[MUSIC] Once you've added EQ compression and reverb, it's time to take our mix to what we would call radio level and make them louder. You may have noticed in some of your previous productions that they've actually bounced out quite quiet, and when you play them next to a commercial radio track, they might not be as loud or as impactful. The process to get everything louder in our productions is called mastering. And one of the most common plugins used for mastering is a limiter. For the mastering process, we're going to use a limiting plugin called Maxim. And depending on what version of Pro Tools you're using, you might not have this plugin. However, the information in this lesson is really useful for your productions and you can always consider investing in a limiting plugin for your future productions. Limiters are always added on your master fader, and remember from our first lesson when we try to make sure nothing was peaking, well, that will also bring the overall volume level of our track down. We want our track to be loud enough to compete with any other commercial track that's either downloaded or streamed. On your master fader, go into your inserts section and choose dynamics, Maxim. Limiters are essentially compressors with incredibly high ratios. And the two most common parameters on a limiter that we want to worry about are threshold and ceiling. First of all, the ceiling is the point that we don't want any of our music to get louder than. And naturally, you would assume that it would be zero, because based on all of what we talked about in terms of peaking and loudness, zero has been the maximum loudness level that we could get. However, if you set a ceiling on a limiter to zero, there is still a chance, especially if something tries to push desperately over that ceiling, that it still could distort and create digital distortion. So as a rule, it's always advisable to set your ceiling slightly below zero. So I usually set it to -0.1 dB. This is not going to create a huge amount of audible difference in loudness, but it will avoid peaking or any sort of digital distortion. So I'm going to set my ceiling to -0.1. Next, we want to take our threshold and actually drag it down. And what that's going to do is essentially make everything on this track louder just by moving the threshold downward. So this is what the track sounds like before we add any limiting and this is the level that it is. [MUSIC] If I had to estimate where that was peaking, I would say the loudest point is probably around -15 or -14 dB. Now, we want to get this close to -0.1, which is going to be quite a big jump in terms of loudness. As I drag the threshold down, you might see some peaking on your output. But always double check after you drag the threshold when you playback, and usually, it's going to be fine, and avoid any chance of peaking. [MUSIC] So you can definitely hear the difference and loudness by dragging the threshold down, and the ceiling x as a stopper or a wall that nothing can go louder than that ceiling. As I mentioned, you might experience a little bit of peaking when you do this the first time. But we always double check and make sure that it's not peaking after we set that threshold. So I'm just going to press play again and just make sure that everything's fine. [MUSIC] As you can see, even though it peaks the first time when we were actually dragging the threshold down, everything's fine when we double checked it. So the big question is, how far down do you drag the threshold? The simple answer is you don't want to distort the actual mix that you've created. You want to make sure that you preserve all the dynamics that you have and preserve all the effects you've made but also make everything loud enough so we'll be able to hear it in comparison with commercial tracks. This measurement called attenuation is basically the same as the gain reduction meter that we saw on the compressor. Where essentially that's a value of how much gain you lost by anything trying to push over the ceiling where we've stopped it. A good rule is to keep this very minimal. This is at 4.9 dB, but if you drag that threshold even more, that could be a really high number. And once you go higher than about 5, it's going to create some digital distortion and it's not going to sound nice. This will also create something called pumping, where the limiter's trying really hard to keep the loud sounds below the ceiling but can't keep up with it. So I'll demonstrate what it would sound like if you brought that threshold down too far and created some sort of distortion or sounds that aren't quite as good as what you've made them with all of your mixing techniques. [MUSIC] When we brought the threshold all the way down, you can hear the kick drum fighting against the ceiling and basically pushing the entire mix down every time the kick drum hits, and the limiter fighting to get that to come back to the level it was before. This is something that we don't want. We still want to preserve all of the dynamics, all of the EQ, all of the reverb that you created in your mix, but we just want to make the whole thing louder without peaking on the output. So again, set your threshold and limit the attenuation, try not to have too much, but also bring the loudness up as close to the ceiling as you can. So here's what our track sounded like before the limiter. [MUSIC] And after. [MUSIC] It makes a huge difference in the loudness of your track. If you're still confused about where to set that threshold on the compressor, always use your ears and trust what you're hearing. If it sounds good, it probably is. [MUSIC]
