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T-racks is starting to make me sad


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Most of my clients don't have the budget to get professional mastering. so i usually run their stuff through T-Racks to take care of that. but i've been noticing lately, the levels of the songs i "master" in t-racks are substantially lower than most other songs. even when i run the levels as hot as it can go, no dice.

 

does anyone have any tips for it? or is it time to move on to something more awesome? any tips appreciated since this is one area i know very little about.

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Originally posted by MASSIVE Master

A.k.a. "Toy Racks."


That being said - Volume is the easy part. But the *mix* has to be able to handle it.

guess i'm just not quite awesome at making the mix handle it :freak: . i'm a bout to just say screw it and make you guys do it from now on, haha

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Competitive loudness is a sickness...

 

 

But... if you gotta, you gotta, I guess.

 

 

Take a look at the bottom octave of your mix in spectrum analyzer... if there is a bunch of loudness down below 40 or 45 Hz, consider rolling off around in there.

 

Most folks' stereos -- and a WHOLE lot of NFMs -- don't go that low...

 

And as you no doubt know, lower frequencies suck up all the 'power' to reproduce...

 

IOW, by rolling out some of the bass you can substantially lower the overall volume -- without, by and large, having a huge impact on the apparent volume or tonal balance (on most systems).

 

Now that you have some headroom, you can bring your overall level up, gaining more apparent loudness.

 

 

But, really, listen to the music -- not the evil little voice that tells you your mix isn't "loud enough."

 

That IS why they invented playback volume controls...

 

 

(Don't get me wrong... I understand... I've heard my mix sandwiched in between a couple of glossy, maxed out Nashville productions in a playlist and... I understand. ;) )

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I'm not a fan of loudness for the sake of loudness and I don't use T-Racks...being the el cheapo guy I am I use many free plugs and I'll tell you using Kaerhus [sp?] Audio's Classic limiter or digitalfishphones endorphin will enable you to create tracks louder than you'd ever want them to be...of course given the mix is at a good place prior to applying them...

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I've been able to get pretty darn loud, when needed, from T-Racks. I would slam it to get a client an idea of a LOUD version. It's got that saturation control at the end - it's a brick wall limiter that will crush the life and raise the volume. Then turn the master out level down about 1 dB. If that won't make it loud enough, there are other serious issues.

 

But remember = LOUD does NOT equal GOOD!

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one t-rack is okay for good mixes, not okay for so so mixes...

also it pumps quite easily, which would be fine for some heavy rock the will sound good with pumping and satustion

and fine for music with very few insturments. but not too great in adding volumes in busy eletronic tunes

sorry it's just me :freak:

 

Competitive loudness isnt a sickness to me :thu:

it have saved lots okay mixes into good mixes

lower energy dance tune into upfront powerfull

and give more openness to closed sounding mixes

 

however if you have a perfect mix or sometimes acustic mixes, Competitive loudness maybe a sickness to some , especilly to enginers that have acess to top grade gears for mixing and recording and monitoring that are contemped to what they have before adding mastering loudness flavor.

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T-racks generally does a pretty good job of boosting anything I throw at it up to a decent level. I try and keep my mix's way way down... like 5 or 10db below clipping at peaks... to avoid any digital distortion; T-racks makes up for that pretty well, and (IMHO) it has a pretty decent saturation model for those grungy rock tracks.

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I use Waves L3 Multimaximizer with Waves C4, or Izotope Ozone to get the job done.

When the clients want it "Loud like my other CDs", that's what I use.

 

Oh, and that Funklogic stuff is awesome!! I used to use it every once in a while, but now its on ALL my mixes. :)

hahaha

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