Last night I had a band come in for 3^rd mixing session. Generally, I give a band two mixing sessions and that just about covers it. Since I mix totally in the box (for better or worse), totally recalling a mix only takes as long as opening the file. I thought maybe we made some big mistakes on the previous mixing days and I was going to have my work cut out for me. It turns out the band simply wanted to make their mixes louder.

Everybody Wants A Loud CD

If you have recorded more than 0 bands, especially any band going after a ?modern? sound, you have probably heard complaints that your mixes just aren't as loud when you take them out to the car. This is a problem that we all face and deciding what to do about it can be tough.

I look at my recording studio as a service. I'm helping the client get whatever they are looking for onto a cd. While I have my own preferences, 99.9% of the time, I'm going to do what the client tells me. The problem here is that the typical band looks at a cd that isn't loud as being ?weak? or ?inferior?. The look at the volume issue as being something objectively wrong with their finished product if it isn't as loud as their favorite bands cds.

Their Favorite Bands CDs Are Destroyed With Compression

Just about any modern rock record that has came out in the past few years has been totally smashed with compression. I've noticed that this loudness war has leaped into a new realm in 2005-2006. I hear blatantly obvious distortion on the the mix as a whole.

The Kids Like It

There was a day when some retard smashed a pencil into his guitar speaker to create distortion. The guy's name was Link Wray, from The Kinks, who became a highly influential band on future rock music. Was really an idiot for sticking a pencil in his speaker? Or was he just that creative? Was he a visionary?

The only way that I can really tell if a tactic that seams a little out there like stabbing your pencil into a guitar speaker or smashing a mix with so much compression that the kick drum and everything else for that matter are distorting is to look at the kids. If they like the music, then the tactic worked even if it is hard for us people who have already made up our minds to accept.

Mega Loud CDs Undo All The Work The Engineer Put Into The CD

The bummer with this whole loud thing is that typical client doesn't understand that everything gets smaller when you really lay on the compression. When you work hard to get your kick drum and bass guitar to work together, but then smack an enormous amount of compression on, all of the sudden you end up with a bunch of muck with no real distinction between the kick drum and the bass guitar. I'm of the opinion that music is more effective when it's not destroyed by an aggressive compressor because the only reason that client really wants it loud is because they are used to music being a certain volume when they turn their cd player to 35. Now it's on 45 and that bothers them.

My Mixes Were Already Fairly Loud

Back to my story. In the case of this band, I knew what we were going for. I had already compressed the drums and vocals pretty damn hard because I knew they wanted their cd loud. On the 2 bus I didn't get too crazy, but I knocked about 2-3dB of with compression and then shaved off a few peaks with a Waves L2 limiter. The cd was plenty loud for my tastes and was actually pushing it a little bit for me. That wasn't good enough.

Open A Modern Rock Song In Sound Forge

If you've ever taken a look at a modern, mastered tune in Sound Forge or any other wav editor that has a huge display, you can see that someone just went in and knocked ALL the peaks right off. They've taken a ?who cares? mentality and just starting destroying (kind of like a 2 year old kid with a crayon on the wall).

So How Do You Make Your Mixes Loud Enough?

Make a mix loud is easy. Just compression the crap out of it. Maybe use a fast attack and release time. Put a limiter on it and set it to be mega aggressive. Now making a mix sound loud and still sound good is a whole other issue. When you compress a mix, you will hear it ?strain?. You will hear it complain a little bit like an overworked mule. (I don't know if mules complain, it just sounded good). Well, if you fire up a modern cd in your studio monitors, you will hear that it's complaining to. So in other words, if you want a cd that is THAT loud then you will have to live with the distortion. It's as simple as that. Your meters will have to be pegged in the near red. It sucks. You'll hear it suck. But this is what they want.

Master While You Are Mixing

There is considerable debate about this, but I always put a compressor and a limiter on the 2 bus when I'm mixing. I don't actually use it until I have most of the mix finished, though. As I get closer to finishing the mix, I will squeeze more and more. The meters should be burried to compete with modern recordings. You'll notice the low end get funny.

Since you still have your mix up, you can make some changes. I noticed that as I squeezed to a point that the band would like, I had to bring the bass guitar down as much as 2dB. I also found myself putting on a low shelf EQ and sucking out 2dB off of everything under 100Hz. This helped the mix reach maximum loudness without getting too muddy and flappy in the low end.

Conclusion

Ruining a mix just so some rotten kid doesn't have to turn up the volume sucks. But if the client asks for it, I say do it...unfortunately.