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S3E11 – .10dB Causes Distortion (Mastering)

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In this episode we talk about mastering tips to achieve a loud master which still has “dynamics”, and how only .1dB was the difference between hearing distortion when mastering a song on BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Vol. 10

When mastering music, there is a sweet spot to give your music the most excitement and energy.. go too loud, you’re wrecking your music.. not loud enough, your music will be lacking!

The Loudest Part of a Song when Mastering

A helpful tip when mastering your music is going to these loud parts of a song to make sure no distortion is happening, because distortion will typically happen only at the loudest parts of a song.

The first beat of a chorus is typically the loudest part of a song..

This is because all instruments are playing here, and the initial spike can cause audible unwanted distortion.

BEAT TAPES By GratuiTous Effects Chain Mastering Mastering Chain

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Transcript

S3E11 – .10dB Causes Distortion (Mastering)

  1. Season three, episode 11.1 dB causes distortion.
  2. I've been mastering my beat takes by Gratuitous Volume 10.
  3. There was this one track that was causing me distortion in the chorus.
  4. I dropped the song by 0.1 dB and the distortion was gone.
  5. And I was good to go. Now when it comes to a dB, so we just have one dB.
  6. So for example, if you go 0.9 dB, that's like 90% of a dB or 0.8.
  7. So I'm talking 0.1, right? I dropped the song by 0.1 in that limiter, and the input
  8. gain to the limiter, the distortion was gone, and I was happy with the master.
  9. Now when it comes to mastering our music, we still do want to push our music loud
  10. because when we hear the term loudness wars, again, there was pushback from the
  11. audio community that people were pushing their music too loud and they were wrecking
  12. the dynamics of the song. Okay, you gotta be careful when you're listening to all
  13. these words because people really don't fully understand this terminology and they
  14. use it kind of against the industry to you know make their videos more popular.
  15. They try to make people want to click on their videos.
  16. So I just want to talk a little bit of history, keep it really simple, and then
  17. we're gonna move forward with what I want to talk about in this episode about just
  18. 0.1 dB was the difference between distortion and no distortion in my track.
  19. So first of all, when it comes to measuring audio, there's been a lot of different
  20. attempts in the industry over time.
  21. Okay, we've had like VU meters, we've had peak meters, and now it's on to loudness
  22. meters. And I do think this loudness meter is a nice way to balance your
  23. songs from one song to the next because it measures music in a different way from
  24. these other types of audio measurement approaches..
  25. It takes into account how loud frequencies to our ears
  26. And so far it's been generally pretty good.
  27. Now, what I want to say is if you have taken my 10 steps to become an FL Studio Pro
  28. course, I showed you how to master a song based off of the loudness
  29. teachings at that time. Okay. So what was happening was people were pushing their
  30. music way too loud. They were destroying the quote unquote dynamics of the music.
  31. But essentially it was like you're just pushing the music way too loud for loudness,
  32. but there's a sweet spot. And then what happened was when these loudness meters came
  33. out, people actually were not pushing their master loud enough.
  34. They were saying you want to master your music to minus 14 LUFS integrated.
  35. So when we talk about these loudness meters, again, I don't want to get super
  36. intense, but we have the momentary, we have the short term, and we have the
  37. integrated. And in that course, I was talking to you about minus 14 for that
  38. integrated, because that's what all these streaming platforms play your music back
  39. at. Because these streaming platforms were telling us that you know they are playing
  40. back the music at this certain number.
  41. So people were thinking, okay, well, I'm gonna master my music to that same volume.
  42. But you have to understand that when it comes to mastering your track, there is a
  43. sweet spot. And when we are pushing our music a little bit louder, we are getting
  44. the benefit of making our song more cohesive.
  45. When we're driving it into that compressor a little bit harder, we are reducing the
  46. peaks, we are making the song overall more energetic.
  47. The sounds that were quieter, they're they are now louder.
  48. It's more cohesive. Even if that compressor is pumping just a little bit, that can
  49. also add to the music as well.
  50. So again, you got to be careful what you're listening to out there.
  51. There is that saying, you know, if it sounds good, it is good.
  52. I don't really like to use that that saying.
  53. I just like to say that when we're mastering our music, be very careful in following
  54. the trends. These loudness meters, I think are good.
  55. I think they're very powerful.
  56. But again, in recent years, I've been using the short term, but I was just kind of
  57. repeating what I was reading and what I was watching about mastering your music to
  58. the integrated loudness. The whole goal here is that when someone listens to your
  59. music, that the song is sounding balanced.
  60. And if you don't master your music loud enough, it doesn't matter where your music's
  61. being listened to, that actual audio file is what your music is.
  62. So if the streaming platform turns your music down, all they're doing is just
  63. turning it down like on a volume slider.
  64. But you as the listener, you can turn it back up.
  65. So if the actual audio file is not mastered well, you know, if it's not pushed loud
  66. enough, then it's not going to be energetic.
  67. If it's pushed too loud, you know, you're gonna be causing distortion, or it's just
  68. gonna sound just loud and not musical.
  69. So, but there is a sweet spot.
  70. I want to talk about more specifically what I want to get at in this episode.
  71. And before we do that, just check out the website, it's gratuitous.com.
  72. I did a revamp so you guys can check it out.
  73. it's a little bit faster now, so I'm a little happier with the speed before it was
  74. even slower. and And when I talk to you guys about audio plugins, one thing about
  75. websites when it comes to plugins is if you have bad plugins, they can actually slow
  76. down your website. So I was going through all the different plugins, I have about 50
  77. plugins on the on the website because there's so many different things that you as
  78. the user are able to do website, and you need plugins to do that.
  79. So, anyways, it's gratuitous.com.
  80. You can check out the new layout, it's a little bit quicker, I'm happier with it.
  81. We're gonna start moving forward now with new content.
  82. All right, so what I want to talk about in this episode is myself as a producer, I
  83. like to work lazy. In other words, I like to set things up once, send my audio
  84. through it, and it's good to go.
  85. I am not a mastering engineer.
  86. Mastering engineers would probably do a little bit more creative things to fix the
  87. problem, and I'll give you an example of that in a second.
  88. But what I'm trying to say is when I'm mastering my music, I usually like to set my
  89. compressor up, whatever for the song, and it's done.
  90. I don't want to do automation or anything like that in my mastering stage.
  91. I just like to send my audio through it.
  92. Then what was happening is see, every single song is unique and it follows
  93. a pattern. Okay, so it doesn't matter what song it is, every song is unique and they
  94. all follow a pattern. For example, if you hit play and that unique song has an intro
  95. versus one chorus, it's always gonna be intro versus one chorus because that's how
  96. the song is. So when you hit play, your audio and your audio meters are always gonna
  97. be the same, and each song you have to work off of each song uniquely.
  98. But usually each song has a louder part than anywhere else in that song, and that
  99. typically happens at the very, very first beat of the chorus.
  100. So, for example, you have the intro, it goes to the verse, and then boom, the chorus
  101. comes in, and that's where the description can happen.
  102. And that's what was happening to me on this one track..
  103. So I liked the master throughout the whole song
  104. It sounded super super balanced.
  105. I was happy with it. And then all of a sudden the chorus came in and I was like, oh,
  106. I hear a little bit of distortion.
  107. And I'm just like, but I but I like the master.
  108. So I was like, there's two options I could probably do here.
  109. One, I could reduce the volume just by a little bit going into that limiter so I
  110. don't hear the distortion. And that was the solution I did.
  111. Made it really, really simple.
  112. I was good to go. If I was a mastering engineer, maybe I would have automated the
  113. volume going into that limiter on the input.
  114. So again, not on the output because that means it's already distorted.
  115. The input is what's going into that limiter.
  116. So if we were to reduce the volume going into the limiter, then we wouldn't get the
  117. distortion because we are sending less audio into it.
  118. So only on that very very first beat going into that chorus, maybe I could have
  119. automated the volume. And as a listener, you probably wouldn't have heard a
  120. difference because you just don't hear the distortion now.
  121. And then it goes right back into regular audio.
  122. But again, as a beat maker, I usually like to keep things really, really simple.
  123. I make the beat, I will mix the beat.
  124. You know, each sound will be processed in its own way, gets sent to the master.
  125. I set up my mastering chain. I want to send my audio through it.
  126. If I'm happy with the settings, we're good to go.
  127. I export it and then it can be released.
  128. But a mastering engineer will definitely look at that song much different than I
  129. would because for me, I just want to get it out there and I want it sounding half
  130. decent, but good enough to release, where the average person really won't hear the
  131. difference if it's a really, really good master or just like an okay master.
  132. I've reduce the song by 0.1 decibel.
  133. decibel. So again, if we have one decibel, then there's 0.9, which is 90% of one,
  134. and we have like 0.8, like I'm talking 01, so a tenth of a decibel, I reduced my
  135. master, so the input going into the limiter, and it fixed the distortion problem.
  136. It was good to go. When I talked to you in a previous episode about harsh and
  137. pleasing speakers, one thing to also mention is when we're listening through harsh
  138. speakers, you may hear distortion on harsh speakers, and then you go to pleasing
  139. speakers, and you probably won't hear that same distortion.
  140. But if you're hearing distortion on pleasing speakers, that is a big problem, okay?
  141. So I was hearing distortion on pleasing speakers, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna
  142. keep reducing that volume until I'm not hearing the distortion.
  143. I didn't hear it, and I'm you know, I'm happy with that master now.
  144. Now I want to talk a little bit about how to get a loud master.
  145. So here's how it works, okay? In the mixing stage, you can actually be super super
  146. aggressive if you want to be on your individual tracks.
  147. If you send that to the master now and you again you do light processing, typically
  148. you are gonna have a lot of dynamics in your music still because each track is still
  149. unique and different. If you are on the mastering stage and you're getting like
  150. eight decibels of gain reduction on your compressor, you know, yes, you're probably
  151. gonna be quote unquote squashing the music and having no dynamics.
  152. But a big problem is again, a lot of people actually aren't pushing their music loud
  153. enough. And if they are trying to push their music louder, they're not able to
  154. because they're actually not mixing hard enough.
  155. And what I mean is, for example, if you're mixing your music, you have a piano, you
  156. have a guitar, you have a kick drum, you are not compressing these instruments hard
  157. enough, or you're not applying enough distortion onto them.
  158. Again, you can also do parallel distortion and parallel compression.
  159. So you kind of get like the best of both worlds.
  160. You can kind of retain some peaks, you know, for quote unquote dynamics, but then
  161. your parallel audio signal gives you that fullness.
  162. And so if you are not compressing and distorting your music hard enough, you know,
  163. your actual individual tracks in the mixing stage, then when it comes to mastering,
  164. you're not going to be able to push your music very loud because what's going to
  165. happen is you're going to be pushing your music so hard into the limiter, and the
  166. peaks of these instruments, which you have not controlled very well in mixing, are
  167. going to be pushing the mastering chain way too hard, and you're going to hear that
  168. pump in a bad way. If you control your instruments very good
  169. in the mixing stage, then when it goes into the mastering, when you have peaks,
  170. that's fine. Like that's good because you need to have peaks in order to have you
  171. know life in your music, but the peaks are controlled going into the master.
  172. So when you are doing compression, when you are doing limiting, that it's not huge
  173. peaks, like you're not getting minus eight decibels of gain reduction to get the
  174. loudness that you're looking for.
  175. If you control that in the mixing stage, then it goes into the mastering chain, then
  176. you can master your music very loud.
  177. But again, when I say very loud like that, like we don't want to be doing very loud.
  178. There's a sweet spot. If your music is too loud, yes, your music's gonna sound just
  179. loud and just boring, it's just gonna sound so static.
  180. Your music needs to have some life in it.
  181. If you don't push your music loud enough, then all the kind of quiet parts of the
  182. song are lacking, like they're missing.
  183. And when you push your music hard, what happens is you are driving the compressor,
  184. you're driving the limiter, and you are getting pumping.
  185. Sometimes pumping can be good in these audio tools because it adds life to your
  186. music as well. If you process your music too much in the mastering stage, you can
  187. actually bring life back into the music with like transient processors or even on a
  188. compressor. If you open up that attack, you are emphasizing the attack of a lot of
  189. these sounds again. So that last part was a little off topic.
  190. But what I'm trying to say is first of all, in order to get a loud master, it starts
  191. in the mixing stage, and you have to be aggressive to control the peaks of your
  192. audio. Then when it goes into the mastering stage, then you'll be able to get a nice
  193. sweet spot of loudness where you actually have control and thinking, do you know
  194. what? I'm actually pushing this too loud.
  195. Because sometimes you can actually push your music really loud, and you're actually
  196. able to because you've mixed it so hard, if that makes sense.
  197. But then sometimes you might be like, okay, do you know what I'm gonna pull it back
  198. a little bit now? And so what was happening was I mixed the music pretty hard.
  199. I was listening back to it, and when that chorus came in, because again, if we have
  200. the intro or verse one or verse two, these are not the loudest parts of the song.
  201. So typically we're not gonna hear the distortion in those quieter parts of the song.
  202. We are gonna hear the distortion when it comes to the loud part of the song, such as
  203. in the chorus. And most typically it's because when that chorus drops, so what
  204. happens is again we go introverse one, and then as we're building up to the
  205. chorus, sometimes you can remove the audio.
  206. So in other words, your compressor and your limiter are no longer working at this
  207. moment. As soon as that chorus drops, where that first beat comes in, like with the
  208. kick drum, your compressor and your limiter, they all have to quickly react.
  209. And that's where just like a distortion can really happen quick.
  210. Because what you'll notice is when that chorus continues to play, you're not hearing
  211. the distortion anymore. Many times it's just as soon as that chorus comes in, boom,
  212. that's when all your audio plugins almost can't react fast enough, and that's where
  213. you get the distortion. So what I'm trying to say is in this one track, I reduced
  214. the audio by 0.1 decibel. I didn't hear the distortion anymore.
  215. I was able to get the loudness I wanted.
  216. I was like, perfect. Because again, I like to set it up where I just send the audio
  217. in, that's my master, I can export it, I'm good to go.
  218. Alright, so that's this episode on 0.1 dB can cause distortion in the mastering
  219. stage. It might sound obvious, but hey, I was just working on a track, I reduced it
  220. by 0.1 dB, and that was the difference between hearing the distortion and not.
  221. And another thing that makes it really tricky is again when you're working on a beat
  222. tape or an album and you're trying to get each song to be a similar loudness one to
  223. the next, it even gets more tricky because if all the songs are already balanced in
  224. terms of very similar in volume.
  225. Now you know it's really hard if you just adjust one song here and there.
  226. But yeah, like I said, 0.1 dB, and that was the difference.
  227. So again, I'd also just wanted to talk about that again when it came to you know,
  228. let's say in the 2000s, people were mastering their music very, very loud.
  229. It got to the point where they were actually destroying audio because it was just
  230. way too loud. These loudness standards came out.
  231. People actually weren't mastering their music loud enough.
  232. Okay, and again, in the 10 steps to becoming FL Studio Pro, I shared that with you.
  233. I taught you off of the integrated loudness.
  234. But again, nowadays I'm just using the short-term loudness, and honestly, probably
  235. around minus 10 to minus 9 is kind of like the sweet spot.
  236. And if you can't push your music that loud, that is telling you that you're probably
  237. not working hard enough in your mixing stage.
  238. In other words, you know, you're probably not compressing hard enough, you're maybe
  239. not distorting hard enough because that is kind of like the sweet spot I've been
  240. finding for just cohesiveness in that song, right?
  241. Every track is different, every genre is different, but I'm talking more for like
  242. kind of hip-hop and dance beats.
  243. that minus 10 to that minus nine short-term LUFS.
  244. Again, that is just at the moment of today's standards.
  245. but that is where I'm finding that the music still has a lot of life to it, a lot of
  246. quote unquote dynamics, because I'm not pushing the music super super hard, but I am
  247. pushing it hard, but I am feeling that the song is balanced and
  248. it kind of sounds polished. Nothing's really spiking out weird, and I'm hearing
  249. pretty much all elements of the song, and I'm really happy with this release so far.
  250. Again, I just have one beat to work on, and I may be doing a live stream here
  251. tomorrow. I'll see how it goes.
  252. So if you're on the newsletter, I'll I'll send out an email to you guys..
  253. And what I want to do is I just want to mix that track
  254. One thing I want to say before closing out here is in this audio world being a
  255. beatmaker, the MIDI notes are your copyright.
  256. And so I'm always very careful in sharing my notes because hey people copy in this
  257. industry all the time and that's stealing right and something in this audio industry
  258. like that's very unique to the audio industry.
  259. If we're talking about other industries like let's say you want to watch someone
  260. stream a video game you can't really steal anything from them.
  261. Like sure like they might have a unique way of doing something.
  262. Yeah that's just their playing style but that's just a video game and you're able to
  263. watch them what makes the audio industry very unique in when you're a beat maker is
  264. copyright to your MIDI notes. If I shared my MIDI notes all the time in the live
  265. streams and stuff people would actually just copy those notes and they would make
  266. their beats and they'd think that they're actually learning and not just that what
  267. if they start selling the music and they've copied my notes okay so to me that's
  268. where I'm very careful and I only share my MIDI notes in courses or if I do
  269. in tutorials it's very very simple kind of melodies because I've worked really hard
  270. to learn the piano for it very very hard to learn my melodies but what I want to say
  271. is if I were to do a live stream of mixing see every beat's different and if I set
  272. up my different parameters for this track every track is different.
  273. So it's like it's very hard to copy in the mixing stuff.
  274. And so if I were to do a live stream with the mixing, you know, people, even if they
  275. copy, it's every beat's different.
  276. But whereas let's say we had the MIDI notes, and let's say it was a beautiful
  277. melody, someone could literally just take those MIDI notes, copy it, change up their
  278. own sound. That's where it's very tricky with the audio industry when it comes to
  279. education. Because I want to help you guys, I want to educate, I want to teach, but
  280. I've just been thinking lately like how can I educate, how can I teach you guys
  281. without people stealing? And if you're there thinking, well, well, no, people aren't
  282. gonna steal, yes, they do, they do all the time because see, this is this is what
  283. happens in the audio industry.
  284. People copy and they make their beats, and they think that they're a beat maker
  285. because they're comfortable in what they know, only to a certain extent, but they
  286. can't really break free from what they're comfortable in, and so for myself,
  287. I make tons of different styles of beats, right?
  288. Dance, hip hop, and I honestly never feel restricted or beat block because I've
  289. practiced so hard these melodies, and so people they'll steal and copy
  290. because they have not put the time in to learn, and that's where you know copying
  291. comes in. And my goal for you is so that you can learn to enjoy beat
  292. making because once you can learn it, I'm telling you, it is so much fun.
  293. You play the keys, you play over a drum loop, it is so enjoyable.
  294. And just because somebody can improvise on a piano, or just because someone can play
  295. the piano well, doesn't mean that they're actually able to create catchy melodies,
  296. right? That's another thing that you got to be careful of, and what's deceiving.
  297. Catchy melodies are very hard to make, and once you can train yourself to create a
  298. catchy melody and then also create melodies that go together with that main.
  299. melody, that's where you want to get
  300. And you want to be able to do that without having to watch other people's YouTube
  301. videos or even my courses. Like the thing is, I don't want you watching my courses
  302. forever. I want you to get in there, I want you to learn what's going on.
  303. Then I want you to break free and be able to enjoy what you're doing because there's
  304. not enough time to make beats, to watch videos, to make beats, to watch videos.
  305. Like if like that's all you're gonna be doing.
  306. I want you to be able to enjoy your life, still do whatever you want to do, and then
  307. when you come to make your beats, you know what you're doing.
  308. You don't have to find inspiration from out anywhere else because if you do that,
  309. you're never gonna be your own self as a producer, all right.
  310. And I'm telling you, in this music industry, people are copying all the time.
  311. I encourage you to visit my website, it's gratuitous.com forward slash music.
  312. You can check out all of my beat tapes, you're able to download them.
  313. Okay, this is a free download link, you don't have to sign up with your email or
  314. anything, and just check out some of the beats, like they're just so unique, they're
  315. so different, and that's just because I'm not following the trends, I just like to
  316. do my own thing, and you have to understand that in this industry, if you want
  317. things to sell, if you want to build momentum, you're gonna have to copy the trends,
  318. right? But for me, I would not enjoy making music if I had to follow the trends.
  319. What makes music so much fun is just creating a catchy beat, which is so unique from
  320. anything you've heard before, but it still sounds really powerful and catchy, and
  321. that's what makes beat making so much fun for myself.
  322. and I really think that if you are not making beats that way, eventually you're
  323. gonna. gonna get bored, and it's not be fun
  324. Because what happens is if you start entering the music business and you start
  325. making money, what happens is you start focusing more on the money rather than
  326. enjoying music. And for me, it's like I always want to I always want to keep time
  327. for music. I always want to keep time because it's so much fun.
  328. And then when I do educate, one I'm fresh, you know.
  329. If if you want to follow a video or whatever, it's like, yeah, I've been making
  330. beats for a while. So whenever I make a beat, it's like I'm still fresh.
  331. It's not like you know, oh yeah, I made beats like seven years ago and I'm still
  332. doing training, but I'm not active.
  333. So, anyways, visit the website it's gratuitous.com.
  334. In the top bar, you will see newsletter.
  335. You can sign up, right? You guys can be notified of new podcasts, new blog posts.
  336. I'll be coming out with a lot of cool things here soon.
  337. Website's now organized. I want to come up with some piano training for you guys,
  338. some drum loop training. And if you guys ever need help learning to make beats,
  339. again, just visit me over at it'sgratuitous.com, and I'm just an email
  340. away.
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