Increase the volume of my audio mix - any suggestions?!

[Cortexturizer]

Hi guys, I have recently recorded a song in rehearsal with my band, got 8 channels and mixed them together using my limited but somewhat existing knowledge of Cubase. It sounds pretty good to my ears, it should serve for band promo purposes so quality is not really the issue right now. But I have an issue with the end volume, it is so so much quieter than commercial music. I tried adjusting gain and there is some space to do that before clipping but still nowhere near enough.

What should I do? What are your preferred ways, either conceptually or in practice (which plugins) to handle this? I've read in some places that it all get's down to limiters and compressors in the end, and EQ of the bass content. But it's no use when I don't know where to begin!

I know there's lots of knowledgable people here so I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Thanks!

P.S. I should've explained the sort of music we do, because I reckon the approach to mixing and production varies wildly from genre to genre. We play alternative rock with fuzzed out guitars, strong drums, distorted bass and shouting vocals. So, yeah, it should, you know, sound loud haha.

[Muadzin]

I've never personally worked with cubase, but a friend of mine does and when he wants to increase the overall gain I see him use the normalize function.

[drolo]

Also commercial mixes use all kinds of compression strategies to increase the perceived volume.
Perhaps you can try to run the final mix through a compressor and see if it helps.

[midwayfair]

There are multiple things that can be the cause of this.

First, here's a general process before you go to finalize the track:
1. Bounce it down to a stereo output track so that none of your peaks exceed -10dB. Remove any bus plugins you have going on the stereo output UNLESS you used something like a compressor for the whole track for effect. Don't normalize this bounce!
2. Import your stereo mixdown into a new track, and create a mastering chain. You do this because it frees up your processor power for the mastering chain, so your computer doesn't have to render individual tracks and plugins on the master bus at the same time.

Okay. Now that you have that in hand, first thing to do is to take a look at the track output. There are lots of good free metering plugins, and your DAW might have one. Look at the following:

1. "RMS" levels: This is the AVERAGE volume of the track. Your mixdown will likely be somewhere no higher than -15dB RMS, much more likely to be around -20dB. I shoot for between -11dB is where I shoot for after I'm completely done with the track, and it makes a fairly dynamic mix, rarely overshoots my limiter, and pretty much never clips my converter. However, this is extremely low for many modern styles, which push it to -9dB or even as high as -6dB for EDM or some hip hop (which level often involves clipping the converters intentionally).

2. Compression, distortion, density (of frequencies across the spectrum) and even stereo imaging increase the average signal level and the perceived level of the track. What you want to do during the process of finalizing your mix is to deal with each of those elements to produce the maximum amount of available and useful headroom WITHOUT completely squashing the life out of the track or the individual instruments. So look for stuff like the low-end (especially bass guitar) being too loud (which can trigger compression and reduce the high end too early, resulting a less present/quieter mix), various elements in the mix having *excessively* dynamic transients on a regular basis (use a limiter or saturation plugin on the individual track if you need to), a lack of presence (stuff above 5KHz in my book), or the stereo image being out of balance (e.g,, if your right channel is consistently 3 dB higher than your left channel, the whole mix will end up near the level of the right channel).

3. Some DAWs simply won't output a track at 0dB no matter what you do. I used to have this problem with GarageBand. I think the problem may have been fixed in a newer update, but I don't use GB anymore (I use Logic Pro X). Fortunately, something like Audacity is free, and Reaper might as well be, so if this is the problem, then you have cheap or inexpensive solutions. This is the last thing I'd worry about, though.

4. Remember that there's a volume control on a lot of things. Unless your mix is excessively quiet, if it's good enough for just presenting something to a venue, you might leave well enough alone. But it's fun to learn new things, so let's do this.

Below is a post I put on Reddit yesterday detailing my "mastering" (really just "making a reasonably loud mix") process. You can use this to create a template. If you're using Logic Pro X, I have a mastering template file I can share (it requires some free plugins).

I "master" my own tracks for my solo recordings and demos to get a more complete picture either of what the final track will sound like or because it's only for local distribution or online anyway. [...]

So here are the steps I take. This is just my opinion, and the process I use. It makes my tracks sound enough like I want them to sound most of the time that I am fine with sharing them online. I write and play folk rock, and I prefer less punishing mixes than most of what I hear from modern rock, hip hop, etc. Depending on the type of music you play and the sound you want, this could very well be useless to you, because the process I use doesn't produce a very "modern" sounding track. It makes the sound I want to hear.

1.    Make sure the mix sounds as close to what you want as possible. Use reference tracks constantly, and more than one of them if possible. Use metering in addition to your ears in case your monitoring or room isn't ideal. (Mine isn't.)

2.    Listen to the mix on as many different systems as possible. Again, make sure the mix sounds as good as possible. If the mix sounds as good as possible, your mastering is going to be simpler.

3.    My mastering chain includes, but doesn't always use, the following: (a) some sort of saturation or character, usually a tape saturation (just a tiny bit from Logic's tape delay) and Izotope's Vinyl -- when you need something like this, you need it, otherwise it's off; (b) a pre-plugins fader of some sort, just in case (Tokyo Dawn's proximity is useful because it can also be a character or imaging tool); (c) an exciter, just in case the track is a little dark in the top end (usually turned off, but never more than 5-10%); (d) a multi-band compressor -- this is also my EQ, and is generally a smiley face overall, mainly used to compress the lows and upper midrange a little, but we're talking minor adjustments; (e) an imaging plugin of some sort, something to broaden, or even tighten, the stereo image of the whole track if needed; (f) a character compressor of some sort -- often turned off, but I do like the 1176-alike in Logic's stock compressor reducing a decibel or two on a faster attack, which can also be used for autogain if I'm going for a more squashed mix; (g) Tokyo Dawn's Kotelnikov (or however that's spelled), usually compressing between 2 and 5dB total and with enough output to get me near the limiter; (h) a brick wall limiter, usually the adaptive limiter in Logic (which is sufficient for making folk rock tracks, I can't speak for more modern sounds), with the gain staging from previous plugins set to never exceed about 2dB of limiting and only on rare peaks and rarely limit more than a couple fractions of a dB (by the time your mix gets to this point, if you need more limiting than that, you probably needed to compress the instrument that's sticking out more, or you needed to compress the whole track more -- hard limiting can sound weird, so it should only be an emergency thing IMO).

4.    I monitor with metering and shoot for nothing higher than -10.5dB RMS, depending on how dynamic/quiet/dense the song is. Most of my songs end up around -11, which is still kind of loud to my ears.

5.    Give it a rest, listen with fresh ears after a while through multiple types of speakers/headphones, and see if anything is poking out.

6.    Play the mix on different sound systems, in the car, etc., ask a friend or two to listen, and make notes. Go back to the mix before touching the mastering chain, make whatever adjustments are needed. This has even involved re-tracking!

7.    Repeat steps 5 and 6 until it's the best I can do.

8.    If I'm not happy after several iterations of step 7, I consider whether I care enough about the track to pay for mixing and mastering.

Finally, remember that you actually want your master volume or your limiter's output BELOW 0dB at the end, to avoid problems with intersample peaks, but you actually need quite a bit more than .1dB or .3dB (you will see various numbers) to completely avoid that, so do what your ears tell you is best.

[Cortexturizer]

You never cease to amaze Jon. I will take these advices seriously and try to make the most out of what I have at hand. There's much more to this than I had expected. It's both a good and a bad thing I suppose haha. THANK YOU so much.

[midwayfair]

Remembered reading this and thought you might like it.

https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar12/articles/loudness.htm

[blearyeyes]

What you're looking for is a good brick wall limiter. There is a free VST one called W1.
You also have to be careful that your monitor speakers can re-create low lows. The low end can be out of control and you wont hear it. That will eat up a ton of your dynamic range and make your mix seem quiet. Use a high pass filter to cut everything from about 40hz down or even 50hz. depending on what's there. Then use the W1.

Let me find the plug-in I'll post a link:

http://www.yohng.com/software/w1limit.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQvZdf8GNuA

[Cortexturizer]

Wow this W1 plugin just made my track 2 times louder and I can't hear any particular artifacts that I don't like. I've done the high pass filter before the W1 as you said.
Whoa, so this was a fast solution, thank you so much!

Midwayfair, your post served as a tutorial/guidelines for me to approach this topic later on with a bit more time and brainz. I will definitely do so. Great stuff everybody, thank you!

[peAk]

but never forget: dynamics are great!!!!

There are reasons why Steely Dan Aja, Thriller, DSOTM, are all considered some of the best produced albums ever!!

...but I get that most new commercial stuff is very loud (squashed) and you must compete with that.

[blearyeyes]

but never forget: dynamics are great!!!!

There are reasons why Steely Dan Aja, Thriller, DSOTM, are all considered some of the best produced albums ever!!

...but I get that most new commercial stuff is very loud (squashed) and you must compete with that.

Yes you can definitely squeeze the life out of a mix. The W1 is a clone of the Waves L1 limiter. You can bring a mix under control without messing it up if you're careful and realize it is a powerful effect that you can't really hear that easily. Until tomorrow when you play back your mix with fresh ears and your drums are sorta losing the whack they had. But to bring up the over all levels and control the peaks it's pretty cool for free. Everything in moderation.

[JC103]

If you can send me the tracks I'll mix the song for you on my console. The reason, as noted, why your track was quiet compared to commercial cd's, etc., is that it lacks a professional mastering job. I've been at this 20 years and can not master a track the way my mastering engineer friend does. It's a skill that takes time and very expensive gear to do right. Mixing however, that I can do! PM me if interested.

[Cortexturizer]

Hey man thank you for the offer but I think I got this right now. Definitely a very nuanced skill, mastering!

[oldhousescott]

Let me add another freebie to the list: VladG's Limiter 6. Yep, it's got a lot of knobs and switches, but there are examples/tutorials on YT to help you grok it. Really amazing "mastering" plugin, all the more so as it's free.

[JC103]

Hey man thank you for the offer but I think I got this right now. Definitely a very nuanced skill, mastering!

Cool, no problemo.

[midwayfair]

Let me add another freebie to the list: VladG's Limiter 6. Yep, it's got a lot of knobs and switches, but there are examples/tutorials on YT to help you grok it. Really amazing "mastering" plugin, all the more so as it's free.

Just tried this out -- it's really cool and very efficient. I'm not sure wit will replace the 1176 Emulator in Logic + the Kotelnikov for me, but I like the extra options on this.