loudness war

[Jay Pace]

Had this problem when I got stuff mastered

Had two tracks full of dyanamic, lovely warm bit of bass in there and nice rounded full sound. This really came out in the mastering as well - good full bodied rounded sound that held its form even when you cranked it right up.

Problem was that it was noticeably quiter than most other commercial tracks. So I had get it remastered and push it a bit harder, which gave it more volume and bite but lost some of the polished fullness.

Shit state of affairs, but I though it was more important to have a track that would work on the floor and fit comfortably with other tracks than standalone and protect the audio quality but risk sounding quiet in the middle of a set.

[dirty_bass]

Had this problem when I got stuff mastered

Had two tracks full of dyanamic, lovely warm bit of bass in there and nice rounded full sound. This really came out in the mastering as well - good full bodied rounded sound that held its form even when you cranked it right up.

Problem was that it was noticeably quiter than most other commercial tracks. So I had get it remastered and push it a bit harder, which gave it more volume and bite but lost some of the polished fullness.

Shit state of affairs, but I though it was more important to have a track that would work on the floor and fit comfortably with other tracks than standalone and protect the audio quality but risk sounding quiet in the middle of a set.

Ah you fell into a bad trap there man.
You see, the volume of your final master has no relation to the cut on vinyl.
In fact, a crushed loud master, when cut, may end up quiter (and indeed far weaker) than a quiter more dynamic master.

If your talking about just stuff you are playing off CD or whatever when live, just turn up the gains. The clarity and presence will end up shining through.
Unless you are on a rig where everything is run in the red anyway, in which case you are doomed either way.

People always comment about my live PA`s that the sound is always really clean and clear, after gigs, that kind of comment shouldn`t even be happening. To me, my tracks are just produced normally, but I guess I just play after DJ`s playing a lot of new wave of techno stuff that has been crushed with maximisers by new producers and so ends up loud, uncomfortable and noisy.

All this does is increase the stereotype that techno is just noise for drug heads.