Common practice?

[naypalm]

Really happy with my mixes at the moment, and with mastering. Just one nagging problem, loudness.

In mixing i generally have a drum buss, bass buss, 2 guitar busses and a vox buss.

Is it common practice to use a brickwall limiter on each buss just to reduce peaks by a couple of Donnie Brasco's before mastering?

Or is this just going mad?!

[Joe_caithness]

Originally Posted by naypalm

Really happy with my mixes at the moment, and with mastering. Just one nagging problem, loudness.

In mixing i generally have a drum buss, bass buss, 2 guitar busses and a vox buss.

Is it common practice to use a brickwall limiter on each buss just to reduce peaks by a couple of Donnie Brasco's before mastering?

Or is this just going mad?!

Nothing wrong with using it to control the few stray peaks which could cause problems later on when everything is summed, but I wouldn't suggest smashing each channel hoping that it means the mastering guy will have to use less limiting, because it's not always the case, especially if the musicians are all hitting hard on certain beats, the effects become cumulative, what you could end up with is a big PRRFFF sound on the most dynamic point of the rhythm.

I would suggest if you are to do this, to audition it with all busses un muted.

Personally I use clippers on busses for my electronic music, but I wouldn't do the same for acoustic stuff unless we're talking about tickling 1dB at most. That's really only because I use a lot of lively harsh sounding samples which just sound confused if you limit instead of clipping.

It's the same answer as always I guess, try a few things and use your ears!

[naypalm]

Right, thanks for the reply, but could you explain clipping to me, and what plug-ins would you recommend to use?!

[Rob Murray]

Compressors yes, limiters no. Well maybe a traditional limiter, but not a brickwall limiter. If the peaks from individual levels are causing problems down the line you might have an issue somewhere else. Why not try a slower traditional limiter (compressor with a ratio >8:1) or compressor and see if that achieves what you need. This way you can retain a your transients, but control the levels of each section a bit. This should be much less damaging than the the additive effects of brickwall limiters, especially in louder sections where the music should have more transient punch.

[wado1942]

It is not common to use brick wall limiters anywhere on a mix. The actual level cranking itself is done in mastering, using many combinations of techniques and not just a limiter. Bear in mind, if you're looking for the kind of loudness that's been common over the last few years, it will be a distorted, painful mess regardless of what you do. I'm assuming your music isn't made of pure square waves of course.

[brethes]

No it's not and I wouldn't recomment it as it will mess your transients.

[naypalm]

How on earth then, do bands like the Flaming Lips sound amazing, yet ridiculously loud?! If you analyse their waves, they are just full on sausages, but sound awesome!

[SASMastering]

Limiting is an extreme dynamic process, sure they are much more advanced than limiters ever used to be. But if you cannot hear very, very clearly what actual affect these limiters are having due to so, so monitoring and room, don't apply them to busses. (or the output).

If you are mastering yourself good luck with it.

[mixer898]

I am not a fan of using brickwall limiter in mixing. In my mix, I make sure everything balanced and the EQ is done right. Even in mix buss compression, I wouldn't do brickwall limiting. Even if I supply my client with the mixdown I would tell him/her that its only a mix and its not yet loud. And if you would like visualize having it mastered simply turn the volume of your player up.

[wado1942]

Originally Posted by naypalm

How on earth then, do bands like the Flaming Lips sound amazing, yet ridiculously loud?! If you analyse their waves, they are just full on sausages, but sound awesome!

The same way everybody does it. Mix as well as you can, then in mastering, touch up any EQ & overall compression, do some manual level automation. Then clip, limit, clip some more, clip again. Listen to them on a good system and the shortcomings of this technique become abundantly clear (or harsh and distorted as the case may be).