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ohhh yeah! i forgot about that. Bark Filter is a great launch point to help visualize your frequency range. Its also great to pull down some bands and see how it effects your mix, then go back to the mix and adjust accordingly. I dont have any experience with Blue Mangoo MB, but have some of the other apps from them and i dig em. great call @espiegel123
Yeah the bassline in this song is HUGE and drowning out the kick and some of the other instruments, and definitely affecting how hard you can push the loudness on this one. Although if you're targetting -12 to -14LUFS like you mention in your first post, it's not a huge deal as you're always going to be quieter than most of the songs on Spotify regardless.
I'd say definitely turn down the bassline a dB or two and use a gentle EQ shelf to roll off 2-4dB around 50Hz on that bassline. I think that will help balance the mix/master a little more and will just make things sound better all around. As always, don't forget to reference your mixes on multiple playback systems if you can, that can be an easy way to spot excessive low end issues like this.
I'm also going to go against the grain and say you really don't need to be messing with multiband compression or processing on this song, at least not so far. Nothing in this song is jumping out at me as being too dynamic by any means, and definitely not only in some frequencies. The issues in this song are track to track volume levels and EQing more than anything, though there's always more than one way to skin a cat so don't be afraid to mess around with multiband compression if you feel you really need it. Though again, if anything I feel like this song already maybe a bit over-compressed sounding. Hard to tell with a Spotify link version and not hearing what you uploaded to Spotify.
If you want to send me an uncompressed version of the mixdown (IE not mastered and not a spotify link) I can show you what I'm talking about. tarekith at icloud dot com or throw up a link here and I can mess with it tomorrow.
absolutely what tarekith said! if you can fix it in the mix, do it, MB compressors and MS eq is what i used to address a stereo file. tweaking things in the mix should always comes first.
@Tarekith @shinyisshiny @espiegel123 thank you all for the feedback here. I think I have enough info to work off of for now. Knowing how much my sub frequencies are eating up in the mix really helps. I do have Barkfilter already so I can use that as another tool. I also just picked up 4Pockets SideBand Remix.
It also really sounds like I need to ignore the standards. While Spotify recommends targeting -14dB, it doesn’t sound like anyone does that, at least with hip-hop and EDM. I’m going to try and target between -8 and -6 for these next 5 tracks and see where that gets me.
I believe Spotify has changed and now recommends -11 LUFS. Someone correct me if I’m wrong
Just trying out the TBC trial. Awesome/Dammit, looks like I have ten days to mix my album.
Still -14LUFS as per their guidelines posted earlier in this thread: https://artists.spotify.com/help/article/loudness-normalization
Also, just to highlight why this is an issue, at any time Spotify (or Apple, YouTube, etc) can change their target levels, where as our songs will be locked in at the level they initially recommended. Just make your songs sound good first and foremost people, and don't worry too much about the loudness level. Just don't squash the shit out of it for no reason
I hope this isn’t a sign of the loudness wars coming back…
And thank you @Tarekith for always being willing to share your mastering knowledge with this forum.
IMVHO. Loudness wars never really stopped, artists/engineers just got more educated about it and learned the skills to get around a lot of the limitations they had missed before.
I have recently started messing around with the dynamic EQ part in Fabfilter. It is amazing how the world of frequencies opened up to me.
In terms of balancing low end on kicks, bass and subs:
Appplying dynamic EQ on mids to duck specific frequencies of a bassline sidechained to the kick: "thank you fabfilter"
Fabfilter shows the overlapping frequencies of both tracks in red, so you know exactly where to fix things.
I prefer to chose dynamiq EQ over standard compressors when clashing tracks are to become one. When using more than one bassline, I set the dynamiq EQ sidechained to the main bass.
This has helped me getting the low end better balanced, and putting a glue compressor on grouped tracks or the master.
I have many tracks but mostly are not mastered, because I am still learning day by day.
When measuring the limiter LUFS, sadly there are too many different opinions. I tend to aim for a -7 or -8 LUFS and leave less than a -1db using Fabfilter Pro L.
I have found that when aiming for a -14 or -12 LUFS, limiting with Fac Maxima with the Limiter presets gives a more solid loudness.
I would also like to know if there are alternatives to Izotope Tonal Balance Control or Levels by Mastering the mix for IOS.
^ Spot-on.
I was really hoping to avoid FF and stick with TB but it sounds like I’m really starting to find the reason FF costs more.
FF is my go to on iOS as well, they really are top quality.
is it a jump in quality from TB to FF or that they allow more graphical monitoring (or both)?
I had the feeling that features wise there wasn’t much in it…
Also, shame TB don’t do a dedicated saturator as Saturn seems to be everyone’s go to.
It isn't an issue of quality when comparing the equivalent functionality. FF have a some useful extra features which are great if one uses them...and some prefer the design of the FF plugs and find they enhance the workflow. As far as the actual eq quality, they are both top-notch.
This was released today and following this thread I just thought I would throw it in.
/DMfan
Hmmm, TBC is actually great for starting a track out on the right foot before it goes off the rails. Then I just check in every now and then to see if I messed it up and things seem to stray a heck of a lot less. Well sheet...
I went ahead and grabbed BLEASS Saturator instead of Saturn as I strongly prefer to have universal apps. I think Continua is the only non-universal app that I use nowadays. I don’t often mix on my iPhone, but when I do…
Any thoughts/plans for desktop?
TBC was/ is a game changer for me. It actually helped me to start hearing frequency ranges im missing in my productions as im producing. now when i slap it on im pretty close to where i want things to sit. when i first started using it, my mixes were all over place.
As long as I reference it while writing new stuff I am getting good consistent results. My old tunes I was hoping to fix are probably just eternally fucked, lol/sob.
Not any time soon. Between just buying a house and getting engaged, not sure when I could justify a new computer with all of the tools I’d need. And the mobile aspect of iOS is super important to me.
@DukeWonder congrats!
Woah, yah that's usually a penny or two. oh yah, and congrats!
TBC feels like cheating.
Thank you! Very excited.
Out of curiosity…
@DJB Any plans in the pipeline for this?
Damn, I will need to buy TBC but it’s so expensive and I don’t produce music on my cheap windows laptop.
This plugin is the real deal for checking mixes. Is Levels comparable to achieve the same goals?
I sometimes render too many masters with different settings to find issues and many times get lost and give up.
I will explore barkfilter, thanks for the info, guys.
And Sideband Remix, anyone deep diving into this one?