If you want your track to sound louder, it's better to use a multiband compressor imo. If you want to make it easy for yourself, try out some mastering plugins like psp vintagewarmer2 and izotope ozone. The former can boost your track quite much in a natural way, and the latter is capable of doing extra mastering tricks like multiband excitement et c.

When you are normalizing your master you want to get rid of unwanted peaks. The track will normalize itself to the highest peak in the track, so it's probably a good idea to put a hard compressor (or limiter) last in the mastering chain.

Thanks for the info everyone.  I might have learned a little bit!  Or, maybe I'm more confused.  Anyway, I'm uploading a track that I've tried some new "mastering" (in quotations because I'm not a master by any means).  Maybe you all can give me feedback?

edit: what on earth happened? i seem to have posted

Classical music is much better to listen to on the radio because I don't need to play volume jockey.   Personally, I like the most convenient-transparent listening environment so that I can really focus on the content rather than bullshit.

Word. In fact, I've noticed sometimes over-attention to dynamic range can be really annoying sometimes. I notice this especially in early Genesis records where the dynamic shifts have me changing volumes constantly and this makes it near IMPOSSIBLE to actively listen while doing something like driving, for instance.

It's like COMEON, i just wanna hear Peter Gabriel sing in crazy outfits!

The listener gets the best experience when your track plays and he doesn't think about mixing or mastering whatsoever.  Mastering should be transparent, meaning, if they need to adjust their settings, or raise the volume, thats taking away focus from your COMPOSITION.

I master my songs so that if they're on a mix CD, or playlist, or car stereo or whatever, they fit in without any sort of jolt.  I also master them so the bass is sexy.  By the grace of god, LSDJ sounds huge enough on its own (provided your sound design is good) that you really only need to give it a tiny bit of love during mastering.  It's surprising really.  The complete lack of offensive high end frequencies helps immensely.

Here's the difference between my raw track and the mastered track.  I alternate back and forth.  What sounds better to you?

http://www.armcannon.com/danimal/danima … asters.mp3

There some things you can now "forget" as they were due to mechanical limitations of recording medias. Now there's only a a small amount of chance that your tracks will end on vinyl for example.. so you can boost a bit.. But the "squared" curve of over Compressed/Brickwalled tracks is definitely annoying (and bad for your ears too )

Google "loudness war"

Also if your master is at -INF you don't have to worry about your music offending anyone, or SoundCloud ruining your tune's epic entrance by showing the peaks (since the waveform will look like a line.)

Seriously though, the volume column is there for a reason, so don't forget to use it!

Mastering Audio by Bob Katz - all you ever need to know.

i find that the listener gets the best experience if the music volume is all the way down. the best part is  that by doing so you avoid all chances of clipping and spikes. silence is the new loud.

It doesn't sound like it's clipping, so that may mean I can pull the volume up more than what the meter says.

Are there any good articles someone can recommend on this subject?

For instance:

What does mastering to -3dB mean?  I've read that dance music is often mastered to 0dB.  I'm not making dance music, but I'd like to know what these terms mean.

Forget the red signals. Does it sound like it's clipping?

Mix with your ears, not with your eyes.

i was, but now ive seen the light
mastering to -3dB and very mild compression now
most of the new album falls between the 1983-1991 ranges

lol loudness wars, I'm part of the problem.

Could be several things. For one, replay volume doesn't always equal render volume. Check your DAW for render settings. Next, how does the waveform look in an editor? You could have spikes (usually high frequencies at the attack of a wave), which get reported as 'in the red' while most of your track is considerably quieter. Then there's waveform stacking (don't know the correct term for this), where waves pile up in such a way that they lift the whole y-axis action away from zero, which decreases the dynamic range.

The way I do it, I usually go source->{effect chain->limiter->mixer (3-band eq)->}limter->compression->10 band peak eq. The stuff in {} is only for multitrack recording. Limiting takes care of spikes, compression boosts the quiet stuff, 10 band eq to accentuate. Settings on limiter and compressor will determine how 'loud' your track is.

During master phase I often have a waveform/histogram plotter running, so I can see how to fix things.

Disclamer: I also often struggle with mixing/mastering, so I don't claim absolute knowledge on this.