AKARSH SHEKHAR
Watts The Right Way : How To Power Your Mix Correctly ?
Economical arrangement
Many hit-parade songs these days are written from the start to be heard flawlessly on your speakers . These songs often have one thing in common : they are very economical arrangements . If your song consists of just a kick , vocals , and a few synth beeps , all of these take up a lot of space , making them sound powerful even on small speakers . This type of arrangement is also easier to compress and limit during the mastering process .
No power without sweetness
If you go all the way from start to finish of a song , you lose the attention of your listeners in thirty seconds . The best pop songs therefore make intelligent use of dynamics . There are always a few points in a song where you need to be gentle and then build up in intensity again . Thanks to the volume automation function in your DAW , you can emphasize these explosions . You can do the same with the stereo image .
Peak level
The most difficult album that greatest mastering engineer Bob Katz ever made wasn ’ t metal , or a classical music recording . It was a CD with … panpipes . At low frequencies there is relatively more energy than at high frequencies . These frequencies occupy a large part of your dynamic range . As a flute produces very little bass ,
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Bob Katz was able to bring the tracks to a level very close to 0 LUFS ( more on this later ) without touching a compressor or a limiter . So you can create a lot of space by filtering out the excess bass with a high pass filter . Be careful though , because before you know it your mix may lose liveliness and depth .
Peaks
Mute all drums and percussion and you can suddenly turn up your mix much louder without clipping . If you don ’ t want to sacrifice drums or beats , then compression is a must-have tool . It allows you to control peaks by adjusting the attack time . You can also sustain notes for longer with a short release time . This will give you the impression that your drum sounds are more powerful , because long sounds are felt to be louder than short ones . Be careful that this extra sustain doesn ’ t get in the way of the rhythm . If there is a very strong peak in your song , it can make your song play very soft . You can use a limiter to tame this peak , but it ’ s often more subtle to do it manually in an audio editor .
LUFS
For a few years now , all major streaming services , such as Spotify and iTunes , have been using perceived volume normalization . This means that they use a standard for reading volume . If your song is louder than this standard , the playback volume will be lowered . To measure the sound level of your production , most streaming services use the brand new LUFS which stands for Loudness Units Full Scale . The upper limit is 0 LUFS , so measurement results are always expressed as a negative number . LUFS meters give a much better picture of the sound level as peak or RMS counters . Most DAWs these days have an LUFS counter . If you want to stream your tracks to a streaming service like Spotify , iTunes , or YouTube , it doesn ’ t make much sense to upgrade your track to more than -12 LUFS . Otherwise , it will be softened anyway .