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Andrew Scheps, Heretic


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2 hours ago, James Foxall said:

 

I got so inspired that I bypassed my summing and all my 2bus gear, set up a 2bus chain like he has, 

Could you roughly outline what specific plugs he had on his master bus? Of course how you use them is program dependent, but I'd be curious what exact plugs he sticks on there, in what order . . . ? 

Your post was very enlightening, as I have always made the same "mistake" by mixing into a limiter, the Fabfilter actually, and it's last on the bus just catching peaks, I don't add any gain back in.

When it comes to mixing, I've always felt like a professional plumber asked to wire a house with electricity.

 

Cheers,

-Tom

 

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15 hours ago, emeraldsoul said:

Could you roughly outline what specific plugs he had on his master bus? Of course how you use them is program dependent, but I'd be curious what exact plugs he sticks on there, in what order . . . ? 

Your post was very enlightening, as I have always made the same "mistake" by mixing into a limiter, the Fabfilter actually, and it's last on the bus just catching peaks, I don't add any gain back in.

When it comes to mixing, I've always felt like a professional plumber asked to wire a house with electricity.

 

Cheers,

-Tom

Hi Tom,

I will share my notes and some screenshots!

I'm moving my son back to college today so give me a day or two and I'll be happy to share. Shall I make a new post in the coffeehouse?

PS: I've done one of these now with Chris Lord-Alge, Scheps, and Brauer - the money spent for each of these was better than any plugin purchase I made... :)

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I was using the K-system. The issue with it is mainly the need to make sure everything is calibrated .  I tend to start out with the good old fashioned RMS/peaks and work backwards in looking at the standards. Audio amplification hasn't changed drastically with respect to amplifiers and how the sound is distributed. There are no stickers on sound systems " This amplifier has been approved by the LUFs committee"

The main reasons for all of this are for online distribution. Different streaming services will treat your tracks slightly different. They will ALL apply some kind of control to over zealous tracks that are too hot.  So it comes down to either we do it more intelligently or they will do it for you. I am usually tickling the limits of LUFS metering sometimes exceeding it. Yes "they" are probably limiting it some on upload but not enough to be noticed so far. 

Another misconception is that these standards protect your hearing. This is only partially true. You still have a volume control and it's up to you how loud you turn it up.

Andrew isn't the first engineer I have heard say they are sometimes beyond measured limits slightly. Shooting past a LUFs setting doesn't necessarily mean you're clipping. Two different things ;)

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2 hours ago, James Foxall said:

Hi Tom,

I will share my notes and some screenshots!

I'm moving my son back to college today so give me a day or two and I'll be happy to share. Shall I make a new post in the coffeehouse?

PS: I've done one of these now with Chris Lord-Alge, Scheps, and Brauer - the money spent for each of these was better than any plugin purchase I made... :)

That would be really awesome of you, and congrats on your son having an open college to go to!!!  Our son gets an extra year of parenting with us at home - the bonus round!

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2 hours ago, craigb said:

Margarine.  One of the worst substances man has ever created for consumption.  It's so nasty that even cockroaches won't eat it!

When I was a kid people in Kenosha, WI (my home town) had to drive into Illinois to get margarine. Which even at the time to me seemed ludacris. 

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2 hours ago, craigb said:

Margarine.  One of the worst substances man has ever created for consumption.  It's so nasty that even cockroaches won't eat it!

Maybe that's what makes them so resilient.

 

Come to think of it, maybe Keef don't eat margarine either. 

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5 hours ago, Starise said:

Another misconception is that these standards protect your hearing. This is only partially true. You still have a volume control and it's up to you how loud you turn it up.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but I do sort of agree with the standards protecting your hearing. If we were to say (for sake of argument) that the standard is -14 LUFS, people/systems will at least try to adhere to it. If there was no such thing whatsoever, people would mix to whatever feels good on that day; you might end up with a mixed playlist with a track targeting -22 LUFS (which you really enjoy and turn up), to be surprised by the next song on the playlist that targeted -10 LUFS.

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No I don't think you are.

You seem to have mastering down for online pretty well. I listened to some of your tracks. I agree with the idea that LUFS can protect hearing too. Whatever the site uses as a measure is mainly a way to balance all audio within a reasonable sonic space so one track isn't blaring loud as compared to another track. LUFS makes things more consistent. I like that and it assures we won't accidentally become deaf because someone uploaded an extra loud track as compared to the others.

If there is competition ....no make that yes there is still competition to at least be in the same ball park as others in the genre as Andrew Sheps mentions in the video. This means we have a much smaller window to play in, be loud enough, and be within specs of the site db reductions. It's still a window that can be adjusted in other ways like perceived loudness as compared to actual loudness. If I hear him correctly what he's saying is he doesn't adopt any one standard as his bible. He mixes to the genre and music, then compares different methods. This is pretty much what I do too although probably not as well ;) I don't mix in acoustically aggressive genres like Metal and EDM so for me it isn't as much of a thing concerning loudness. I'm more about dynamics and as a result my tracks often have the kid gloves on. I'm ok with that.

My main point was anything can be gotten around. Our hearing safety is still up to us. Once we begin streaming a track we still have a volume control. 

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Thanks for taking the time to listen - I generally use Insight to target an Integrated Loudness of -14 LUFS for each song.

Yes, you're right: different genres tend to have different targets. I read an article a while ago that generally hinted that classical music was the quietest, at around -22; whereas the latest pop/rock was targeting somewhere between -10 and -12. That said, this was probably when the loudness wars was more prevalent, and streaming services have probably helped to lower the target a little. I'm pretty sure that different services have different levels still though, as products such as Mastering the Mix's Expose wouldn't exist otherwise.

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I hate playing songs on shuffle with huge perceived or actual volume differences.  But I also hate to have to go through 350,000 songs and have my media player auto-level the volume too... 🙄

I still think this image is very telling (and the latest one is from way back in 2005 - I doubt things have gotten much better since!).

Music-LoudnessWars-BrothersInArms.jpg

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I think things have got better since 2005 and streaming services are partly the reason why; they started to introduce levels that music will be adjusted to. When a song is mastered really loud it sounds 'great' on hearing initially, because we perceive louder to be better. However, when that same loud song is brought back down, the lack of dynamics makes the song sound really weak when compared to a song that was mastered to the same output level. In the video, the interviewer says something along the lines of the loudness wars are over and 'you won'.

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1 hour ago, craigb said:

I hate playing songs on shuffle with huge perceived or actual volume differences.  But I also hate to have to go through 350,000 songs and have my media player auto-level the volume too... 🙄

I still think this image is very telling (and the latest one is from way back in 2005 - I doubt things have gotten much better since!).

Music-LoudnessWars-BrothersInArms.jpg

My Dire Straits albums from the 80s are all noticeably quieter than other albums of the period.

And arguably the best works conceived during that time.

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