Audio-Technica Demo: 'Loud And Clear'

[The_Metallurgist]

-14 ish lufs master

i only wish it was Alan.

it would be really nice to hear this mix in a true -14LUFS master. to do that, however, you'd need to go back into the mix and will most likely have to make some significant changes in your compression strategy overall before bringing it into the master process for finalizing. now this is assuming you can get enough dynamics available beyond -14LUFS to add the touches - it's a tough ask in this project because of it's inherent nature, vocals are especially troublesome of course. doing so will change the character of the mix entirely but it would be nice to hear what you can do here within the expectations of the European Standard for dynamic range; EBU R128 refers, chaps.

if anyone out there is serious about mixing, it can't be ignored.

what's happened here, is that you've merely reduced the gain by -6dB, so the song still retains the excessive compression and limiting attributes of the original v1 - nothing's changed there. that's why it still sounds over-processed and doesn't contain the sort of dynamics one would otherwise expect.

so, it's still -7.2LUFS Integrated on the meter, it's just lower in volume (i hate that word volume - audio has nothing to do with cubic meters!).

using the value of K14 on the k-meter, it's working mainly around 0 to +4. i'm wondering if you are confusing the K-meter with LUFS?

try and have a go at mixing a song to -14LUFS. if you are anything like me, you'll find it an interesting approach because it requires a change in mind-set. because you tend to mix hot, you'll probably find it more of a struggle than i am, and, of course, it is very genre sensitive. but it's the way the world is going.....thank goodness!

i'm still messing around with mine when i can find some odd moments. but it looks like i made a blunder on choice of some vocal mics, they just aren't blending well, no matter how much i try and persuade them with EQ. i'm not impressed with the quality of the tracking, i've got to be honest, given this stuff was tracked in 24 bit it didn't need to be so "hot" (some of the vocal tracking is clearly distorted from the signal chain). i suspect they wanted the output to be as loud as possible in order to make the microphones sound more impressive and to keep the noise floor as far away as possible!