How'd she do that? Pat Sullivan mastering

[lowland]

Presumably because much of the required loudness has been generated prior to the L2, so the limiter is not having to work as hard as in your version - I bet the mastered version sounds cleaner too, with less of that distinctive L2 'roar'.

I can't speak for Pat, but in my case the final limiter is often only ticking over to control occasional peaks as transparently as possible, and a combination of other techniques further upstream has got us pretty much there already loudness-wise.

Why don't you ask Pat?

[audiomichael]

Now that's a good idea!

[optik]

yeah, and don't forget to post Pat's reply here!

[aivoryuk]

Any chance of a before and after example, its always nice to hear good work

[Rick Sutton]

In addition to any audible differences it looks like a screenview issue to me. There's gotta be a low level floor on the blue file, it's just lower than the red and not showing on the screenview.

[krid]

Originally Posted by aivoryuk

Any chance of a before and after example, its always nice to hear good work

I would love to hear that.

[Ben F]

It would come down to a touch of decent compression and less limiting. It looks like you have a lot of limiting on your waveform. The L2 should be 1-3dB GR, 3 is even pushing it for most music except perhaps dance or hip-hop.

[audiomichael]

Originally Posted by Rick Sutton

In addition to any audible differences it looks like a screenview issue to me. There's gotta be a low level floor on the blue file, it's just lower than the red and not showing on the screenview.

It's not a screenview. I double checked by throwing it into Peak. Mine is razor sliced.

[audiomichael]

I'm slammed with work, but I'll try and get back in touch with Pat next week. I'm not sure I can post and example, but I'll look into it.

[Bob Yordan]

Hiya audiomichael

What is the average RMS levels for those songs/parts ?

Best wishes

[Switchcraft]

I just started to be able to get those round and tall edges in my masters.
i do it by mastering with a high ratio (approaching limit, but not quite) and long attack, letting peacks through (the ones you see), then following it up with a 2-1 ration to pull those edges that slipped through back down, but keeping them round. Last I use Software limiter to bring up the level approaching 0.0, but I also push the inputs of the converter to get it close to 0.0. I do everything out of the box, except for the last limit.

[derekbo]

Mastering engineers look for an output of around -0.3 to -1 Db. Thats because they want to leave headroom for further conversions that are common nowadays (eg. Wav to Mp3). It is believed that some wav to mp3 converters, or cheap players do in fact cause clipping if you dont leave some headroom!

[kuasalogam]

try using Kramer Tape and/or Stillwell Event horizon, I can do similar result to the pic

[echoRausch]

My waveforms look similar like Pats since I started using a limiter capable of limiting intersample peaks.

I assume she was using such a device...

[dave-G]

SRC after a peak limiter set to say -0.3dBFS often causes peak alterations like that above the previously rendered output ceiling.

[huejahfink]

Yep - and limiters with a bit of a soft knee, Elephant can be set this way with a knee control.

[Cubic Spline]

Originally Posted by huejahfink

Yep - and limiters with a bit of a soft knee, Elephant can be set this way with a knee control.

+1
You can have same effect in the oxford limiter by engaging the soft knee.

[MASSIVE Master]

As much as I hate "looking at sound" -- Anything I run out and in again -- Even if it's a simple AD/DA loop, ends up looking like that just because I have my AD backed down a few 10th's from the DA. If there's a lot of extra gain involved, a whole bunch of things can take over... Processing on the HEDD (a whole lot of people use 'em), capturing with a limiter before the AD, certain adjustable digital limiters, etc.

[HB Stone]

Some limiters (e.g. iZotope Ozone's Maximizer) give you the option to preserve/recover transients during limiting.

If you look at Ozone's gain reduction trace while turning Transient Recovery off and on it seems like it basically adds a small amount of lookahead time. By reducing gain immediately before the transient, you don't have to clamp down so hard ON the transient.

Originally Posted by derekbo

It is believed that some wav to mp3 converters, or cheap players do in fact cause clipping if you dont leave some headroom!

I used to always export at -0.5 dB for that reason; anything higher would clip when I converted to MP3, but -0.5 would just touch -0.0 without clipping.

Then I figured out that it does depend on the converter. The same MP3 codec through a different conversion app only boosts files 0.2 dB during conversion. Some apps might boost a whole dB.

[paintitblack]

Did you have a fast attack and her a slow attack?

[Camera]

Originally Posted by audiomichael

I just got back from mastering with Pat Sullivan @ Bernie Grundman. Needless to say, she totally rock'd it.

I was trying to see if I could match the sound she got. I was looking at the waveform her's vs. mine. I know at some point she had hardware L2 engaged, I had the plugin at the end of my line. Why are my waveforms samurai chopped clean, while Pat's still has some little life left there???

Mine's in blue, her's is in red.

Between yours and hers, which one was perceptively louder?