Making your mix sound louder can be hard without causing distortion
or ruining the dynamics of your audio.
So, in this video, I'm going to show you 3 ways to make your mix sound louder with compression,
a little trick with volume automation, and careful decisions with EQ.
Stick around, this is pretty cool stuff.
[How to make a louder mix with compression + more.]
Hey everyone, Jake from Transverse Audio here.
The first thing you can do is introduce something with a slightly higher volume
and lower it back down to its original level.
This maintains attention to it, without permanently raising the volume of it and everything else in the mix.
This can really help with controlling the decibel level of everything
and will allow you to bring more attention to other elements too,
without drowning out the sound you'll be automating.
This works because the listener's ear will follow the sound as it drops in volume.
[Demo of volume automation]
To do this, create an automation clip for the channel volume or pre-gain if you don't have that option.
Then, if your DAW's default for this is at or really close to 0dB,
instead of increasing it, start from its default position
and move it down to a lower level over time.
Or when other instruments start playing alongside it.
And if it doesn't, you should be good to move it up to start from instead,
as long as it doesn't pass 0dB.
And of course, this should be eased in, not a hard switch.
Then you're going to want to mix this sound as if it was always at this lower level.
This means you'll probably have to increase the gain on the mixer track volume fader
to account for this if you've already done some mixing.
Unless you were able to increase the pre-gain from its default.
But you'll still want to make sure it's not clipping or causing any other kind of distortion in the entire mix
at it's louder section when you first introduce the sound.
If you want to learn more about pre-gain and why I suggested decreasing instead of increasing,
check out the card to the top right, you'll find a video I made about Gain Staging.
The next tip involves a limiter and how you can technically raise the decibel level
of the quietest elements by reducing the dB of the loudest.
Now, it is important to not destroy the entire dynamic range,
that is, the range from the highest and the lowest decibel level of the entire mix.
To avoid this, you'll to want to use a limiter with subtlety in this case.
A good way to tighten up your mix and make it a bit louder is by first putting a limiter on your master track
(or individual track) and analyze the track's dynamic range.
If your limiter doesn't have a visualizer, you could use a plugin called Youlean loudness meter,
which is free by the way. I'll put the link in the description below.
Once you know where the highest peaks are,
lower the ceiling until you start to see a bit of the peaks getting compressed.
In FL Studio's Fruity Limiter,
You can tell when they are by the purple and white lines, showing you where and by how much.
The objective with this is to keep everything within an appropriate region
while still keeping some distance between the highest and lowest peaks.
Finally, the last tip involves a lot of EQ decisions that can help your mix.
Since the human ear is most sensitive to mid frequencies,
that is where you'll have the most perceived loudness in a mix.
So, you can push a little bit of your kick into this range instead of the low end,
which gives your bass more room anyway.
Having the kick and the bass compete is another thing and it's something you want to avoid.
You should choose what one will be the most important in the low end.
Because if these have too many overlapping frequencies,
They can start to cancel each other out and it can make them both a bit quieter.
[Demonstration of making EQ changes to compliment the Kick & Bass.]
Another thing with EQ is cutting the low end on sounds that just don't need it, even bass.
These, of course, are the ones that don't contribute to the sound.
Now, all frequencies contribute to the loudness of a track, and if you have a bunch of information
or sound that isn't contributing to your mix,
it's taking up a lot of the "loudness real estate" so to speak.
Basically, removing or suppressing some of this can allow you to raise the decibel level
of that instrument or sound.
Just add a high-pass filter with a very steep curve to trim off frequencies right below where the lowest activity is.
For most sounds, this is going to be something like 35-45 Hertz
but would be more like 20 if it's your sub-bass.
Keep in mind, there is a trade-off between dynamics and loudness.
I also suggest that you keep your master track between -3 and -6dB
to leave some headroom for the mastering phase.
And it does give more room for dynamic range.
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As always, thanks for watching.