light)

-eq (basic shaping)

-compression (light)

-eq (heavy shaping, especially on freqs that "pop out")

-compression (heavy - and I mean intense, you'll have to automate it for loud vs soft sections)

-saturation (more intense, this step is optional, depends on the peaks)

-limiter (DON'T DRIVE IT TOO HARD! This will squash the sound; you make it commercial loud with the next step...)

-a really badass clipper (such as timework's or stillwell audio's)

that last step is really a good trick to getting a loud mix while still getting punch - most rock/electronic music uses that + outboard clipping to get ridiculous rms values of like -6.3.

but unless you really want that, don't go there. -8 or 9 is plenty loud...

also, you get what you pay for in the VST world. I haven't found a freeware limiter or compressor that can compare to the commercial plugins - and a good saturation emulator is pretty expensive too.

IMHO, of course

[Arcana]

Okay I think I managed to rectify a bunch of stuff with some advice. Part of the problem was actually just the mix itself, there were a lot of tracks that weren't levelled well, I had a lot of effects applied poorly, and it all and contributed to a muddy, dull sound. I believe it's loud enough now. I'll post excerpts later this week for comparison just to make sure.

[AMT]

It's been mentioned, but I can't emphasize enough how much of a difference hi-passing and low-passing your tracks makes. Put a hi-pass on anything that isn't a central bass instrument (Kick, bass, etc). Try around 150Hz and increase it (not soloed) until you can hear the difference in the mix, then back off just a hair. Do the same on all of your tracks with a low-pass; You can easily low pass at 12KHz without losing anything on almost every track, and you can push it down to 7.5KHz-9KHz on guitars and other things no problem. Stuff like bass can be way lower, around 1.5KHz or so easily. Recently on my tracks, the only things that aren't hi-passed are the bass and kick drum, and the only things that aren't lowpassed are the hihat and cymbals. This will clean up "junk" frequencies that aren't contributing to the mix, allowing you to push it way louder without sounding as squished or harsh.

[spacecowgoesmoo]

Very interesting stuff AMT, thanks! Gonna give all those techniques a try tomorrow, I've got a badass Etrian Odyssey soundalike track that only peaks at ~50% of my mixer..