The Loudness wars

[fretless]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ[/video]

[RIFF]

Yeah, Ive been fooling around with that a little. Testing mixes & whatnot. You can weaken your mixes by overcompressing, & you can weaken by not.
I like to keep the drums punchy, but if you dont knock em down some, they loose the ability to sit in the mix.
Ive also noticed that it can make the guitars very brash & in your face rather than punchy.

I cant understand the completely ludicrous practice of DESTROYING a piece of music the way some like metallica and others have done.

[EndTime]

Pretty much what Riff said.

But I'll add, that maximizing a mix with heavy compression/clipping Doesnt automatically screw a mix. Some compression and clipping can absolutely be the final touch and " sound" we WANT to hear.

But not every mix can take it. And without just finding the right frequency levels that everyone copies and can take heavy maximizing, I'd just say master your mix until it starts sounding worse. If that's fucking LOUD! Great. If it's 3dbs lower than your favorite album, then so be it. My personal favorite mix and master i did(have also heard from numerous people how much they also like it) is nowhere near as loud as most of my masters, let alone pro mastered tracks.

And you know what I've never heard about that master that isn't THAT loud? I've never heard "Man, I wish it was a bit louder tho" lol.

Now, when I used to do more DIY mastering for other bands10 years ago, I always heard from the bands "Can you make it louder?" Yet, most of them came my way because of the album i mastered I just spoke about where it wasn't that loud.

So, most bands like my non loud master, but when it came to their albums they wanted the volume. So, it's obviously just something people want without actually listening to what's the best sound. But I think the volume wars are actually becoming a little more under control than say from 5-10 years ago where shit was being absolutely slammed