Hi, and welcome back.
A few people didn't like the animated waveform display for my voice over, but I've still
no intention of appearing on camera, so I thought I'd try this spectrogram instead.
Let me know if you like that better...
Anyway, part two of my Fabfilter tutorial about loudness has just gone up, and predictably
there are a few nay sayers. Specifically lots of DJs are telling me that EDM masters need
to have average levels up at -6 LUFS otherwise they can't get loud enough, or they're inconsistent
with other masters that are up at those levels, or that they simply lack the punch and energy
if mastered quieter.
So, let's examine those claims one by one. First of all: can't get loud enough.
What? You're playing through a PA system for god's sake! Just turn it up! You don't need
fake artificial loudness when you've got thousands of watts of amplification driving dozens of
speakers!
I mean, you're probably way too loud already, anyway.
As a live engineer, if my console wasn't in an ideal location, I would walk out into the
crowd mid song to judge my mix. Otherwise I could be sucking badly out there and I'd
never know.
If your DJ booth is not ideally placed to judge how loud the PA stacks are, walk out
to check, or you're not doing your job properly. And if you're too big a name DJ to mingle
with the crowds, you can delegate the job to someone else, right?
Otherwise you're damaging your audience's hearing (and if they're too wasted to realise,
that doesn't absolve you of any responsibility) and you're making the live engineers forced
to listen to you while packing up the gig that's just ended despise you deeply and profoundly.
While we're on the subject: if you don't know how to use a DJ mixer properly, and I'm talking
about setting a basic gain structure here, not advanced effects features, what are you
doing even calling yourself a DJ? That's like a guitarist that hasn't bothered to learn
how to tune their instrument.
Ok, so let's talk about consistency: DJs need all their tracks to be at the same level because…
they don't know how to use the DJ mixer? I mean, every channel has a gain trim and a
fader, and there's a master volume as well. Which part do you not understand?
This is like a guitarist requesting that all songs just stay in C major so he doesn't have
to move his fingers.
As a live engineer I would routinely mix bands with 32 channels coming from the stage, sometimes
even more. If I was in monitor world I might have to create up to a dozen separate monitor
mixes and keep every musician on stage happy at the same time.
You want sympathy because you can't manage one stereo channel?
Ok last one: quieter mixes don't have the punch and energy of louder mixes.
But that's just not true. In fact the truth is exactly the opposite. With less limiting
your EDM tracks will have punchier kicks, more infectious grooves, more rousing buildups…
and as a bonus, they won't be so likely to kill the PA system.
Yes that's right. You thought limiting your peaks was protecting the PA system from overs?
I'm afraid you were doing the opposite.
In fact power amplifiers are quite good at recreating short loud peaks without clipping.
They will usually be happy to exceed their rated output for brief transients. And PA
speaker drivers will usually handle those gracefully as well. As a live engineer I could
push the PA right to its limits with a live band, and rarely have any issues.
Then the idiot DJ would start playing, and those flat topped, stupidly limited and clipped
waveforms would rip through speaker drivers like butter, regardless of how conservatively
I set the limiters on the PA system controllers.
Seriously, DJs, if you didn't play such badly mastered material, and consistently burn out
drivers, the venues could actually afford to pay you more.
This has turned into more of an anti DJ rant than I intended, but honestly I think it's
totally justified.
I mean: "Electronic Dance Music" there's a clue in the name: its music for dancing to.
The rhythms are the most important element. Yet you're telling me this is the one genre
where its absolutely critical that you remove any trace of a transient from the final master?
Dumbest thing I ever heard.
That's all, thanks for watching.