setting crossovers in Waves LinMB, release in L3 Multi...

[Adam Terchin]

1. Anyone have a particular method of determining the numbers for the crossover buttons in the Waves LinMB?

2. My mix goes from HARBAL to LinMB to Waves L3 Multimaximizer (new)

(click for bigger image)
My question number 2 is: The L3's master release section: is it intended to improve anything if you just LinMB'ed the mix and adjusted the release there? As well I could point out the other set of crossover buttons you would need to deal with (which probably should be the same?).

Back to question 1, I'm curious about the crossovers because my music is experimental electronica, sometimes abrasive, sometimes musical and the highs and lows have vast dynamic differences from track to track, which is generally how I write it.

[Adam Terchin]

actually, I got sick of thinking about it this afternoon and so on my lunch break, i just did what i normally would do with the peaks and valleys in Har-Bal (only evened them out even more, rather than my normally subtle changes) and then used Har-Bal's internal limiter, measuring it up against a commercial track, burned a disc of it to listen to on the way home and it sounded.....actually pretty good. i think my problem is overthinking the problem. now if i go back and raise the levels of all my synthy sounds between 400hz and 1khz, i think all that may be left is to even out those with Intuit Q and Har-Bal to boost the hi's.

The only thing about the limiting i could gripe about is it may have boosted certain bass-snare-hit noises so much it introduced a bit of distortion, but then again, i might be able to fix that by dropping the kicks by a couple parameter clicks. Or it could be my ears.

The other thing (which also unfortunately comes back to my mix) is that while boosting the level to match the commercial track (using the match loudness feature) Har-Bal couldn't raise it any more than 15 db. (my avg. loudness was about -28 on this one track because of a predominant narrow ultra low frequency and not much mid-hi).

I'm doing my best earle and paavo. but u guys are right, patience pays off. i've learned more about mastering since i got this program a couple months ago (including this forum) in all my years doing this crap as a hobby.

[HarBal]

Glad to hear you are making progress Adam!

Yep, the limiter isn't great if pushed too hard. Works fine for modertate loudness but for super loud you may need to go elsewhere until I have the time and patience to improve upon it.

The +15dB gain issue is one I've come across too! I thought it would be enough when I first implemented it but, as you've discovered, not always enough. I'll change it in future.

Cheers,


Paavo.

[Adam Terchin]

Actually i was still wondering about the crossovers question. is there a method when you are looking at the frequency spectrum in Har-Bal for determining what the four crossover should be set to in LinMB?