Bad_Mister
Total Posts: 36620
Joined 07-30-2002
status: Legend
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Re: Volume level on finished songs
LOUD is a very separate thing from level… that is the first thing to learn.
LOUD is a function of perception - while LEVEL or Gain is something that can be measured on a meter. You also have to recognize that the frequency response of the human ear is what it is… I used to teach audio engineering (in a previous life)… and one of the things I used to do for students is make them realize that this does exist.
I would send a test oscillation through the console 1kHz and set the meter to 0VU. Then switch it to 100Hz (still at 0VU) and then to 10kHz (still at 0VU)… just that little experiment can tell you a lot about your ear/brain and your perception of sound. The 1kHz sounds much louder than the 100Hz or 10kHz… That is frequency response on a static sound… But the sound in motion… as in music - where there are percussive strikes and attacks and a variety of spiky amplitudes coming at you simultaneiously and it is much more complicated.
It is easy to make anything LOUD. While audio recording is both an art and a science, many musicians feel that that should be able to do it without much study. Fact is, there is more to it than just the subjective (art), there is actually some objective knowledge (the science part of it) you must acquire.
Consumer products (like home stereo hi-fi systems) have a very few controls on them… Notice consumers are not given the control over individual instrument volumes, or anything close… They are given those that are deemed ‘safe’ for even the most non-technical person to use. These include:
_ an overall VOLUME control
_ a BALANCE control (panorama potentiometer) which is set to Center (and never moved)
_ and an EQ (usually Bass and Treble, and in some cases Mid)
Preoccupation with VOLUME and how LOUD your mix is, is one of those things that recording engineers have many jokes about… Musicians always want “more me”, always want the mix “louder”, It has to be louder than the other records… more Cowbell!!!
I’m a musician, who while I was still young, decided I was going to learn as much about the recording engineering thing as I could… because I felt it was going to be important for me to be able to understand what it was about. And once I did, I finally got some of the jokes the engineers would tell about the “deaf musicians"… What they meant was not initially clear. But later I got it. Up loud you can hear everythig - but it is not necessarily a good mix.
Just because you record something as close to 0 on a VU meter as you can get, does not guarantee that it will have the same “perceived” volume as the next mix which also is as close as possible to 0 VU… If it were that simple, everyone would be a great recording engineer. There is more to how the ear and brain perceive sound, much much more. The ear can hear over a range of a trillion to one. That is, if the softest detectable sound you hear is given the value 1, the loudest sound is a trillion times that… Recorded media is always going to be some smaller subset of the actual range of hearing.
A lot of engery of a sound is pent-up in the attack portion of a sound. Meaning that if you are dealing with a kick drum… the mallet strike is violent and quick: “CLICK” - it causes the meters to spike (you hardly even recognize it as loud, it is just so fast). The response of the drum comes a fraction of a second later and is not as much energy - but it is the sound you actually want to record the most of: “BOOM”.
So take a recording where the “engineer” is unaware of this ‘science’ fact. The level reaches 0 and they have their kick drum recorded.
The next engineer knows about transient peaks and uses a small amount of compression to lower that transient spike, so that they can bring up the impact of the kick drum - and they sit that boom right in the listener chest.
The two look exactly the same on the meters, but one is perceptible LOUDER to the listener.
A good mastering engineer can get as much as 18dB of perceived gain from a mix… and trust me that is a whole lot…
It is not just in the mastering. The Mix and the original recording itself can change the perceived volume… it is about compression, it is about frequency, where to place instruments in the stereo field… it is both an art and a science.
If you are curious about this I can recommend a great book - but be prepared to change your thinking about the overall Volume Level of your mixes - “Mastering Audio… the art and the science” by Bob Katz (Focal Press)
Remember: LOUD, any consumer can turn up the volume… and you know what? They do… especially when they want to hear something. But you must respect that Mastering Engineers _ the guys who take the Mix Engineers work and make it a “finished product” - get paid hundreds of dollars per hour because of their expertise… It is years of experience and lots (and lots) of listening.
Hope that helps.
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