How to get my master volume higher without clipping? FL studio

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CM03

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Hey guys,

I use FL for my beats and make sure my master never goes above 0db, staying in the yellow and never going into the orange. I notice a lot of other peoples tracks sound a lot louder and I doubt they mixing their tracks in the orange/red. What gives? Do they just have better gear or is there way I could achieve a louder sound in FL studio without clipping? I am using the FL limiter on my master.

Beats for reference: https://soundcloud.com/cm03
 
0db what? fs? rms? something else? You need to reference your statement about db with a frame of reference so that we are all thinking and talking about the same values

my guess is that you are hearing loudness mastered tracks and comparing them to your own unmastered efforts

as for the limiter - remove it from your master channel until you are in the throes of actually mastering
 
Play with the FL Limiter(if I remember correctly, it's already in place when you open FL). If no, add it to the master bus and play around with it. You may want to put an EQ in front of it to shape sounds as you crank the limiter, but, remember, it's just going to be for listening purposes. You're gonna want to take it back off before letting someone record over your track.
 
Thanks I do try messing around with the threshold and gain, I suppose I'll try some more.

@bandcoach

excuse my n00bness but I'm not sure was fs and RMS mean, im talking about master chanel DBs in FL studio. :O
 
Don't feel bad, to this day I don't know the difference. I do if I think hard, but don't care to. I know you got peak/vu meters and I use VU meters before applying master bus comp/limiters and peak meters afterwards. Can't even tell you that's right or wrong, because I use my ears more than my eyes.

But I'm pretty sure you're talking about DBFS(coulda answered in 2004 while getting certifications but now it's a guess in the dark). See how little I know for all the tracks I've mixed, lol. Not rocket science and not saying it doesn't help some people, but running everything myself and not having to answer to another engineer while recording...I have forgotten the difference. I'm sure that's a big "no no", but I know how not to clip, nothing else matters much. Green/yellow good, red bad!!!

I also confuse LPF and HPF often.

EDIT: Just googled because I felt dumb. Yeah, dbfs is the only one that really matters in software. Sorry for the brain freeze. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBFS
 
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Thanks for the info! Been tampering with the gain in the limiter - too much and my mix gets squashed but I think I've found some balance... my best mix/master yet lol! Thanks!
 
deRanged what is your opinion of Maximus in FL? I've tampered with the clear mix preset and it gives me mix a punchier, airier, slightly louder feel.
 
to add to deranged's commentary 0dbfs is the absolute upper limit; anything above is clipped and distorted, anything below is fine

my own take on red/yellow/green

if it is in the
- red: you're dead;
- yellow: better make it mellow;
- green: squeaky clean

- comes from my days of live mixing where some bars had traffic light like systems that would cut all stage power if the spl exceeded the threshold for more than a given number of seconds - if you lost stage power, you had a a very real chance of blowing all the power amps or the speakers or both once the spl fell below the threshold again and the power kicked in with everything still being driven hard - instant loss of job and several thousand dollars to replace the damaged gear......
 
CM03 said:
deRanged what is your opinion of Maximus in FL? I've tampered with the clear mix preset and it gives me mix a punchier, airier, slightly louder feel.
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I haven't used FL in a while now, but I remember being able to get as good results out of the FL Limiter as I needed. Mind you, I never push my beats too hard, even for listening purposes. If I'm mastering a finished song, I want it at a level where it's gonna play well behind anything else commercially released. You compromise alot for loudness and have to adjust things accordingly. With beats, even when adding a limiter, I never made it a priority to make the track loud at the cost of dynamics and clarity.

I say all this, because within FL, I never recorded full songs, just made beats. So I can't tell you that the FL limiter or Maximus can get things to the level of a commercially released song, but I can say the FL Limiter is all I ever needed to get a good loud well put together mix for showcasing a beat. I'd like to believe Maximus wasn't much better than adding an EQ in front of the FL limiter, it may have had some type of noise gate built in as well? Don't remember Maximus, just remember not needing it.

I'd also like to believe I never pushed the FL limiter to it's...limit, lol. So I'm pretty sure if I needed to, I could use it to get to equivalent levels of a commercially released song but I'm going by memory while saying all this, not sitting in front of the tools to confirm.
 
CM03 said:
Thanks for the info! Been tampering with the gain in the limiter - too much and my mix gets squashed but I think I've found some balance... my best mix/master yet lol! Thanks!
Click to expand...

I would stay away from pushing your limiter too much. I used to use Maximus, but I couldn't get a feel for the way it worked, so I just use FL's multiband compressor plugin on the master track instead. (It's kind of the same thing).

I'm really no king at mastering, but the reason I say stay away from pushing your limiter too hard is because it is literally a brick wall. I use a multiband compressor to make it louder before I get to the limiter. Oh, and If you use compressors on your individual tracks, you'll make it easier on your master track because it'll have to do less work.

Then, and only then, if I can push the limiter a little bit, I'll go ahead and do it. A little saturation (I love the way it sounds), and voila the track is louder and still has its dynamics. Good enough for me. But for real, If only I had the knowledge that professional engineers did!
 
I feel ya man ^ been wracking my head trying to figure out how to work maximum properly on my master: after a couple hours I have it compressed "right" but it feels too airy/tiny to me no matter how much I tamper with it. I think I'll sleep on the mix and see tomorrow. Maybe I'll take up the multiband compressor instead!
 
If you can't get your beats loud (with no vocal), then the problem is the mixing. Clean your sounds using an eq to remove unwanted frequencies and compressing sounds that have a lot of dynamics (sounds that you recorded using a midi for instance) you'll get the loudness you want. Not forgetting effects like reverb, delay and a whole lot of other things related to mixing. But your problem is in the mix.
 
^ How aggressive are you with the Parametric EQ when you cut frequencies? Normally I cut out the low mid range mud of most instruments from around 250-500 DB (of course depending which one), about 3db. Do you turn the slider down delicately or do you cut them pretty radically??

I tend to compress only the master that could be why :O, save for the drums and bass.
 
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CM03 said:
^ How aggressive are you with the Parametric EQ when you cut frequencies? Normally I cut out the low mid range mud of most instruments from around 250-500 DB (of course depending which one), about 3db. Do you turn the slider down delicately or do you cut them pretty radically??

I tend to compress only the master that could be why :O, save for the drums and bass.
Click to expand...

I could imagine you are getting a quite dull and cold sound if you just cut out the low mids like that.. You cut there if there is a problem or if it just needs to be toned down a bit. I have said this a lot around the forum and as cheesy as it may sound, you don't cut just because, but you cut for a reason. Who knows, your mix might benefit from a boost there as well. Low mids does not equal mud.
 
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sometimes ill boost the bass a tad at 250 and on 1 instrument at 500 and generally cut the others. as a rule of thumb I try not to have two instruments occupying the same freq ranges so 2 mid instruments may be boosted at 900 and 1000k repsectively. what are your thoughts on that?
 
Out of context that really means nothing. You do what sounds best, what works for one tracks or sound might be useless in another.
 
Bus compession, instruments compression? master compression, limiting
 
Looking at your replies it's pretty obvious your problem is mixing. Spend some time learning how to get a proper mix, that's the best advise I can give you.
 
Yep! It's all about balancing mix, proper EQinq avoiding of too much concentrating in the midrange and compression, saturation....
 
I took your suggestions and tried my best.

Here is my master using Maximus on the master track and a FL limiter


Please give me any advice/criticism I am trying hard to improve my mixing/mastering!
 
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