How to Make Your Master Loud WITHOUT Distortion

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[@maxssoundtracks3867]

I have been suffering from this issue for a while now! 😅 This video was just what I needed. It was straight forward and helpful!

[@sageaudio]

That's awesome! Thanks for watching Max! SageAudio.com

[@mttlsa686]

That metaplugin oversampling everything is exactly what i need. I was thinking about this just yesterday and today this video....

[@sageaudio]

Awesome! It's a really cool plugin - thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@slychnidos]

Waaay better! Honestly I had no idea oversampling is that powerful!

[@sageaudio]

Tanks for watching! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! SageAudio.com

[@tehillimmusic]

I don’t usually subscribe after watching one video, but this was very important piece of information that not many other channels talk about and demonstrations were clear. :) Really glad I bumped into this. Things that I always knew and practiced in my masters but maybe at times did it just for the sake of doing it or just hearing the difference in only musical sense, without truely understanding the technicalities of what happens. At the end of the day, yes its all hearing and feeling the music, but as engineers its always good to have further understanding. Thank you :)

[@sageaudio]

Hey Tehillim! Thanks for watching and subscribing - I'm glad you liked the video! I definitely agree - it's best you critically listen, but understanding some of the more technical points can help open up new possibilities and ideas. SageAudio.com

[@godzmic9741]

There are so many different ways to accomplish loud mixes, no one way is the only way. But thanks for the info bro, educational

[@CharlyPreissel]

Great. Thank you pretty much. Appreciate

[@jt3production936]

Yes Tips were on Point. LISTEN: I took that advice went drove to my Home Studio and applied those techniques immediately and Boom my mix was Louder. I followed exactly. Bus Track run all individual vst/instrument tracks under that Bus. Throw Two Compressors on the Bus adjust attack ratio volume. Now! Use those faders adjust up or down and when you hear each individual track distorting too much pull back boom after a little bit of EQ just hear how your whole track not only get loud Commercially but it just opened up That's My Rant for the day... Thank You Sage Audio JT3 Production

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the video and some of the techniques you used! That's a cool technique you used with the channel faders! SageAudio.com

[@vicneve1169]

I love this channel 😍

[@ThisisTylerCain]

Loving the content!

[@sageaudio]

Hey Tyler! Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@MiracleDee]

Thanks for the video. Gained a lot. (I'd like to mention that Cakewalk is a DAW (free) that has inbuilt oversampling for plugins. Very useful feature. Can be turned on /off whenever needed).

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for checking out this video! That's awesome to hear about cakewalk - I used that one a while back but not since it added oversampling to all plugins. SageAudio.com

[@iamalievski]

You helped me a lot, thx for this professional tutorial.

[@sageaudio]

Awesome thanks Doctor DJ! SageAudio.com

[@stevewills735]

The DDMF tip is golden! I would have never tried this without the tip. Cheers!

[@sageaudio]

Hey Steve! That's awesome - glad you enjoyed the video! SageAudio.com

[@ukubeatz]

Great video! Definitely learned some new things

[@OmuTele]

Thank you so much! 🔥🙏

[@DominicDonner]

Great video man! Thanks for this.

[@sageaudio]

Hey Dominic! Thanks for watching the video and leaving a comment! SageAudio.com

[@godcalvin3829]

so useful

[@yusun5722]

Very helpful.

[@sageaudio]

Hey Yu Sun! Thanks for watching and leaving a comment! SageAudio.com

[@hydos2003]

Tips we’re on point and the track was fire 🔥👌🏾👌🏾

[@sageaudio]

Awesome! Thanks for watching - glad you like the video! SageAudio.com

[@HALOWEENTHER]

@@sageaudio i wonder what's this track name :/

[@elchupacabra33]

@@HALOWEENTHER I need to know

[@HALOWEENTHER]

@@elchupacabra33 same bro

[@elchupacabra33]

@@HALOWEENTHER found it ! It’s Pomelo - Jobii (Thank me later ;) )

[@jahbatonrootz24]

Great work

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@cezarciucium5580]

This is usefull info! Thanks! More videos like this!

[@AudioAssassin]

It's interesting that oversampling is off by default in Fabfilter's Pro-L2 but I guess that's because the performance of each oversampling level is dependent on the power of your CPU. Fabfilter must have decided to switch it off by default for smooth performance with slower CPU's. After watching this video I set oversampling to 4x and saved it as the default setting. Great video and thank you for the free info

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching and leaving a comment! You're right, it's probably set to off to avoid affecting CPU as much as possible. I should probably default mine to that as well! SageAudio.com

[@VersuszMusicOficial]

You can work with a low oversampling, and just put it on 32 when exporting.

[@Najafierfan__]

Woooow very very useful❤❤❤🙌🏻🙌🏻

[@sageaudio]

Awesome! Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@holywaterandgreentea]

Thanks

[@ghostfrom1950]

Noticed the TP and Oversamp reduced the low end impact quite blarringly. Great video!

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! I noticed that too! SageAudio.com

[@briancase6180]

So, what can happen if you get rid of aliasing distortion is that transients sound less loud and more defined. The tell-tale sign is kick transients and high hats (they can sound more click-like and less shhhh-like). That's actually good, but what it means it's that your kick or whatever actually isn't hitting hard enough. Another way to look at it: we've become so used to distortion of transients in popular music, that when it's gone, we miss it. So, understand that distortion is ok as long as you are in control of it. If you make your track cleaner and now you don't like it as much, maybe you need to go back to the beginning and change levels or your mixing decisions.

[@ArbleezyGaming]

thank you for this tutorial

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching Arbleezy! SageAudio.com

[@flaviozarza1735]

Very good info. Thank u so much for sharing. 🙂

[@sageaudio]

Awesome! Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@aam6058]

Another really useful and insightful video so thanks for this. However, I find it better to leave oversampling off on the FabFilter Pro-L2 as oversampling appears to affect the sound in a slightly nasty way. I appreciate that this is counter-intuitive but just wondered if you had found this to be the case.

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! I wonder why this is! Maybe it's causing some weird artifact? Typically oversampling should only be causing a little less clipping distortion, and less aliasing distortion. SageAudio.com

[@briancase6180]

As always, this is a great tutorial; thanks. One thing: for many modern genres, distortion is part of the vibe. I don't mean gritty, sandpaper vocals, but nonetheless, clipping is just what we've been trained to like. Given that, you left out a clipping stage before the limiting stage. A good, oversampling clipper is good here, such as standardclip (worth the $, has lots of filtering choices) or freeclip (it's free, duh). Standardclip let's you set a reasonable rate for producing and a higher rate for printing, but both offer up to 128x (necessary to eliminate aliasing completely). Some mastering for EDM and pop will not use a limiter, only a good clipper, believe it or not. Try it some time in suitable material, you'll likely be surprised: it's another step in attaining competitive loudness (unfortunately, we still must play that game). Also, it's *great* that you mentioned the metaplugin oversampling container!

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching Brian! I'll have to check that one out! Clippers seem to be a more popular form of processing, so I should dive into it a bit more. Thanks for your suggestions! SageAudio.com

[@phillipmanuel3346]

I guess im asking the wrong place but does any of you know of a method to log back into an Instagram account..? I somehow lost my login password. I would appreciate any help you can give me.

[@roccosullivan5912]

@Phillip Manuel Instablaster ;)

[@phillipmanuel3346]

@Rocco Sullivan I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site thru google and Im trying it out now. Takes a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@phillipmanuel3346]

@Rocco Sullivan It did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I'm so happy! Thank you so much you saved my ass :D

[@MalikAmer87]

Good video thanks 🙏

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@MR_Cellarpop]

Great video, thanks. Best/Mathias

[@sageaudio]

Hey Mathias! Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@DalleyMusic]

This is the first video you guys did that I think was incomplete. You failed to mention how; 1)True Peak limiting option can change/dull the transients 2) Regarding Oversampling/aliasing: no mention of "fold back" that happens with the highest frequencies that get involved with aliasing which get folded back (as usually discordant harmonics). I think that would have made it a more complete explanation. Also a recommendation for anyone experimenting with these settings on FF L2,..only experiment these things first using the "unity gain" option. You will hear what the plugin is doing without the huge volume changes as shown here. One last thought; to highlight "Master Loud Without Distortion" I think the song genre type could have been better. That style of music is not going to be mastered for loudness usually so I would have chose something that would, like Rock or EDM which also would make it easier to hear much of what you were trying to display much more obvious. I usually like your videos but this one missed the mark for me.

[@sageaudio]

Hey Daniel! Thanks for watching! Sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy this one as much as some of our other videos (although I'm glad that you're watching these nonetheless haha). I agree, I think some more time could've been spent explaining some of the details of true-peak and aliasing. In the future we'll probably go into greater detail. As for aliasing, I think I did mention the harmonics as well as showed how they fold back with a sine wave and with a down-sampling plugin, but this could have been elaborated on more. Also, good point about EDM or Rock being the example - that would have made more sense for the topic. All-in-all thanks for the feedback - it does help us better understand what you all want to see! SageAudio.com

[@DalleyMusic]

@@sageaudio Sorry if I missed any key points (from my comments) that may have been in the video. I'll still watch your videos and enjoy them very much! Thank you!

[@sageaudio]

No worries at all! Thanks again for watching! SageAudio.com

[@norwimusic1384]

Wao very good content

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching and commenting - glad you enjoyed the video! SageAudio.com

[@eaccin]

32x OS in Pro=L2 softens the transients. I usually prefer 8x or 16x.

[@zanda6828]

Thanks for making this it's really useful. I was just wondering what the song you used for the example was if it has been released.

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching - glad it was helpful! I believe it's called 'Golden Crates' by Dusty Decks SageAudio.com

[@sakkomusic7348]

Wow. I've been doing almost all of those steps without even realizing. Now I feel more comfortable knowing I've been doing it "the right" way 😁

[@stevecarrAB]

Thank you for the heads up about the Attack knobs function. BTW, 30 ms release time? That will create significant (audible) distortion on an 80 Hz signal that's clipped only 3 dB. Maybe you meant to say "130 ms"? Thanks again

[@okidot]

What is your take on having around -5db of limiting (as seen in video), as I would have felt -2db would be the most before it starts to sound a bit messed up?

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! Sometimes it's almost unavoidable unfortunately. If you need to make something super louder, some heavy limiting may be the only way to achieve that. But I agree, -2dB or less would be ideal. SageAudio.com

[@akagerhard]

Heads up people... distortion is not always a bad thing. This is not only true in producing and mixing, but also for mastering. Always compare oversampling vs not oversampling and also compare higher oversampling rates with lower ones. More is NOT better, it's different.

[@sageaudio]

Hey Gerhard! Good point - but aliasing distortion in particular often has a negative effect on the sound due to phase cancellation and the overall timbre of the distortion (since aliasing distortion is of a higher harmonic order). Some forms of distortion sound great, but aliasing which is remedied via oversampling rarely complements a master. Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@akagerhard]

@@sageaudio no need for the "but" it CAN have negative effects... as can higher oversampling rates, since they are not neccessarily better-sounding. Just compare the higher rates to the lower rates (or none at all) every single time, don't just "go for the higher ones". It is simply false to say higher rates are better for mastering and you have been kind of implying that in your video. I think that one sentence was false and is bad advice, that's why I commented. I frequently find myself prefering the lower sampling rates or none at all, especially with saturation: AGAIN not ALWAYS not ALL of the time, not MOST of the times, but frequently and that's why you need to always compare and not simply go for the higher rates. Enough said

[@anotherego6073]

@@akagerhard lol bro chill out these are solid tips and everyone got their own opinions. Just take in what u think is relevant to u and appreciate what these guys are doing for the community.

[@okidot]

@@akagerhard Oversampling just has one function, and the higher rates simply allow more precise reproduction of ultrasonic frequencies and in turn reduce the amount of harmonic distortion and phasing from aliasing. Your track with 0 oversampling will typically have crude harmonic distortion and aliasing, so when oversampling is applied it cleans things up. Saying all this some people prefer a distorted messier mix. However since this is a mastering channel the aim is to teach people how to achieve a clean & tidy final result. It is true however that true peak limiting affects the timbre of your track and defo has a sound to it that isnt always preferred.

[@MrDobleagent]

is it normal for metaplugin to change the sound radically when set to x4 or x8?.... i hear a big difference in the sound and i don't mean no distortion, i mean a muddy and opaque sound... even plugins like bigceil, seem to totally change the way it sounds... I tested A/B with same parameters outside metaplugin and inside...

[@harleyd_dnb]

i think it would be good to understand what levels are considered loud at your standards and what genre that relates to because its all so different and releative. Also then you could have talked about perceived loudness, lufs, rms etc

[@sageaudio]

Hey Harley! That's a great point! For this one we're thinking mastering closer to an integrated -8 LUFS, which is loud for most genres. Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@harleyd_dnb]

for some music yes but im working with -3 to -5 lufs integrated, this is in drum and bass although obviously some genres wouldn't need this sort of loudness but within this genre it is part of the music; you use different techniques to attain such levels. I personally now look at mastering as correcting the tonal balance rather than inducing level mainly because the level to which the track can reach is all down to the production and mixing and forcing extra db can be detrimental to the track if it doesnt have potential to reach that

[@briancase6180]

Pro tip: go to loudnessplenalty.com and see what the streaming services will do to your track. If you're publishing on beatport or wherever for DJs, that's a different story.

[@gabsauvage]

Hi, i've noticed that your studio were equiped of Neuman KH310 monitors. To you, are they worth the price, or does some lower end monitors such as the Kali IN-8 fullfill the day to day studio needs? Thanks for your answer.

[@sageaudio]

Sorry for the delay in responding to you! It may be best to reach out to Steve (the owner/head engineer) to get his thoughts on the monitors! Here's a contact link: www.sageaudio.com/contact.php

[@jayzamedia]

any chance of you mixing my vocal aswell if i send the stems? i been looking for someone to get my sound how i want it really struggling if i sent them over could u do this?

[@sageaudio]

Sorry but we currently only do stereo mastering. Maybe we can figure out how to get them to sit right by mastering a sample of it for you. Here's a link if you're interested in trying that out: www.sageaudio.com/register.php

[@verdi260]

Hi. Thank you for this tutorial. A question I processed a choir and my distortion occurred only on hi-mid and hi frequencies. Would you use dynamic EQ or multiband compressor. Or what else? Thank's in advance. Jan.

[@Its24KARAT]

Brother I have a question, how do I achieve that very brickwall waveform? Is it a mastering work? I put a brickwall limiter at the end of the mastering chain?

[@lahattec]

What about using clipping to help gain loudness? I am far from an expert, but I have used StandardClip to slightly knock off some of the extreme peaks prior to going to limiting.

[@sageaudio]

Clipping can be really helpful! It more or less introduces white noise when a transient would hit - the high frequencies it adds helps us to perceive a transient, even when it isn't there. SageAudio.com

[@EmmzBeats1zx]

yh im having alot of troible when uploading a beat to yuotube it gets turned down loads and if i try to increase the db of the track it just distorts.

[@DrBrunoDzogovic]

How to make your master loud without saturation? - Use good quality AD/DA converters. Clipping the bus of the DAW and the AD/DA hardware are two completely different things.

[@Citiaprod]

Nice video dude, btw you can do this withouth fabfilter?

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! Yes you can! SageAudio.com

[@OneStepToday]

I am curious : Does Ozone maximiser has true peak detection to avoid ISP automatically? or it doesnt have it all?

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! It has a true-peak option above the limiter! SageAudio.com

[@EricPeelMusic]

One of the best ways to make a master loud without distortion is to actually use distortion, especially on drums and bass. Makes the sound more wet and interesting too.

[@sageaudio]

That's a good point! Distortion is a helpful tool to make things loud, and if used right, can benefit the timbre of the track too.

[@austinedeclan10]

I have a recording that is -14lufs but does not sound as loud as commercial releases

[@rahulraj-us9er]

When using two limiter how much make up gain should we use on each one?

[@humorustrout.]

I would use the 1st limiter to chop around 1-3db off the loudest sections, and that'll help the 2nd limiter to not have to work as hard. I usually aim for around -3db reduction on the 2nd limiter, but depends on the music.

[@joakimalkman6643]

Great video! One question: I have noticed that all the reference tracks (by very famous pop artists) I use when mixing have True Peaks of +1.0 to +1.5 dBTP (one even as high as +2,6 dBTP). Do you have any idea why these tracks are so loud and why some mastering engineers don’t seem to use True Peak Limiting?

[@sageaudio]

Hey Joakim! Great question! I'm really not sure why this is! Out of curiosity, how are you sourcing these references? SageAudio.com

[@joakimalkman6643]

@@sageaudio I buy and download them from Tidal Store, HDtracks or Beatport.

[@sageaudio]

That's interesting - I'm not sure, maybe they're using limiters that don't use truepeak detection. The only other thing I can think of is if the amplitude changed during encoding, but if these are lossless files that wouldn't cause that great of a change. What's one of the tracks that you reference from Tidal? I'll check it out. SageAudio.com

[@joakimalkman6643]

@@sageaudio Thanks for your reply! I bought and downloaded the track “Over Now” by Calvin Harris and The Weeknd from Tidal Store in Flac file format a few weeks ago. When I use my meters on it, they show a True Peak Max of +2.6 dBTP.

[@FabrizziMusic]

@@joakimalkman6643 Nobody will tell you this... but especially in that kind of music, sometimes they just clip the output of the daw , and don´t use a mastering limiter at all...

[@dylanschiavonecomposer9116]

A well-put-together video, but if we're trying to listen to subtle artifacts in the examples you provide, I wouldn't choose source material that is both saturated and already has a lot of high-end already sheared off (i.e. lofi). It just masks the differences in what we're trying to hear, IMHO.

[@itchyvinyl]

Totally agree. Great video, but choice of example material could have been way more illustrative.

[@volo9864]

Hey man do you master like song for free I’ve never expirenced how a song sounds after getting mastered from a professional engineer !

[@campar1043]

if your project is 48 or 96 do u need oversampling with the metaplugin?

[@sageaudio]

If 48 I would use it, if 96 you should be okay in most instances. Thanks for watching Cam Par! SageAudio.com

[@nosinfantasia]

I always thought that that red spectrum in limiter was bad and I did everything to avoid it .... One question, is it bad to use oversampling x 32?

[@sageaudio]

32x may be too much for your CPU, but it won't have a negative effect on the sound. Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@nosinfantasia]

@@sageaudio well I use 32 in render. And what about the red zone? Is not bad for the quality of sound?there's a limit ?

[@stevecarrAB]

What is that annoying hiss (tape noise) sound in your musical sound source? That noise masks important details in such demonstrations.

[@kensmechanicalaffair]

Its probably a compressor or recorded to tape. Everything doesn't always sound squeaky clean.

[@Gguitarist1]

👍

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@tuckerbingo2491]

Who sing the music at 4:00

[@ghst7r]

If oversampling is that powerful, we should always set it to 32x for exporting, shouldn't we?

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! That's probably overkill to be honest. 4x to 8x should typically be enough to reduce aliasing significantly. SageAudio.com

[@sybillesztorm9006]

Are you sure Meta Plugin is reapplying the chosen oversampling before each plugin within its framework? I thought I had to stack Meta-plugin every time.

[@sageaudio]

Hey Sybille Sztorm! It looks like it is. Reading the manual (which is unfortunately of an older version that only mentions 2x oversampling) it claims that the oversampling is applied to everything inside the metaplugin. SageAudio.com

[@sybillesztorm9006]

@@sageaudio That's great to know! Thanks for clarifying!

[@infinity528affirmationaudi9]

@@sybillesztorm9006 It does say OS of the entire chain.

[@johnnyt5514]

On their product page they wrote „Up to 8x oversampling option of the whole signal chain is available.“ For me that does not sound like it is applied to every single plugin separately. This might matter if distortion adds up on many plugins that does not support oversampling. It might also be negligible, if a clean master is the aim and aliasing is far to low to get recognized. And too many downsampling filters may also change the sound....

[@sybillesztorm9006]

@@johnnyt5514 So we stack it for now?

[@user-rk9su7nj2m]

Personally,my ear is not trained enough and I can't really notice the difference.Is ithere any tips to improve hearing on these small little details?

[@HvrriMusic]

good headphones like m40x is the first step

[@user-rk9su7nj2m]

@@HvrriMusic Im using m40x, what i meant is when it comes to mastering the difference is sometimes not noticeable at least for me.So I want to train my ears for it.

[@sageaudio]

I'd say use an equalizer to try and hear minute differences. Just practice a lot and keep mastering music! SageAudio.com

[@briancase6180]

@@sageaudio yes! I learned a lot by soloing various frequency ranges on my mix/master bus. It's probably the best/fastest way to learn what's really happening when you EQ and etc.

[@Slytander]

Totally unrelated to the content but your intro song is the same as on Anders Erickson's cocktail making channel 🤔

[@notprosperBEATS]

4:28

[@DaleSuttonMusic]

I dont hear a difference lol, probably because youtube is putting its own limiting etc

[@P3X967]

Has no one noticed that the DS1MK3 was in bypass mode the whole time? He was "bypassing" through DAW, but plugin's internal BYPASS was ON the whole time. Yikes!

[@sageaudio]

Haha whoops! Thanks for letting us know! SageAudio.com

[@Ekalavya_]

Just to confirm, do you master the beat for free?

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! We do! We master it and send you a sample of it so you can hear how the full track would sound mastered. SageAudio.com

[@bruno_khouri]

fodaaaaaaaa

[@anotherego6073]

Bro how is this quality content full of gems free?????

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching this one! Great to see that you liked the video and found it helpful! SageAudio.com

[@nhmusicbeats]

479

[@sageaudio]

Thanks for watching! SageAudio.com

[@the_inzz_remix4050]

Sir I need master rms to -1.5db Without distortion how I do that? tell me plz

[@Lothyde]

I feel sad for people that don't have volume knobs.

[@tunerterror]

can you please turn the background music down ?

[@sageaudio]

Sure! We'll turn that down in future videos! SageAudio.com

[@hipass_]

Sounds fine to me 😒

[@TheHardRage13]

Why even mention aliasing, just work your track with high sample rate and it shouldnt become a problem

[@RichmondDoesThings]

Why is all the comments so long

[@eriksteverman]

BRO WHY THE FUCK ARE ALL THESE TUTORIALS FOR FL STUDIO? ABLETON IS THE ONLY WAY

[@John-qw4jf]

When you have a random HiHat playing out of time crap over the track it makes it impossible for anyone's brain to focus on the rest of the sounds. Waste of time.

[@cultserpent4501]

I feel so sad, how can i train my ears to detect the changes you make on attack and release times? In general i find it hard to detect changes in dynamic processing, but when you go from +8db gain to +14db on the pro L shouldnt there be a very clear change on the overall loudness? When i push the gain 2-3db and up, i can hear a clear difference in loudness boost. Why i cant hear this now?

[@sageaudio]

It just takes time! It also may be harder to hear changes due to KZbin's loudness normalization.