Getting an entire album to sound the same?

[Sucio]

Had my boy working on a mixtape...


He has all the tracks done, but all of them do not have the same volume...



Now I would think that we would have all the records loaded in PT, and putting some type of limiter for all the records to get that similar volume...nothing too drastic, then bounce them all individually.


Would that be a good tactic?

 

[StressWon]

I did that once. The last trick I did was use a compressor limiter plugin with a custom saved preset. Then I added or lowered accordingly. I'm sure someone may have a better idea. Just my 2 cents

 

[Fade]

That's a good idea but what I try to do is the step before mixing, is to record at the same levels so before I get to the mixing phase, I don't have much to do.

 

[lion-ucs]

Well, when I do mine I'm already mixing with that in mind. I usually have some very light EQ and Compression and a (Brickwall) Limiter at around -0.1 to -1 dB -- I'm normally @ -0.3 dB there. I may lower the threshold to increase the perceived loudness but not so much that I kill all the work I did in composition and mixing.

After that I import all my tracks into one project to get all the timings between songs and I'll use a plugin on the master track if I need to, I usually don't but because what I do is pretty general, you can probably do the above in a master track with all your songs in one project -- which might be better, because more often than not if there's something that needs to be done to a song I'll load it up again, change what needs to be changed and re-export it.

 

[dacalion]

What lion said plus Ozone!

 

[lion-ucs]

What lion said plus Ozone!

haha!
Well I try not to be specific to any particular plugin(s), but I do use Ozone and Alloy

 

[dacalion]

You know...Ozone is the 'goto' for do-it-yourself Mastering and rightfully so imo. I like Alloy as well but my all time fav is Waves + Har-Bal. There are so many really good plugins available now, like you're pretty much saying...calling names isn't really practical. =)

 

[wrightboy]

what lion said. there is going to be some "mixing" that's going to have to be done to the individual regions (tracks) though. shouldn't be too much, a sprinkle here, and a sprinkle there. i try to do everything at this stage based on RMS levels instead of peak as well.

 

[thedreampolice]

Buy this NOW if you want to learn how to do this right.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MPPTMaster/

 

[Sucio]

When I worked @ a studio a long time ago...they had a groove 3 all access pass and I was able to get a hold of

http://www.groove3.com/str/mastering-with-waves.html now that I have waves, I'm considering going that route, whatcha think?




Thanks for your insight guys... I do have Ozone 5, now...but it's a memory hog, but not nearly as bad as 4 was.

 

[dacalion]

Yeah it's a memory hog but considering that you're opening a group of processors all at once, it not so bad...I'm even willing to bet that the same stuff in Waves may require more RAM.

Analyzer
Parametric EQ
Reverb
Harmonic Exciter
Compressor
Stereo Imager
Post EQ
Maximizer
Peak & RMS Meters

I'd say either one would be great...the rest is up to your skillz.

 

[2infamouz]

ive found if you turn your master fader on all the tracks down all the way they have a consistent volume. other than that id listen to lion ;p

 

[dacalion]

ive found if you turn your master fader on all the tracks down all the way they have a consistent volume. other than that id listen to lion ;p

hahahaha! Yup, perfect consistency! lmao...thats a good one!