A bit late to this video but if you want a nested return track, make one and add something lightweight with a sidechain set to listen, each one of these can be from another track with its own gain control into whatever fx is on there.
This is the god of all tutorials on music production engineering. I mean seriously, this really is!. I am subscribed to a set of really good channels and all guys in the top of their field as far as music production/engineering is concerned, Mix bus tv, Chris sellum, White sea studio, Dom Segalis and several others. But none of them touch this. This has been the first time i have been able to properly sit down, watch, listen, learn, take notes and put into practise and understand everything you say, down to the finer detail. The way you present it, your clarity, the detailed explanations, the lecturing, all high level, totally undertstandable and engaging. While a lot would have me falling asleep, this gives me energy, focus and excitment! And it works! This is like having the blanket taken off me and i can actually hear and see clearly. Truely incredible. I am of course sticking with the lectures all the way through. But i got to this point and wanted to start getting in practise what i've been noting down and learning. Goddam if i'm mot up to - 8.4 lufs already, and this was retro fitting to a massve track already written and arranged. It's taken a quite a bit of work to retro fit, but it's been the best hard work i've done in like, forever! So i've made a template based on CTZ with everything already inserted, with all bus cascading and groups set, with db meter, kclip, physcope etc and ready to go once this track is finished. Once i get going from the start with a new track it will be so much easier to get Ctz into place from the get go and i should be reaching those loudness targets with ease. Thanks for something so enlightening and for sharing this with the music commmunity. Amazing!
If you look on the contact page at FX23.net, you'll see that the plugin developer is **keenly** aware how badly Mac people want an OSX port. I don't blame y'all. It's a fantastic implementation of an oscilloscope, and I'd **really** miss it if I started producing on a Mac.
Jesus I totally agree! My kingdom for an oscilloscope that shows SUM for AAX I’ve been working on implementing CTZ into genres pretty far away from EDM, Club, etc, but that also need to be LOUD. DAW is Protools. There’s so much good info in this series that can be applicable to nearly all modern music production.
Such a great approach! Starting to actually get this! Thanks again for your insight Baphy! If anyone knows work arounds for sends and listen bus in logic pro please hit me up!
29:00 holy smokes this is way better in bitwig than in ableton!!!! didn't know about this feature, thats a crazy workflow improvement!! in albeton arrange and clip view seem a little disconnected, bitwig combines them in a very logical view! awesome this makes me wanna grab bitwig just for producing beats.
I rebuilt Your template on my own and got a much deeper insight on the CTZ approach. As even the template projects with some minor individual tweaks got quite complex, I documented the structure of the tracks and groups in a Powerpoint. Now I can see the signal flow on one page: The qouping of tracks, where all the Sends go an which track is beeing ducked by another one. Can highly recommend this! This Powerpoint will be my second template in the production phase. I have allways been struggling to understand old projects after a while. ..........
Using Ableton, would I solve the problem of the summing aux returns if I: 1. created a new audio track, and routed all my sends to that audio track (I don't know how to make group specific audio tracks in Ableton if it is possible.) 2. Sidechain duck that new sends track to kick and snare 3. CTZ that new track using dpmeter5+gclip Would that alleviate the problem?
This is like the concept of many rivers joining the sea. Imagine if all the rivers (tracks) joined the sea (mastering limiter) at exactly the same place and time at once! that place would be destroyed or wouldn't even exist as it would become flooded and ruined. That's why rivers naturally join each other way before the final joining point, and make thicker rivers (busses) so that finally one big river (mix buss) feeds the sea. I hope I wasn't too high for writing this and made sense. LOL
The best tutorials on the internet! Amazing organization, very thought out. I am using ableton, but it's easy to convert stuff to it. I dropped everything after I saw the first episode - jumped here to create my template from scratch based on your thought process - and I'll watch the rest taking notes. Thank you for the work you put into these videos, truly amazing work
Hi @Baphometrix. One thing i don't understand after watching i think all your video's. So at the start of mixing, is your kick already hitting 0dB on its channel? And in this video, we see your kick with a CTZ Bus on it, why not a channel CTZ? Thanks for the series :)
The way most kicks work, yes, they usually end up getting clipped at least a wee bit even on their origin track, so that their RMS/LUFS can be loud enough for me to hit the overall loudness targets I tend to shoot for. In my videos, look closer at the thing that says "KICK". that's actually a folder icon, meaning it's a **bus**, not the source track where my kick really comes from. Inside that KICK folder/bus, there might be several different kicks I use for different parts of the song. So the KICK folder/bus has a "Bus clipper" rack on it.
Your series is so enlightening Baphy I really sincerely appreciate all of this. Im learning so much about mixing, its definitely helping me take my sound to the next level thinking about clipping and summing and bussing and im tweaking my template, i bought psyscope. I eagerly await more content from you so keep it up!!
This series is sooooo incredible. Thanks Baphy, for all the insights!! How exactly do You rout Your bass sounds in Your projects? A pure sub bass is part of the SUB BUS, that´s for sure. How do You handle basses with frequencies below 200Hz AND above? Do You frequency-split them and route the two parts to SUB and TONAL or do You keep them in one place?
As a Bitwig user, I was secretly hoping for this video, and you delivered!!! Thank you. :) Question on duckers/side chainers. Is something like Kickstart 2 or ShaperBox2 equally useful for this purpose? I've also been using Trackspacer alot for my vocal space.
Thanks Baphometrix for the course, it's fantastic. A question! Where would you put a BASS group? It's frequency content does not originate in the sub range but usually expands into the mid range. I would argue it should be inside the TONAL group, between SUBS and MID LINE, but sometimes the bass has a midrangey sound that may interfere with the MID LINE. What would be your approach? Really appreciating your work!
This is the first template walk-through that I've ever found to be useful. You can do all of the send/return grouping with Live, but you still have to use the returns as pass-thru channels to audio tracks (with their sends disabled) used as auxes. (You can also do all of the necessary routing and organizing in Logic and Pro Tools.)
Follow up thought/question... How do you manage solos with the listen bus? When you solo a track, do you also have to solo the listen bus or is Bitwig smart enough to know not to mute it?
Very good demonstration of CTZ and the structured bussing. Splitting by spectrum / content has always been the best way to mix for me - putting lots of channels labelled synth 1, synth 2, bass 1, sub 1, sub 2...etc and then trying to mix is much harder. similar sounding things should be made to sound as good as possible on their own - then grouped together and treated as a whole. Much more consistent sound.
Also, FL Studio is great for flexible routing of tracks and audio - the current track is great. You add a plugin to that channel and it will affect which other track you have selected, perfect for scopes, meters, testing effects on different tracks. bitwig (for sound design) and reaper (for recording) are also fantastic DAWS and I recommend both highly - (paid for them myself and use them daily)
Testing this method out in Ableton. It's quite a challenge using PSYScope due to the PDC latency problems. I have tried adjusting for latency within the scope but due to multiple groups and routing it becomes a headache. You can never be sure you have your latency setup correctly. Anyone got any tips?
@@iamBQ yeah the "fix" is basically keeping track of all the plugin latency in each channel and setting psyscope delay to compensate..... every single time you add latency you need to adjust psyscope. Not very good for workflow so I'm just going to try Bitwig
I can't tell if Duck Buddy is insufficient, or if this sort of ducking just isn't appropriate for funky house. Its making my guitar, clavinet and a synth solo sound really unnatural in the project i am applying these techniques to.
I've been struggling doing CTZ in ableton, because of how delay compensation works. It doesn't report it to the internal clock. My oscilossopes and sidechains are not in sync. I can use offsets but whenever I introduce a new plugin that has delay I have to readjust the offsets. I am seriously considering switching daws because of this.
One question about the Listen-Bus. I don't get the difference to "real" Listen-Bus and something like THIS in Ableton: All tracks grouped to the Pre-Master-Bus. In the Pre-Master-Bus I set the Send to an Audio Track (named "Listen Bus"), that's outside from this Pre-Master-Bus. In this Listen-Bus I set the "send to Audio" to the Master. If I get it right I have all in need or not? A Pre-Master to Work with, a Listen-Bus to set meterings and so on and a complete empty Master. Or is it wrong? All Return-Tracks also set to "send audio to" Pre-Master. So I get all the sum on the Pre-Master-Bus, where I listen over the Listen-Bus
So I don't know if this is purely an Ableton issue, but when using psyscope pro and analyzing the Kick/tonal buss relationship (placing it after an instance of duck or gatekeeper), there is anywhere from 30-300ms delay in what psyscope is showing me. Makes it basically useless to analyze, is there any way to compensate for the plug in latency? Thanks for the vids they are a great help, just can't figure out why the kick and/or other busses are not aligning visually within psyscope.
Hows the routing work with Gate by Kiloheartz... For example got my kick bus I want triggered to silence/lower whenever an amen break hits on another channel... tried using sidechain, to it from kick but instanly just kept ducking when the amen wasn't playing? thanks B !
Hello! If you have bus processing such as compressors, saturation, etc, if the aux sends are sent to that bus, wouldn't that reverb/delay/etc get processed through those plugins on the bus? Or are they still going in Parallel? I Use logic pro X so I'm unable to do such routing, but I'm wondering if that's the case Thank you for your awesome videos! @baphometrix
I've been building out my Bitwig template, and this video has moved it forward by an insane amount. Thank you sincerely for sharing your knowledge and technique!
You usually don't have a choice. In nearly every DAW, your choices for sends are either "pre-fader" or "post-fader". Any processing from the track or bus clipper in the insert channel is already baked into the signal at that point.
@@Baphometrix i was thinking of sending to a reverb or delay bus which comes back to the group bus but keeping an individual bus where i’ll have a clipper for that specific track, then sending to the group bus. Its a bit messy but still can achieve pre clipper reverb. Either way i don’t think it will make much difference. Do you recommend any specific mixing tutorials based more on eq, balance and placing sounds in the frequency spectrum and stereo field? That seems to be one of my biggest weaknesses atm.
@@kiko8u There are a fair number of such tutorials out there floating around UA-cam. And my next three episodes in this series will be specifically about these questions.
Is it possible to hard clip sounds that are more low end like kicks and sub basses and then have no distortion sound to it so that I can push the overall peak value??
Hellp bapho. Is the CTZ method useful for every genre? I mainly produce breakbeat as an indie artist or rnb (trapsoul) beats to sell and make bread. my production for both styles is ambient and spacey not "hard" like your bass music. will applying this method benefit my mixes? or should I just keep using the old school way of gainstaging at low levels. thank you.
I've been learning CTZ recently, it works for more chill genres too. You can afford less overall loudness depending on the genre. Genres that don't need to be as upfront and loud can have lower lufs. The idea is still choosing 3-4 main anchor elements, processing these to be present and at or close peaking at 0db. Even though the genre is chill you still want it hitting peak 0 - 0.1db on the master but at a lower average loudness. One of the benefits of producing around 0db is you catch summing and arrangement problems way earlier regardless of the genre. You could have relaxed bass line and a soft pad and soft kick, but summed with a 0db method you will catch frequency buildups and resonances at the source, rather than having "fake" headroom mixing around -16db, you have -16db of range to hide problems. If you still want to keep that arrangement then some loudness will be sacrificed. No genre is immune to summing and resonance and will eventually be pushed up to 0db for mastering. It can still sound very good clipping and saturating elements in chill genres, you just have more depth available in the mix for reverb and delicate elements and layers etc.
Hey! I recently came across your tutorial series "Mixing loud with CTZ" and I am almost fascinated by this technique. It's amazing how much bullshit is said on the internet. I have a question about this technique as one thing is not clear to me. As an example for the drums: Kick Tracks, Clipper -> (Kick Bus, Clipper) -> Clap Tracks, Clipper -> Clap Bus Clipper -> DRUM-BUS, Clipper Hat Tracks, Clipper -> Hat Bus - Clipper -> If these buses are now merged to another bus (in this case the drum bus), clipping will occur at the bus input when kick and clap play together (for example +4dB). This is compensated by the bus clipper at the beginning of the chain, so the drum bus is back to 0dB. Now my question: Is it only an "information" at the bus input or does it really clip at the input? Have I perhaps overlooked/overheard an important part? In my opinion, I could not perceive any extreme overloads when a clipper is set at the beginning of the DRUM bus, which would be clearly audible at +4db. I also compared it to the same DRUM bus, where the overdriven value on the DRUM bus of each associated track is turned down, so that on the DRUM bus the peaks are at most 0dB and afterwards the clipper compensates for the turned down value. However, the volume ratios or the loudness, when comparing the DRUM buses, the individual elements, deviate from each other at least once. I work with Ableton. I look forward to your answer and thank you in advance!
I'm not quite following your question, but just remember that the clippers are always at the END of the processing chain on any given track or bus. For example, if you sum kicks, claps, and snares at a bus called DRUMS, you might start out with just a single bus clipper there on DRUMS which ensures that whatever is happening on that bus never goes over 0 dBFS (clipping it, essentially acting like a limiter on that bus). Now say you add some processing to that DRUMS bus. For example... Ableton's "Drum Bus" device (lol what a confusing name). Or some EQ to pull down some ringy resonances. Or whatever. You want to put all those things in FRONT of the bus clipper itself. Because they're all going to be creating new/different peaks on top of all the signals from the summed tracks merging at that bus, right? Clippers always control the peaks back down to 0 dBFS at the END of every track/bus. That's why this method is called "Clip to 0".
@@Baphometrix Yes, I am aware of that, I have already seen your CTZ series up to this episode! :) Okay, thanks for the quick reply. Maybe explained a bit easier again :D. So I have kick, claps and hats together as buses, which in turn run into the drum bus. Since kick and clap also play at the same time, there are peaks in the drum bus input that are above 0dB(4dB). So this is not a big deal because the clipper at the end of the bus catches the peaks? I thought that in the processing chain overloads are also undesirable - isn't that the case? Or should the input from the drum bus not be above 0dB?
Just FYI, FL Studio has a Listen bus that's been basically implemented exactly the way you use it by default on the Mixer, ever since FL9 at the latest. The difference is they call it Current, and it's designed to follow the focused mixer track/bus with no audio out routed by default, though you can assign it to function as a Headphone/Cue bus very easily. What can be a drawback for this is that it's also the only mixer lane designed to handle Sample Previews from the Browser, but obviously by the time you'd have to worry about major conflicts between the mix and these previews is if you get bored and start poking around in reverse, dipping back into sound design when you're well into the later mixing phase(s). Probably much more info than you need, I know, but you and I seem to kind of share the gift(/curse) of long-windedness lol
I´m watching this for the third time since its release, I guess.... 😀 Baphy, I You templates You never have any EQing, saturation, Glue Compresion or other Colouring Plugs on Your Buses. I guess that has an educational purpose,. In real projects You would have those plugs on a BUS level before the Bus CTZ, right?
Short answer, yes. Every type of processing on a track or bus always comes before the Clipper/Limiter. Every processing tweak you do changes the waveshape, which changes what pokes up above 0 dBFS and therefore gets clipped. You don't see too many of those plugs because I'm demoing quick and dirty projects I made for illustrative purposes for some videos.
What is missing from the CTZ videos is talking about bus processing. Sometimes you want to do a lot of processing even to the level of "sound design" on the bus, but there are no guides on how you would do that and maintain the VCA trick working like it should. If you have plugins that act based on a certain threshold on the bus, then how can you maintain the VCA trick working if you for example pull the entire track down? That means the threshold dependent plugins would stop working correctly, so you would have to adjust everything (which is a total pain).
In this video you mention turning the VCA up or down if you need to. It was the first time I heard turn up. If you set the dpMeters up for 0 on your individual tracks and you turn the VCA up… is that OK now that the individual tracks are higher than zero going into the clipper? Sorry in advance if this is silly question. I know the busses go above zero and then are clipped with the clipper, just was unsure on the tracks.
You would turn the VCA up only if you were originally shooting for a relatively quiet and dynamic loudness target on your final mix. So imagine your arrangement and rough mix is complete, and your song is measuring something like -10 LUFS (integrated) across the full span of its loudest chorus/drop/hook section. And imagine you wonder what the song might sound like at -9 or -8 LUFS instead. That's when you might choose to turn the VCA up. For most of us working in loud genres and trying to hit targets more like -7 or -8 or -6 LUFS, we typically wouldn't try crushing the song even more, so we'd probably be going the other way, maybe testing what our song would sound like if we took it **down** by 1 or 2 LUFS.
Amazing stuff as usual Baph! I wanted to ask if you use a kick from a sample pack and its peaking at 0 already would you still clip it to get more out of it or would you keep it as is? Also where are you sending your external sidechain to from Duck?
Remember, peak values don't matter. We don't balance our mixes by the level of super short, transient peaks in the signal. We balance our mixes by the perceived loudness of the signal (RMS or LUFS). So, you could have a very sharp, transient kick that peaks at 0 but isn't very LOUD at all. So, yes, if I liked the sound of that kick but it wasn't loud enough, I might try pushing it to hit -10 LUFS max momentary and see if it could survive that amount of clipping and still sound good. I might even try using a transient shaper or slow compressor on it first, to reshape that kick to help it better survive the necessary amount of clipping. TL;DR - not all kicks nor snares can be made loud enough for loud genres.
Short story, use a spectral ducker. The best one right now IMO is smart:comp (by Sonible) in "spectral ducking" mode. You can see how I use it here at this timestamp: ua-cam.com/video/yabKWyIvenQ/v-deo.html .
I think somewhere you said you don't clip subs, but what if the sub is part of the bass preset, which can be often these days (and how I prefer it sometimes). Is it ok to clip those basses? Or what will it ruin the sub?
Does anyone know a free vst for sidechain-ducking with obtion to do external sidechain? I don't use the kick on every beat and I want the sidechain to work only when kick is hitting.
I've never encountered a free one that can duck against an audio sidechain. The one I use ("Duck" by Devious Machines) can be triggered from MIDI or Audio sidechain inputs, and is fairly inexpensive, at only about $30 USD (or less) most of the time.
I'm only intimately familiar with Ableton, Bitwig, and Studio One. I've used Cubase waaaayyyy in the past, and it certainly looks very capable today. But I don't know much about the ins and outs of its routing capabilities. I do know that it has a "listen bus" (called "Control Room"), but that's all I really know about it. What I know is that if you focus primarily in electronic dance music genres, it's very hard to beat Ableton, Bitwig, or FL Studio, primarily because these are all geared around heavy sound design and around loop-based workflow. (Instead of traditional "record a band full of live musicians" workflow.
@@Somedei Both are great, I think. Luca Pretolesi mixes in Studio One. I like a lot of things about Studio One, but Bitwig is more suitable for my type of music production because Studio One is strong in mixing and editing features, but weak in sound design features. Bitwig and Ableton are the kings when it comes to crazy/flexible sound design, and FL Studio is right on their heels.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking? Saturation is a very common and desirable sound design step for many sounds. So no, you wouldn't turn off saturation before mastering.
@@Baphometrix I was just curious if it was similar with hard clipping in that the mastering engineer may have some analog saturation that they would prefer using instead. Thanks : )
@@BrysonPrice If you're going to hand your mix off to a mastering engineer, I've got an entire episode about things you want to consider. But in general, mastering engineers should be doing as little as possible to **change your mix**. The goal of a mastering engineer is to make your mix sound as good as possible at the loudness targets you're asking for. Their job is to be fairly transparent. If they think you made a big boo-boo, a good ME will do some feedback with you and suggest some changes to your mix that will help them do a better job on their end. I talk about all this in that episode. In short, saturation isn't a thing they care about. That's **your** sound design and **your** choice in how hot/dense you want certain sounds (and your entire mix) to be. I can't think of any pro ME who would say "redo your mix so it's less saturated, because I've got a saturator that will sound better". That's not how it works. Saturation is everywhere, on every track (potentially). How are they going to re-do that "better" with a single round of saturation on the stereo pre-master? Nuh-uh.
@@Baphometrix makes sense, thanks for your perspective and I believe I did watch that episode :D I'm slowly making it through your whole video collection
Another excellent video sir, really explains your philosophy 💪🏻 Typically how much clipping do you end up with on your "passive" clippers on busses like drums, basses and esp pre master? I know it will be track dependent, just wondering how much these guys are usually working in your projects
To tag along on this question. My tonal and especially midline sounds are hovering around -6db which means most busses above that don't do any clipping. I think this is normal.
I do very loud music (festival-oriented bass music), and one of the genres I produce (mid-tempo bass) typically uses a 4-on-the-floor kick with a snare layered in on the 2 and 4. So my combined kick and snare hit is usually WAY over 0 dBFS. Add in the drum tops, and it's not uncommon for the DRUMS bus to be clipping as much as 7 dB or so. Remember, though, these are very short-duration clips and tend to happen only on the combined kick/snare hit. Other genres with separated kicks/snares, I might have no real clipping at the DRUMS bus at all, but the kick and snare will still each be clipped and still hitting 0 dBFS. And since my "Drop Sounds" need to be correspondingly loud and full-scale, many of those are individually clipped by anywhere up to 6-8 dB or more, but they don't tend to sum with each other on the DROPS bus because I arrange them very "vertically" (in sequence, not layered). Other midrange sounds are usually not clipped very much, if at all. Subs of course are never clipped. (That would typically sound bad and would mean my subs were too loud in the mix.) Layering of the chordal/melodic sounds in the intros/breakdowns/outros with the backing foley/atmospheric sounds usually results in only small 1-2 dB of clipping at most on my Tonal bus. And finally, because ALL of my Tonal sounds are sidechain-ducked to the kick and snare, there's only a very small amount of overlap right near the end of the kick/snare tails, so the total amount of bus clipping at my pre-master is usually in the 1-3 dB range. And again, these are fairly rare events and very short duration.
@@Baphometrix thanks so much for your detailed explanation. Typically on my pre master I'm hitting around 6db of clipping, I work in dnb so it goes way low LUFS wise. On my drums and bass combined I see very similar levels to yours and as you have mentioned before drums can take alot of clipping. Wasn't sure if I was clipping too much at my pre master, obviously it's how it sounds that matters and I'm getting much cleaner results with your ctz method 👏🏻💪🏻🔥
@@JChow-sw1yb Ultimately, your ears need to be your guide. Sometimes, on some sounds, audible/noticeable clipping sounds **good** . In other cases, audible/noticeable clipping sounds **bad** . At least with CTZ, you have the tools and the project setup to enable you to control exactly how much clipping is happening. Or to think about how to change/adjust some mixing decisions, sound design decisions, and/or arrangement decisions to minimize the clipping in a different way than simply using the VCA trick.
Thanks for this series, it's a real treat and very, very insightful. I have a question: I can't select another audio track as the output for the master channel. In other words I can't create the (( listen )) bus construction (in Bitwig). How did you accomplish this?
Thanks. Yes, I've seen that, but I can't select the audio track as the master output. In the pull down the category 'audio to tracks' is empty. In your ((listen)) track I also spot the small down pointing arrows. Is the listen track really an audio track? I think I am missing something.
@@Baphometrix I figured it out: it only works when I first throw away the default send track and then follow the order given. Thanks a lot for your concern.
Hey baphy, how do I know when or when not to touch the mixer fader on individual channels? I understand why you'd turn down the fader in a bus but what about individual Chanels? I'm a bit confused about it. Ive been mixing using faders up until this point.
It's simple (once you wrap your head around it). In the early stages of a project, you are bringing new sounds in one by one. You're sound designing them. You're gain staging them. You're balancing them against the other sounds you already have in the arrangement. Your mix is far from perfect, but it's a rough static mix already, especially if you follow my advice and carefully set the loudness and relative balance of your main "framework" sounds. At this early stage, just leave the fader at unity. Do all your rough balancing adjustments with your channel processing on that track. Now you're done with that new sound. It's mostly done and roughly balanced. At some point later as you start fine-tuning the balance (and EQ, etc.) of your entire mix, THAT is when you grab the fader. You won't be doing huge adjustments to the relative loudness of that track. Just small ones. Because your fader is already at unity, it has the most "resolution", so you can do fine balancing easily. From this point onward, you'll be balancing mostly with all your track faders.
@@Baphometrix Hi! just one more quick clarification if you wouldn't mind So when you refer to "making the pre fader peak on every track and bus touch the ceiling at 0 dbfs" that's different than db values right? obviously so does that mean something can still be clipped to zero, and have a value of -10 db via turning the fader down right? Sorry if this is going completely over my head I'm a slow learner.
@@wooops6400 dB values on a DAW track meter = dBFS, aka "Decibels, Full Scale". The "full scale" part is just a fancy way of saying "the full scale of minimum to maximum values that can be represented in digital samples. 0 dBFS is the loudest possible value in the digital realm. Any value over that amount can exist temporarily inside of a DAW because of 32-bit floating math, but when you try to print that signal to a file (WAV, FLAC, AIFF, MP3, etc.) any value OVER 0 dBFS will be instantly chopped off at 0 dBFS. Which is what we call "digital clipping". (Which is essentially the same shape/effect as what a Hard Clipper plugin does.) So yeah, pre-fader, you want your tracks running at or very close to full scale. That helps you know how loud they can get. But you don't balance EVERYTHING in your mix that loud. Some of your important "anchor" or "framework" sounds (like kick and snare drums in most electronic dance genres) will indeed be hitting right at 0 dBFS, even on the printed outputs. Everything else is balanced against those important frameworks sounds. This means that some (possibly many) of the tracks in your project will need to have the faders pulled down to make them much quieter, where they belong in the mix.
All the faders are at unity, yes. Tracks and busses. If you watch episodes 6 and 7 you'll see how I tend to set the initial loudness of each track signal with the dpMeter and Clipper in each track's CTZ pair. The busses are all neutral with faders at unity. This is how the project *starts* but of course as it builds up with more tracks and I do more balancing as I go, eventually some of those track faders (and later in mixdown, maybe even some bus faders) will finally move off of unity).
Ha! I do feel that midtempo bass displays some influence from the "industrial rock" bands of the early nineties, such as NIN, Ministry, Kidneythieves, Snake River Conspiracy, and so on. Maybe that's why I love mid temps so much--I loved all that music too.
@@Baphometrix Yes, it is def making a comeback. It’s growing on me. I heard a song the other day called “Dope” by Demeter that was seriously one of the dopest track I’ve EVER heard.
really, really awesome information. i don't know where along the way compressor became the first tool people reach in to a secret loud powerful mix but this obviously make a lot of sense. im wondering how analogue mixers feel about this. like did they have clipping in the 70s? or was the tape environnement required gain staging only
In the analog world, the analog signal paths themselves would (soft) clip if you drove a hot signal into them. This is what's happening with "tape saturation", too. So, clipping was EVERYWHERE in the analog world before digital came along.
small collaboration about to make a "Listen Bus" in Ableton: ua-cam.com/video/ECoomfaN6o8/v-deo.html
Pinning this so people can find it easier. Thanks for sharing your technique!
@@Baphometrix thank you, Baphy, the legend!
A bit late to this video but if you want a nested return track, make one and add something lightweight with a sidechain set to listen, each one of these can be from another track with its own gain control into whatever fx is on there.
I love how clear and hard you can get with this CtZ method. Really gives hard tracks a solid mix :) Thnx Baphometrix
This series is so awesome! Baphy for the WIN AGAIN!!! Thanks for all the hard work making these!!!
great videos I cant wait till I grasp all this information👍
This is the god of all tutorials on music production engineering. I mean seriously, this really is!. I am subscribed to a set of really good channels and all guys in the top of their field as far as music production/engineering is concerned, Mix bus tv, Chris sellum, White sea studio, Dom Segalis and several others. But none of them touch this. This has been the first time i have been able to properly sit down, watch, listen, learn, take notes and put into practise and understand everything you say, down to the finer detail. The way you present it, your clarity, the detailed explanations, the lecturing, all high level, totally undertstandable and engaging. While a lot would have me falling asleep, this gives me energy, focus and excitment!
And it works! This is like having the blanket taken off me and i can actually hear and see clearly. Truely incredible. I am of course sticking with the lectures all the way through. But i got to this point and wanted to start getting in practise what i've been noting down and learning. Goddam if i'm mot up to - 8.4 lufs already, and this was retro fitting to a massve track already written and arranged. It's taken a quite a bit of work to retro fit, but it's been the best hard work i've done in like, forever!
So i've made a template based on CTZ with everything already inserted, with all bus cascading and groups set, with db meter, kclip, physcope etc and ready to go once this track is finished.
Once i get going from the start with a new track it will be so much easier to get Ctz into place from the get go and i should be reaching those loudness targets with ease.
Thanks for something so enlightening and for sharing this with the music commmunity. Amazing!
Thanks for showing us this. Going to copy it and then make it my own over time. This is super useful!
Thanks for everything
I'd OFFICALLY like to start a petition for Psyscope to make a Mac verson. Please!
I'll sign it.
If you look on the contact page at FX23.net, you'll see that the plugin developer is **keenly** aware how badly Mac people want an OSX port. I don't blame y'all. It's a fantastic implementation of an oscilloscope, and I'd **really** miss it if I started producing on a Mac.
@@Baphometrix It's looks fantastic. I've demoed Oszillos and just wasn't keen.
Would be great on mac.
Jesus I totally agree! My kingdom for an oscilloscope that shows SUM for AAX
I’ve been working on implementing CTZ into genres pretty far away from EDM, Club, etc, but that also need to be LOUD. DAW is Protools. There’s so much good info in this series that can be applicable to nearly all modern music production.
That cowbell is magical :)
Where would you suggest putting impacts? Would this be in its own sub bus or perhaps go in lifters or foley?
clip to zero is blowing up on you tube now... lots of producers making videos :)
BIG BIG UP FROM FRANCE BAPHII ! 🇫🇷
Would love to see you do a mix from scratch. Willing to pay for a course.
We'll see? Any type of "Start to finish" video is a LOT of work.
I'd also pay!
Such a great approach!
Starting to actually get this!
Thanks again for your insight Baphy!
If anyone knows work arounds for sends and listen bus in logic pro please hit me up!
29:00 holy smokes this is way better in bitwig than in ableton!!!! didn't know about this feature, thats a crazy workflow improvement!! in albeton arrange and clip view seem a little disconnected, bitwig combines them in a very logical view! awesome this makes me wanna grab bitwig just for producing beats.
GOD THIS IS SO HELPFUL I WANT TO CRY
Thank you so much for all these super helpful and insightful lessons.
I rebuilt Your template on my own and got a much deeper insight on the CTZ approach. As even the template projects with some minor individual tweaks got quite complex, I documented the structure of the tracks and groups in a Powerpoint. Now I can see the signal flow on one page: The qouping of tracks, where all the Sends go an which track is beeing ducked by another one. Can highly recommend this! This Powerpoint will be my second template in the production phase. I have allways been struggling to understand old projects after a while. ..........
Using Ableton, would I solve the problem of the summing aux returns if I:
1. created a new audio track, and routed all my sends to that audio track (I don't know how to make group specific audio tracks in Ableton if it is possible.)
2. Sidechain duck that new sends track to kick and snare
3. CTZ that new track using dpmeter5+gclip
Would that alleviate the problem?
I'd like to hear Baphys response but I'm thinking this is about right.
I guess this is what you described: ua-cam.com/video/p6rDh_boji4/v-deo.htmlsi=iiBp8r9OxzUngfYH
It shows you latency free Return Group/Bus in Ableton
This is like the concept of many rivers joining the sea. Imagine if all the rivers (tracks) joined the sea (mastering limiter) at exactly the same place and time at once! that place would be destroyed or wouldn't even exist as it would become flooded and ruined. That's why rivers naturally join each other way before the final joining point, and make thicker rivers (busses) so that finally one big river (mix buss) feeds the sea. I hope I wasn't too high for writing this and made sense. LOL
Good analogy!
You were just the right amount of high for this comment
The best tutorials on the internet! Amazing organization, very thought out. I am using ableton, but it's easy to convert stuff to it. I dropped everything after I saw the first episode - jumped here to create my template from scratch based on your thought process - and I'll watch the rest taking notes. Thank you for the work you put into these videos, truly amazing work
Hi @Baphometrix. One thing i don't understand after watching i think all your video's. So at the start of mixing, is your kick already hitting 0dB on its channel? And in this video, we see your kick with a CTZ Bus on it, why not a channel CTZ?
Thanks for the series :)
The way most kicks work, yes, they usually end up getting clipped at least a wee bit even on their origin track, so that their RMS/LUFS can be loud enough for me to hit the overall loudness targets I tend to shoot for. In my videos, look closer at the thing that says "KICK". that's actually a folder icon, meaning it's a **bus**, not the source track where my kick really comes from. Inside that KICK folder/bus, there might be several different kicks I use for different parts of the song. So the KICK folder/bus has a "Bus clipper" rack on it.
@@Baphometrix That helps, thanks!
Your series is so enlightening Baphy I really sincerely appreciate all of this. Im learning so much about mixing, its definitely helping me take my sound to the next level thinking about clipping and summing and bussing and im tweaking my template, i bought psyscope. I eagerly await more content from you so keep it up!!
This series is sooooo incredible. Thanks Baphy, for all the insights!! How exactly do You rout Your bass sounds in Your projects? A pure sub bass is part of the SUB BUS, that´s for sure. How do You handle basses with frequencies below 200Hz AND above? Do You frequency-split them and route the two parts to SUB and TONAL or do You keep them in one place?
One place. My next three episodes should make this more clear?
@@Baphometrix THX! Can´t wait.
As a Bitwig user, I was secretly hoping for this video, and you delivered!!! Thank you. :) Question on duckers/side chainers. Is something like Kickstart 2 or ShaperBox2 equally useful for this purpose? I've also been using Trackspacer alot for my vocal space.
Thanks Baphometrix for the course, it's fantastic.
A question! Where would you put a BASS group? It's frequency content does not originate in the sub range but usually expands into the mid range. I would argue it should be inside the TONAL group, between SUBS and MID LINE, but sometimes the bass has a midrangey sound that may interfere with the MID LINE. What would be your approach?
Really appreciating your work!
I put most/all of my mid-basses in the "DROPS" group in my template.
This is the first template walk-through that I've ever found to be useful. You can do all of the send/return grouping with Live, but you still have to use the returns as pass-thru channels to audio tracks (with their sends disabled) used as auxes. (You can also do all of the necessary routing and organizing in Logic and Pro Tools.)
Follow up thought/question... How do you manage solos with the listen bus? When you solo a track, do you also have to solo the listen bus or is Bitwig smart enough to know not to mute it?
Very good demonstration of CTZ and the structured bussing. Splitting by spectrum / content has always been the best way to mix for me - putting lots of channels labelled synth 1, synth 2, bass 1, sub 1, sub 2...etc and then trying to mix is much harder. similar sounding things should be made to sound as good as possible on their own - then grouped together and treated as a whole. Much more consistent sound.
Also, FL Studio is great for flexible routing of tracks and audio - the current track is great. You add a plugin to that channel and it will affect which other track you have selected, perfect for scopes, meters, testing effects on different tracks.
bitwig (for sound design) and reaper (for recording) are also fantastic DAWS and I recommend both highly - (paid for them myself and use them daily)
Can you please clip also with Newfangled Saturate?
Yes. I'll be talking about NF Saturate and also about "TrackLimit" by DMG Audio in about 4 more episodes from now.
Testing this method out in Ableton. It's quite a challenge using PSYScope due to the PDC latency problems. I have tried adjusting for latency within the scope but due to multiple groups and routing it becomes a headache. You can never be sure you have your latency setup correctly. Anyone got any tips?
trying to figure this out as well, makes psyscope useless lmao
He answered here about this that the fx23 site got a way to fix it
@@iamBQ yeah the "fix" is basically keeping track of all the plugin latency in each channel and setting psyscope delay to compensate..... every single time you add latency you need to adjust psyscope. Not very good for workflow so I'm just going to try Bitwig
So if you had your scope on the group bus how would you calculate latencies on multiple tracks?
I can't tell if Duck Buddy is insufficient, or if this sort of ducking just isn't appropriate for funky house. Its making my guitar, clavinet and a synth solo sound really unnatural in the project i am applying these techniques to.
Its something like lfotool? I used that plugin with midi and its easy to modify stuff
I've been struggling doing CTZ in ableton, because of how delay compensation works. It doesn't report it to the internal clock. My oscilossopes and sidechains are not in sync. I can use offsets but whenever I introduce a new plugin that has delay I have to readjust the offsets. I am seriously considering switching daws because of this.
Yeah... I'm honestly surprised that Ableton hasn't cleaned up stuff like this after all this time and popularity.
this x10000. Also considering making the jump to Bitwig. CTZ really highlights the shortcomings.
I stopped using Ableton
I´m sooo close to switching to Bitwig.
@@Somedei was it easy?
WOOHOO!
One question about the Listen-Bus. I don't get the difference to "real" Listen-Bus and something like THIS in Ableton: All tracks grouped to the Pre-Master-Bus. In the Pre-Master-Bus I set the Send to an Audio Track (named "Listen Bus"), that's outside from this Pre-Master-Bus. In this Listen-Bus I set the "send to Audio" to the Master. If I get it right I have all in need or not? A Pre-Master to Work with, a Listen-Bus to set meterings and so on and a complete empty Master. Or is it wrong? All Return-Tracks also set to "send audio to" Pre-Master. So I get all the sum on the Pre-Master-Bus, where I listen over the Listen-Bus
So I don't know if this is purely an Ableton issue, but when using psyscope pro and analyzing the Kick/tonal buss relationship (placing it after an instance of duck or gatekeeper), there is anywhere from 30-300ms delay in what psyscope is showing me. Makes it basically useless to analyze, is there any way to compensate for the plug in latency? Thanks for the vids they are a great help, just can't figure out why the kick and/or other busses are not aligning visually within psyscope.
It's an issue with Ableton's PDC reporting. The FX23 site has instructions somewhere on it for working around Ableton's issues in this regard.
@@Baphometrix awesome thank you again
Hows the routing work with Gate by Kiloheartz... For example got my kick bus I want triggered to silence/lower whenever an amen break hits on another channel... tried using sidechain, to it from kick but instanly just kept ducking when the amen wasn't playing? thanks B !
Hello! If you have bus processing such as compressors, saturation, etc, if the aux sends are sent to that bus, wouldn't that reverb/delay/etc get processed through those plugins on the bus? Or are they still going in Parallel?
I Use logic pro X so I'm unable to do such routing, but I'm wondering if that's the case
Thank you for your awesome videos! @baphometrix
I've been building out my Bitwig template, and this video has moved it forward by an insane amount. Thank you sincerely for sharing your knowledge and technique!
as i myself got into this production strategy i am building my own template in this days and i was so waiting for this specific video. Thank you!
Hey Baph, do you recommend sending reverb and delay post or pre clipper?
You usually don't have a choice. In nearly every DAW, your choices for sends are either "pre-fader" or "post-fader". Any processing from the track or bus clipper in the insert channel is already baked into the signal at that point.
@@Baphometrix i was thinking of sending to a reverb or delay bus which comes back to the group bus but keeping an individual bus where i’ll have a clipper for that specific track, then sending to the group bus. Its a bit messy but still can achieve pre clipper reverb. Either way i don’t think it will make much difference. Do you recommend any specific mixing tutorials based more on eq, balance and placing sounds in the frequency spectrum and stereo field? That seems to be one of my biggest weaknesses atm.
@@kiko8u There are a fair number of such tutorials out there floating around UA-cam. And my next three episodes in this series will be specifically about these questions.
@@Baphometrixthanks Baph!
Now I just gotta find out how to do this in Logic... wish I had you there to help me. Wish me luck!
Is it possible to hard clip sounds that are more low end like kicks and sub basses and then have no distortion sound to it so that I can push the overall peak value??
34:45 this part was SUPER helpful : )
Watching in the morning its been a long weekend maybe i’ll get blessed with 2 👀👀
Hellp bapho. Is the CTZ method useful for every genre? I mainly produce breakbeat as an indie artist or rnb (trapsoul) beats to sell and make bread. my production for both styles is ambient and spacey not "hard" like your bass music. will applying this method benefit my mixes? or should I just keep using the old school way of gainstaging at low levels. thank you.
I've been learning CTZ recently, it works for more chill genres too. You can afford less overall loudness depending on the genre. Genres that don't need to be as upfront and loud can have lower lufs.
The idea is still choosing 3-4 main anchor elements, processing these to be present and at or close peaking at 0db. Even though the genre is chill you still want it hitting peak 0 - 0.1db on the master but at a lower average loudness.
One of the benefits of producing around 0db is you catch summing and arrangement problems way earlier regardless of the genre. You could have relaxed bass line and a soft pad and soft kick, but summed with a 0db method you will catch frequency buildups and resonances at the source, rather than having "fake" headroom mixing around -16db, you have -16db of range to hide problems. If you still want to keep that arrangement then some loudness will be sacrificed. No genre is immune to summing and resonance and will eventually be pushed up to 0db for mastering.
It can still sound very good clipping and saturating elements in chill genres, you just have more depth available in the mix for reverb and delicate elements and layers etc.
Hey!
I recently came across your tutorial series "Mixing loud with CTZ" and I am almost fascinated by this technique. It's amazing how much bullshit is said on the internet.
I have a question about this technique as one thing is not clear to me.
As an example for the drums:
Kick Tracks, Clipper -> (Kick Bus, Clipper) ->
Clap Tracks, Clipper -> Clap Bus Clipper -> DRUM-BUS, Clipper
Hat Tracks, Clipper -> Hat Bus - Clipper ->
If these buses are now merged to another bus (in this case the drum bus), clipping will occur at the bus input when kick and clap play together (for example +4dB). This is compensated by the bus clipper at the beginning of the chain, so the drum bus is back to 0dB.
Now my question: Is it only an "information" at the bus input or does it really clip at the input? Have I perhaps overlooked/overheard an important part?
In my opinion, I could not perceive any extreme overloads when a clipper is set at the beginning of the DRUM bus, which would be clearly audible at +4db.
I also compared it to the same DRUM bus, where the overdriven value on the DRUM bus of each associated track is turned down, so that on the DRUM bus the peaks are at most 0dB and afterwards the clipper compensates for the turned down value. However, the volume ratios or the loudness, when comparing the DRUM buses, the individual elements, deviate from each other at least once.
I work with Ableton.
I look forward to your answer and thank you in advance!
I'm not quite following your question, but just remember that the clippers are always at the END of the processing chain on any given track or bus. For example, if you sum kicks, claps, and snares at a bus called DRUMS, you might start out with just a single bus clipper there on DRUMS which ensures that whatever is happening on that bus never goes over 0 dBFS (clipping it, essentially acting like a limiter on that bus). Now say you add some processing to that DRUMS bus. For example... Ableton's "Drum Bus" device (lol what a confusing name). Or some EQ to pull down some ringy resonances. Or whatever. You want to put all those things in FRONT of the bus clipper itself. Because they're all going to be creating new/different peaks on top of all the signals from the summed tracks merging at that bus, right?
Clippers always control the peaks back down to 0 dBFS at the END of every track/bus. That's why this method is called "Clip to 0".
@@Baphometrix Yes, I am aware of that, I have already seen your CTZ series up to this episode! :)
Okay, thanks for the quick reply. Maybe explained a bit easier again :D.
So I have kick, claps and hats together as buses, which in turn run into the drum bus. Since kick and clap also play at the same time, there are peaks in the drum bus input that are above 0dB(4dB). So this is not a big deal because the clipper at the end of the bus catches the peaks? I thought that in the processing chain overloads are also undesirable - isn't that the case?
Or should the input from the drum bus not be above 0dB?
@@Baphometrix Okay, I think I got it. Thanks a lot!
Just FYI, FL Studio has a Listen bus that's been basically implemented exactly the way you use it by default on the Mixer, ever since FL9 at the latest. The difference is they call it Current, and it's designed to follow the focused mixer track/bus with no audio out routed by default, though you can assign it to function as a Headphone/Cue bus very easily. What can be a drawback for this is that it's also the only mixer lane designed to handle Sample Previews from the Browser, but obviously by the time you'd have to worry about major conflicts between the mix and these previews is if you get bored and start poking around in reverse, dipping back into sound design when you're well into the later mixing phase(s). Probably much more info than you need, I know, but you and I seem to kind of share the gift(/curse) of long-windedness lol
Good to know! Thanks for sharing this.
I´m watching this for the third time since its release, I guess.... 😀 Baphy, I You templates You never have any EQing, saturation, Glue Compresion or other Colouring Plugs on Your Buses. I guess that has an educational purpose,. In real projects You would have those plugs on a BUS level before the Bus CTZ, right?
Short answer, yes. Every type of processing on a track or bus always comes before the Clipper/Limiter. Every processing tweak you do changes the waveshape, which changes what pokes up above 0 dBFS and therefore gets clipped.
You don't see too many of those plugs because I'm demoing quick and dirty projects I made for illustrative purposes for some videos.
I love the way you say "ambiance", makes me chuckle every time.
What is missing from the CTZ videos is talking about bus processing. Sometimes you want to do a lot of processing even to the level of "sound design" on the bus, but there are no guides on how you would do that and maintain the VCA trick working like it should. If you have plugins that act based on a certain threshold on the bus, then how can you maintain the VCA trick working if you for example pull the entire track down? That means the threshold dependent plugins would stop working correctly, so you would have to adjust everything (which is a total pain).
I hope you come up for a decent solution to this and share it in the discord! where willing to learn more
In this video you mention turning the VCA up or down if you need to. It was the first time I heard turn up. If you set the dpMeters up for 0 on your individual tracks and you turn the VCA up… is that OK now that the individual tracks are higher than zero going into the clipper? Sorry in advance if this is silly question. I know the busses go above zero and then are clipped with the clipper, just was unsure on the tracks.
You would turn the VCA up only if you were originally shooting for a relatively quiet and dynamic loudness target on your final mix. So imagine your arrangement and rough mix is complete, and your song is measuring something like -10 LUFS (integrated) across the full span of its loudest chorus/drop/hook section. And imagine you wonder what the song might sound like at -9 or -8 LUFS instead. That's when you might choose to turn the VCA up. For most of us working in loud genres and trying to hit targets more like -7 or -8 or -6 LUFS, we typically wouldn't try crushing the song even more, so we'd probably be going the other way, maybe testing what our song would sound like if we took it **down** by 1 or 2 LUFS.
in ableton you can send returns into another return making a return bus
Amazing stuff as usual Baph! I wanted to ask if you use a kick from a sample pack and its peaking at 0 already would you still clip it to get more out of it or would you keep it as is? Also where are you sending your external sidechain to from Duck?
Remember, peak values don't matter. We don't balance our mixes by the level of super short, transient peaks in the signal. We balance our mixes by the perceived loudness of the signal (RMS or LUFS). So, you could have a very sharp, transient kick that peaks at 0 but isn't very LOUD at all. So, yes, if I liked the sound of that kick but it wasn't loud enough, I might try pushing it to hit -10 LUFS max momentary and see if it could survive that amount of clipping and still sound good. I might even try using a transient shaper or slow compressor on it first, to reshape that kick to help it better survive the necessary amount of clipping. TL;DR - not all kicks nor snares can be made loud enough for loud genres.
:)
Hello Again Baph,How Side Chain VOX Bus? Use Ducker Like MidLine bus Or Other Method ?
Short story, use a spectral ducker. The best one right now IMO is smart:comp (by Sonible) in "spectral ducking" mode. You can see how I use it here at this timestamp: ua-cam.com/video/yabKWyIvenQ/v-deo.html .
I think somewhere you said you don't clip subs, but what if the sub is part of the bass preset, which can be often these days (and how I prefer it sometimes). Is it ok to clip those basses? Or what will it ruin the sub?
It's okay to clip a heavy midbass that you're also using as the sub. If it sounds good, it's okay.
Still no psyscope for mac users! 😩
Any trick for Ableton for return tracks ?
The structure trick is super cool, thanks !
bussin
Does anyone know a free vst for sidechain-ducking with obtion to do external sidechain? I don't use the kick on every beat and I want the sidechain to work only when kick is hitting.
I've never encountered a free one that can duck against an audio sidechain. The one I use ("Duck" by Devious Machines) can be triggered from MIDI or Audio sidechain inputs, and is fairly inexpensive, at only about $30 USD (or less) most of the time.
@@Baphometrix , thank you! 😄
Baphy, What other DAWs are good for CTZ? Im currently using Protools & Logic, Looking at maybe switching to Cubase.
I'm only intimately familiar with Ableton, Bitwig, and Studio One. I've used Cubase waaaayyyy in the past, and it certainly looks very capable today. But I don't know much about the ins and outs of its routing capabilities. I do know that it has a "listen bus" (called "Control Room"), but that's all I really know about it. What I know is that if you focus primarily in electronic dance music genres, it's very hard to beat Ableton, Bitwig, or FL Studio, primarily because these are all geared around heavy sound design and around loop-based workflow. (Instead of traditional "record a band full of live musicians" workflow.
I would say Studio One and Cubase are the best routing capabilities for this kind of methods
@@Somedei Both are great, I think. Luca Pretolesi mixes in Studio One. I like a lot of things about Studio One, but Bitwig is more suitable for my type of music production because Studio One is strong in mixing and editing features, but weak in sound design features. Bitwig and Ableton are the kings when it comes to crazy/flexible sound design, and FL Studio is right on their heels.
What if you saturate your sounds? Should that be turned off before mastering?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking? Saturation is a very common and desirable sound design step for many sounds. So no, you wouldn't turn off saturation before mastering.
@@Baphometrix I was just curious if it was similar with hard clipping in that the mastering engineer may have some analog saturation that they would prefer using instead. Thanks : )
@@BrysonPrice If you're going to hand your mix off to a mastering engineer, I've got an entire episode about things you want to consider. But in general, mastering engineers should be doing as little as possible to **change your mix**. The goal of a mastering engineer is to make your mix sound as good as possible at the loudness targets you're asking for. Their job is to be fairly transparent. If they think you made a big boo-boo, a good ME will do some feedback with you and suggest some changes to your mix that will help them do a better job on their end. I talk about all this in that episode.
In short, saturation isn't a thing they care about. That's **your** sound design and **your** choice in how hot/dense you want certain sounds (and your entire mix) to be. I can't think of any pro ME who would say "redo your mix so it's less saturated, because I've got a saturator that will sound better". That's not how it works. Saturation is everywhere, on every track (potentially). How are they going to re-do that "better" with a single round of saturation on the stereo pre-master? Nuh-uh.
@@Baphometrix makes sense, thanks for your perspective and I believe I did watch that episode :D I'm slowly making it through your whole video collection
Another excellent video sir, really explains your philosophy 💪🏻
Typically how much clipping do you end up with on your "passive" clippers on busses like drums, basses and esp pre master?
I know it will be track dependent, just wondering how much these guys are usually working in your projects
To tag along on this question. My tonal and especially midline sounds are hovering around -6db which means most busses above that don't do any clipping. I think this is normal.
I do very loud music (festival-oriented bass music), and one of the genres I produce (mid-tempo bass) typically uses a 4-on-the-floor kick with a snare layered in on the 2 and 4. So my combined kick and snare hit is usually WAY over 0 dBFS. Add in the drum tops, and it's not uncommon for the DRUMS bus to be clipping as much as 7 dB or so. Remember, though, these are very short-duration clips and tend to happen only on the combined kick/snare hit. Other genres with separated kicks/snares, I might have no real clipping at the DRUMS bus at all, but the kick and snare will still each be clipped and still hitting 0 dBFS. And since my "Drop Sounds" need to be correspondingly loud and full-scale, many of those are individually clipped by anywhere up to 6-8 dB or more, but they don't tend to sum with each other on the DROPS bus because I arrange them very "vertically" (in sequence, not layered). Other midrange sounds are usually not clipped very much, if at all. Subs of course are never clipped. (That would typically sound bad and would mean my subs were too loud in the mix.) Layering of the chordal/melodic sounds in the intros/breakdowns/outros with the backing foley/atmospheric sounds usually results in only small 1-2 dB of clipping at most on my Tonal bus. And finally, because ALL of my Tonal sounds are sidechain-ducked to the kick and snare, there's only a very small amount of overlap right near the end of the kick/snare tails, so the total amount of bus clipping at my pre-master is usually in the 1-3 dB range. And again, these are fairly rare events and very short duration.
@@Baphometrix thanks so much for your detailed explanation. Typically on my pre master I'm hitting around 6db of clipping, I work in dnb so it goes way low LUFS wise. On my drums and bass combined I see very similar levels to yours and as you have mentioned before drums can take alot of clipping.
Wasn't sure if I was clipping too much at my pre master, obviously it's how it sounds that matters and I'm getting much cleaner results with your ctz method 👏🏻💪🏻🔥
@@JChow-sw1yb Ultimately, your ears need to be your guide. Sometimes, on some sounds, audible/noticeable clipping sounds **good** . In other cases, audible/noticeable clipping sounds **bad** . At least with CTZ, you have the tools and the project setup to enable you to control exactly how much clipping is happening. Or to think about how to change/adjust some mixing decisions, sound design decisions, and/or arrangement decisions to minimize the clipping in a different way than simply using the VCA trick.
@@Baphometrix 100% sir.
Since implementing ctz I can hear and judge effectively where I can and want this to happen, thanks to you.
Thanks for this series, it's a real treat and very, very insightful. I have a question: I can't select another audio track as the output for the master channel. In other words I can't create the (( listen )) bus construction (in Bitwig). How did you accomplish this?
I explain how to do it in Bitwig in Episode 13 right here at this timestamp: ua-cam.com/video/B1FDzgEYNjo/v-deo.html
Thanks. Yes, I've seen that, but I can't select the audio track as the master output. In the pull down the category 'audio to tracks' is empty. In your ((listen)) track I also spot the small down pointing arrows. Is the listen track really an audio track? I think I am missing something.
@@ccil6238 The order in which you do things is important. Watch the sequence I show in the video carefully.
@@Baphometrix I figured it out: it only works when I first throw away the default send track and then follow the order given. Thanks a lot for your concern.
@@ccil6238 Oh! I see now. Yeah, I thought I mentioned that? Bitwig won't let you create feedback loops, so that can be a confusing point at first.
Hey baphy, how do I know when or when not to touch the mixer fader on individual channels? I understand why you'd turn down the fader in a bus but what about individual Chanels? I'm a bit confused about it. Ive been mixing using faders up until this point.
Im on Ableton, maybe the interface of your DAW is throwing me off a bit but would I just use 'utility' to turn stiff down?
It's simple (once you wrap your head around it). In the early stages of a project, you are bringing new sounds in one by one. You're sound designing them. You're gain staging them. You're balancing them against the other sounds you already have in the arrangement. Your mix is far from perfect, but it's a rough static mix already, especially if you follow my advice and carefully set the loudness and relative balance of your main "framework" sounds.
At this early stage, just leave the fader at unity. Do all your rough balancing adjustments with your channel processing on that track.
Now you're done with that new sound. It's mostly done and roughly balanced. At some point later as you start fine-tuning the balance (and EQ, etc.) of your entire mix, THAT is when you grab the fader. You won't be doing huge adjustments to the relative loudness of that track. Just small ones. Because your fader is already at unity, it has the most "resolution", so you can do fine balancing easily. From this point onward, you'll be balancing mostly with all your track faders.
@@Baphometrix can’t thank you enough! Thanks for replying
@@Baphometrix Hi! just one more quick clarification if you wouldn't mind
So when you refer to "making the pre fader peak on every track and bus touch the ceiling at 0 dbfs" that's different than db values right? obviously
so does that mean something can still be clipped to zero, and have a value of -10 db via turning the fader down right?
Sorry if this is going completely over my head I'm a slow learner.
@@wooops6400 dB values on a DAW track meter = dBFS, aka "Decibels, Full Scale". The "full scale" part is just a fancy way of saying "the full scale of minimum to maximum values that can be represented in digital samples. 0 dBFS is the loudest possible value in the digital realm. Any value over that amount can exist temporarily inside of a DAW because of 32-bit floating math, but when you try to print that signal to a file (WAV, FLAC, AIFF, MP3, etc.) any value OVER 0 dBFS will be instantly chopped off at 0 dBFS. Which is what we call "digital clipping". (Which is essentially the same shape/effect as what a Hard Clipper plugin does.)
So yeah, pre-fader, you want your tracks running at or very close to full scale. That helps you know how loud they can get. But you don't balance EVERYTHING in your mix that loud. Some of your important "anchor" or "framework" sounds (like kick and snare drums in most electronic dance genres) will indeed be hitting right at 0 dBFS, even on the printed outputs. Everything else is balanced against those important frameworks sounds. This means that some (possibly many) of the tracks in your project will need to have the faders pulled down to make them much quieter, where they belong in the mix.
When you first start,are all the levels of the tracks at zero?
All the faders are at unity, yes. Tracks and busses. If you watch episodes 6 and 7 you'll see how I tend to set the initial loudness of each track signal with the dpMeter and Clipper in each track's CTZ pair. The busses are all neutral with faders at unity. This is how the project *starts* but of course as it builds up with more tracks and I do more balancing as I go, eventually some of those track faders (and later in mixdown, maybe even some bus faders) will finally move off of unity).
@@Baphometrix Thank you
aha ....
I was watching this thru my monitors n my roommate said that song sounded like NIN lol.
Ha! I do feel that midtempo bass displays some influence from the "industrial rock" bands of the early nineties, such as NIN, Ministry, Kidneythieves, Snake River Conspiracy, and so on. Maybe that's why I love mid temps so much--I loved all that music too.
@@Baphometrix Yes, it is def making a comeback. It’s growing on me. I heard a song the other day called “Dope” by Demeter that was seriously one of the dopest track I’ve EVER heard.
really, really awesome information. i don't know where along the way compressor became the first tool people reach in to a secret loud powerful mix but this obviously make a lot of sense. im wondering how analogue mixers feel about this. like did they have clipping in the 70s? or was the tape environnement required gain staging only
In the analog world, the analog signal paths themselves would (soft) clip if you drove a hot signal into them. This is what's happening with "tape saturation", too. So, clipping was EVERYWHERE in the analog world before digital came along.
@@Baphometrix very interesting. seems like we're really on to something
and by we, i mean you.