A logical question in regards to the loudness war =P

C

CH3SH

CH3SH - Naphalm Audio
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Location
Bury St. Edmunds
Okies so iv got a logical question for everyone producing DnB in reference to 'The Loudness Wars'
But first id like to know what everyone is producing at BPM wise,
As a thought would it be better to produce at a slower BPM giving more room between notes which then gives you more dynamic room and the space to push it all further?!
If so what would you suggest as the neutral BPM as DnB is anything between 160-180

Penny for your thoughts lol
 
Different producers will work at different tempos. What ever is cool with you. If you like 172.34 for eg. then do it. Older Dnb will be anything from 160 to 180. Most producers now will use 170-180.

What is your question about the loudness war?
 
Producing at a slower BPM wont allow you to push the tunes louder. It all depends on what is going on in the spectrum. You should be working at peeks of around 0 at the max. I personally like 174-175bpm
 
personally i dont go above 170 - but then again im only trying to make oldskool sounds - and my tunes suk anyways lol
 
logikz said:
170, but we did a song a while back in 165 and nobody noticed, people seemed to like it. 165 is the new 180.
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180 is way too fast imo.

we produce at anything between 170 and 176 :)

as for the "loudness war" - think you have to compress anything and everything today to get noticed. if your song isnt loud enough it wont be played out :/ unfortunately, as i hate pushing everything through limiters ..
 
I've found a new favourite: 168bpm. For that stuff I usually go half-tempo anyway though. It just sits so nicely.

I also noticed that 0.6% (in a pitch fader) sums to about 1bpm when mixing. Oh wow. Not just to figure out how many percent would 1 semitone be.
 
groelle said:
180 is way too fast imo.

we produce at anything between 170 and 176 :)

as for the "loudness war" - think you have to compress anything and everything today to get noticed. if your song isnt loud enough it wont be played out :/ unfortunately, as i hate pushing everything through limiters ..
Click to expand...

im quite new to production and compression, do you literaly compress everything? ive only been compressing drums at the moment, maybe 1 or 2 other elements
 
During mixdown I don't really pay any attention to the RMS level, I just keep the peaks from clipping, which usually lands me somewhere between -20 and -15dB RMS. I might try to shave some of the biggest peaks off to get the peak level down a few db if they're much wilder than anything else in the tune...

RMS comes to play when I do self-masters for demo/promo sends (possible radio play, podcasting, club play etc). Then I try to aim for -10 ish, maybe -12. It's weird though, that different programs calculate RMS differently. In Reaper I'd get -9, and in soundforge statistics i get -11.

Compression... I don't know, it always depends on the material. And I really don't use compression for anything else than drums really. Maybe some wild leads or stabs might need a little taming, or if I want to bring up reverb tails or delay feedback I might compress them but it's rare. On drums I'm usually doing some -3 to -5 gain reduction to the level.
 
Oh yeah, sometimes I might compress subs if I use samples that decay over time, and I want them to stay 'in your face' for longer.

Compressing everything is not very wise since we work in the digital realm. When mixing real instruments you have all kinds of "errors" in the sound like much more variation in dynamics, pops and things like that, so there you would need to use compression much more. If you ease on the compression your mix has more breathing space. Of course some people aim for that super-compressed artificial sound (noisia style), but I can't listen to that for very long.
 
1 more: the biggest element that you can get away with limiting a few dB is the main drum hits, kick and snare (in your basic dnb at least). Bus these two to a channel and use limiter on that. Start dropping the threshold with your eyes closed and without using any makeup gain. When you start hearing that it affects the dynamics, back up just a little touch and you're done. Depends on your hearing of course but I can get the mix 2-4dB louder that way, because my main drums always end up being the loudest peaks in my tunes.
 
checked out our tunes and their rms level is around 15 all the time, after applying selfmastering theyre usually about 10-8, should be all fine then i guess?

and yeah, i mainly compress sub (sometimes quite heavily tho..), general basssounds and drums aswell, no need to compress pads or most instruments (with guitars and keys i beg to differ tho...)
 
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