From the course: Mixing and Mastering with Pro Tools

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Using limiting and compression to maximize track level

Using limiting and compression to maximize track level - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: Mixing and Mastering with Pro Tools

Using limiting and compression to maximize track level

"I want it loud," screamed the client. A major component of the mastering process is track leveling or achieving the desired perceived loudness in a mix that compares favorably or is what's known as competitive with other mixes in that genre. Well, there are much controversies surrounding the battle for loud. Let's first look at how an engineer might achieve this and we'll address some of the considerations and concerns surrounding brickwall limiting. So before we talk about brickwall limiting and how we can make tracks loud, we need to understand headroom and average or perceive loudness and sort of what keeps our signal from being loud. So headroom is the dynamic range between the normal operating level and the maximum output level or clip point of a system. Now, in Pro Tools and other DAWs, this is 0 dBFS. So you see how the meter here ends at zero. dBFS stands dB Full Scale and it sort of counts from zero into negative numbers based on the bit depth, whether it's 16 or 24 bits…

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