# Loudness in Soundtrack/Trailer Mixes



## Zhao Shen (Sep 20, 2015)

Hi guys,

I've recently been struggling with attempting to get my tracks louder. When I listen to the tracks other people have written, whether they be soundtracks, trailer cues, or other, they always sound much louder than my own mixes. I typically like my little spot in the spectrum of music loudness, but it's become a thing where it's not so much whether I make my music louder, but whether I know how, and I've found myself trying to make my tracks louder a number of times. Is it a matter of EQing, or is there some compressing/limiting trick that makes a big difference? Would love to hear your guys' input! Thanks in advance!

P.S. Also, I sometimes hear very loud and punchy music with LOTS of bass/sub frequencies. I know it's due partly to clever compression, but how do they make it so loud?


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## dgburns (Sep 20, 2015)

work the individual tracks more,try to figure out the freq range the tracks need to be heard in,and where they aren't adding anything but stealing your overhead.especially in the low end,it's easy to have bass buildup across tracks for no net gain.
distortion is your friend.That's all tape was anyway.Good distortion,the right amount to reduce transients and yet not be easy to pick out if removed.

monitor at consistent level.make things sound good by arrangements and with plugins,a little goes a long way.


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## KEnK (Sep 20, 2015)

There is such a thing as too loud-
This is when the dynamics and transients are compromised.
Read about "the loudness war" especially how it's "over" and dynamics won.
This is due mostly to the newish European volume standard "LUFS"
http://productionadvice.co.uk/lufs-dbfs-rms/

Ian Shepard has a lot to say about this subject-
Many good tuts and a philosophical perspective are here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/masteringmedia/playlists

Practical immediate advice- Get the Bx meter.
This puppy will help you to not destroy your work.

Learn to use compressors/limiters in tandem-
Meaning more than one, each doing just a little bit of the work.
Example- on percussion tracks- use a limiter first just to tame the peaks- about 2dB.
Then add a compressor after that to "raise" the body of the sound-
Use Parallel Compression when more than that is required.

Also some limiters really do sound transparent even when they're squashing the hell out of the sound.
Voxengo Elephant, Ozone Maximizer, Wave Limiters are all good (to varying degrees)
This is not necessarily "good" but is what's done in EDM or club music these days-
But DJs are noticing that people do respond better to tracks that have dynamics than to a wall of drone.

It will take you a while to get a handle on this-
but it is how it's done

k


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## Resoded (Sep 21, 2015)

I'm no master mixer, but if I were you I'd give this a try:

1. Make sure there's a good balance between instruments. If your bass is 5 db higher than all the other instruments, then that's going to be a problem in the master. Same thing if you have drums with really sharp and big attacks. Try to have all the instruments at a similar level, and if you need a boost for some instrument, instead of adding volume, add saturation or eq instead.

2. Apparent loudness is much more problematic than volume. If you're using a maximizer or limiter, you probably have all the actual volume you need already. But if so then the problem is that the sounds themselves don't sound aggressive enough. Aggressive sounds sound loud without being loud. I find close miced instruments to be much easier to sound loud.

3. Pick your favorite trailer mix and run it through an spectrum analyzer. If you have fabfilter pro-q 2, it's perfect for freezing the spectrum and check the overall eq balance. Then remeber that or print screen it, and do the same thing to your own mix. If they look very different, that could be a clue to what you need to do. Maybe you have too much of a certain frquency, or too little of something.

4. Sonnox Oxford Inflator can give a little push for apparent loudness.

5. Slate Digital FG-X can push the level pretty far without sounding bad.


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