Original subtitles

Hey, what's going on out there? I'm Sean

Devine. Hope you all are doing well. In

this tutorial, we're going to be talking

about five simple ways to get louder

mixes. Now, when I say louder, we're not

talking about in terms of necessarily a

LUFS integrated reading or any other

numerical value. And I think this is

where a lot of you are getting confused

about actual loudness and perceived

loudness, not just loudness in terms of

LUFS or another numerical value. So we're

going to be talking about some different

ways to elevate that perceived loudness

for your mix for your master so that you

can get the sound and the loudness to

compete with a lot of these other songs

that you all are listening to. So let's

go and dive in. All right. So the first

way to easily increase your loudness of

your mix and your perceived loudness,

more importantly, is to utilize a bus

compressor. There's a lot of people out

here who are smacking a bus compressor on

the stereo bus, getting a lot of

compression, and they're just squashing

their mix, killing their dynamics. And

that's just not the best way to do it. So

I'm going to show you why I utilize a

very low ratio here on the native bus

compressor too. And then I'm also doing a

dry wet mix. So we're processing it

essentially in parallel. And so we can

maintain a lot more of our dynamics. And

again, just increase that perceived

loudness. So let's play it back with this

disabled and then I'll engage it just to

note this is the first plugin on my

stereo bus chain here. The lights come on

when you put this on. I hope you feel my

love above down low in the sub. Think

twice before you cut it. The ones I gave

the most, expect the most back. Can't

build trust. Just signing that contract.

Hard lessons, even with the best

intentions. Some of y'all steady flexing.

Don't take it personal. Cause I stay

versatile. Even if you did me wrong, it

was worth it all. Tribulation, build

innovation, growth, my motivation, pure

retention, and strength of vision. So

relentless, I'd get this all the way from

the start. I can feel it in my heartbeat,

through my chest, even in my lowest one.

I'm trying to stress. I found the flow.

Next level. So we get this nice pleasant

lift. We're not changing any of the

essential dynamics of our mix, which is

the goal utilizing a bus compressor or

really any mastering processing stereo

bus processing. We want to leave all that

intact. The second way to get louder

mixes, actual loudness, perceived

loudness is to focus on your mid range

and do some boosting, some compression

here in the mids. We talk so much about

low end, about the high end and how to

get these to sound their best. But the

mid range is really where perceived

loudness lies. And a lot of people are

just not focusing on the mid range. We're

going to compress some of the mids and

control them, but then we're going to

subtly lift them as well and level. So

we're going to get a higher perceived

loudness of those mids and of our mix

overall. So let me show you how this

works here. We're going to set a couple

of bands. The first one we'll do around

500. So let's just dial this in at about

580 and let's solo that so you can just

hear what's going on in our mix.(...) So

quite a bit of information there,

especially in the vocal, the low mids.

And then we're going to set another one.

Let's put this one at maybe 1500. And

we'll just kind of split these in half

here. Let's listen to that band as well.

A lot of the weight and the impact of our

vocal is in this range. So again, we're

just going to compress them pretty

subtly. So let's keep an eye on what's

going on down here and I'll adjust the

range, maybe the

other ratio a little bit.

We're getting a few dB of compression

there and now we're just going to boost

the output of both of those bands. So

let's do maybe, I don't know, two and a

half to three dB on each of these just to

add it back and let's see what happens

here. Maybe we'll add even more.

(Music) (Music) I'm not conflicted. I'm

just outliving my truth.

Another thing to note is by focusing on

the mids and getting our loudness there,

you know this is going to translate on

pretty much any speaker. So even phones,

small speakers, and actually those

speakers are going to be a lot more

focused in this area in terms of the

frequencies they reproduce. So it's a

smart idea to utilize this mid-range to

increase our perceived loudness. The

third way to get louder mixes, louder

masters, elevate your perceived loudness

is to utilize saturation and excitement.

So a lot of you have questions about what

saturation is. The easiest way to think

about it is it's a subtle distortion. So

it's not going to be as obvious as

exaggerated. It will add harmonics and a

thickness and a weight to whatever sounds

you apply it to. The hook vocal, I'm

utilizing the Empirical Labs Mic E comp,

specifically the preamp section. And this

has some nice preamp saturation, some

analog characteristics that are

introduced. Once again, increasing

perceived loudness. So if we set it to

clean, I'll turn this

on so you can hear it.

(Music)

(Music) If you're finding these things to

sound really subtle, just remember that

these are being applied across our entire

mix. So each of these little increases

and little boosts in perceived loudness

equal a big difference. In this same

chain, I'm actually adding a bit more

saturation with this plugin, the Greg

Wells Voice Centric from Waves. It once

again does some cool things in terms of

analog modeling and just adding a bit of

heat to our vocals. (Music)

Just to get your wheels turning, you can

be very creative with how you're

combining different saturations from

different plugins. With our beat, I'm

just going to go ahead and solo that. I

have I am pusher on this and I utilized

this magic control. This is an exciter

that will be applied to the entire

signal. It's going to give us a subtle

lift, but we can also utilize this focus

control, which is going to do just that,

focus the dynamics of the mix. So let's

take a listen to what this does.

So it might seem subtle, but it's

actually adding a lot of weight, a lot of

presence to our entire beat mix. The

fourth way to get louder mixes higher

perceived loudness is to utilize

multi-band limiting. So this is something

that I've been taking advantage of more

recently. Many of you are just kind of

smacking that maximizer on there, pulling

the threshold down really low, not taking

into account individual bands per se.

It's just processing the entire mix as a

whole. If you have, say, a particularly

low-end heavy mix like I have here, you

know, that's going to play in directly to

how that maximizer is reacting. And it's

usually at the detriment of the rest of

your mix and you're not going to really

be able to push and, you know, enhance

and bring up the rest of those bands

across the mix. We lose some of that

perceived loudness in the mids and other

areas because that limiter is working so

hard on the low end. So with the

multi-band limiter, we can set different

bands here and then we can set priorities

across these bands so that the maximizer

knows, okay, work hard on this. Don't,

you know, try to kind of rein in on this

as much. So I'll show you how this works.

Let's just set our crossover points up

here. Let's do something like maybe 120

for the low, you know, going down into

our subwoofer. Then we'll maybe do

something like 750 and then let's do 2000

and 4000. I think that'll give us some

different bands to work with, but I'm

going to go down to the low end. I'm

going to set the value higher, which

means it's going to be lower priority in

terms of where this threshold is going to

hit. So let's play that back and I'll

show you what that does. When I pull that

threshold up, you could see that the

maximizer or the limiter, it's not even

attenuating right there because I set

that higher and it's going to work on

attenuating some of these other bands. So

let's adjust those accordingly as well.

Don't get it twisted. I'm not conflicted.

I'm just outliving my truth.

You know I ain't perfect. Some days go

worthless. Prayer stay apart for the you.

And I could never judge you, grudge with

you while you're on your own walks. So

now that we set that up, you could see

that we're going to get the most

attenuation here in this low mid band,

removing some of the mud and then also

this 2K to 4K band. We're going to get

some removal of some of that harshness.

Now, not only can we push the rest of our

maximization harder across our mix, but

we can also now bring up the gain in say

this band here, this 1K 2K area that

we've been focused on. So let's go down

there and we'll boost that gain up, maybe

a dB,(...) and then let's say that we're

going to boost the gain up on this low

mid just because we are going to get some

more attenuation.(...) So we'll do that

and then the high end, maybe like a half

dB here, and we'll pull the threshold

down a little bit lower.

(Music)

All right, you're with me. The fifth and

last way to achieve louder mixes, higher

perceived loudness is to carefully select

references to compete with for level. In

this case, I was focused on matching the

loudness across some songs that were on

this album, so I loaded those in. They

already had the loudness where I needed

them to be. However, if you're trying to

compete with another song that you're

hearing on Spotify or something like

that, I would recommend buying the

lossless version, so the flack version or

the wave version even better, and then

loading that into this reference tab of

Ozone. This is very, very useful to load

up different references and I can very

easily cue this reference while I'm

listening to my session and directly

compare them. So let's just take a listen

to how that works.(...) (Music)

(Music)

You don't have to be looking at an LUFS

meter or get any kind of numerical

measurement to hear the potential

differences in what you're referencing

here in the Ozone Advanced Reference tab.

So very, very useful. You can cue

different parts of the song, you know,

compare choruses to chorus, verse to

verse, very quick and easy way to make

sure that you're competing and getting

the actual loudness. All right, y'all,

those are five easy ways to get louder

mixes, to increase perceived loudness,

and just enhance the dynamics of what you

already have in your mix, in your master.

Make sure to retain, you know, what the

engineers work so hard for in terms of

the impact, the punch, the low end, the

presence, and just give us more of a lift

in terms of the mid-range. You know, some

of the things that we're not focusing on

in terms of using your ears to actually

get an idea of loudness rather than

looking at meters and measuring just

purely based on numerical values. So I

hope this gets your wheels turning in

terms of kind of pulling your head out of

the meters and really listening and

picking up on these subtleties that

across your entire session, all these add

up in a big, big way. So I hope this is

helpful. If you learn anything in the

video, please like, subscribe, and

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