My music only sounds powerful when I clip the levels.

[Pelecaras]

I like hard techno that grabs by the balls and doesn't let up for air, This is the type of techno i am trying to produce, the trouble is my music only sounds powerful when I push the levels, where am I going wrong? is it the choice of sounds? the processing? the mix or something else?

I will try to post an example when I get 5 minutes.

any help appreciated.

[Lost to the Void]

Everything sounds powerful when you push the levels. Thats the entire reason the loudness wars exist. It is an illusion though, its a short lived audio phenomena and that "power" soon introduces fatigue.

[Pelecaras]

Everything sounds powerful when you push the levels. Thats the entire reason the loudness wars exist. It is an illusion though, its a short lived audio phenomena and that "power" soon introduces fatigue.

That's what I thought, that's the basis of my question really....how do i get it to sound powerful without pushing the faders?

I have posted an example of a loop I made to see if anyone can give advice. please bear in mind I am quite new to this, it is not a mixed and was made on headphones.

thanks Mr Voidloss sir (you cunt) and other cunts on Subsekt

[Dolorum]

Everything sounds powerful when you push the levels. Thats the entire reason the loudness wars exist. It is an illusion though, its a short lived audio phenomena and that "power" soon introduces fatigue.

That's what I thought, that's the basis of my question really....how do i get it to sound powerful without pushing the faders?

I have posted an example of a loop I made to see if anyone can give advice. please bear in mind I am quite new to this, it is not a mixed and was made on headphones.

thanks Mr Voidloss sir (you cunt) and other cunts on Subsekt

Need lots of upper mid content to make the mix sound "loud". It's the reason most Big Room House tracks sound loud as hell, it's all upper mid stuff.

[Pelecaras]

Need lots of upper mid content to make the mix sound "loud". It's the reason most Big Room House tracks sound loud as hell, it's all upper mid stuff.

The loop just an example of how my stuff lacks the aggression I'm aiming for. I don't know how to achieve it without distorting everything to fuck. I'm not trying to make gabba so don't really wanna be doing that.

[innovine]

Well, if distorting it to fuck, or pushing up your levels gives you what you want.. why not do that?

[Mattias]

Need lots of upper mid content to make the mix sound "loud". It's the reason most Big Room House tracks sound loud as hell, it's all upper mid stuff.

The loop just an example of how my stuff lacks the aggression I'm aiming for. I don't know how to achieve it without distorting everything to fuck. I'm not trying to make gabba so don't really wanna be doing that.

Just distort it. Try to do it on the individual elements of your music as a starting point. Try different distortions, increase it but blend it with the dry signal. If it doesn't seem to get you where you want try to route it all to busses and add distortion there. Or throw it on the master channel.

[Mslwte]

I like hard techno that grabs by the balls and doesn't let up for air, This is the type of techno i am trying to produce, the trouble is my music only sounds powerful when I push the levels.

tell me about it haha. ive tried many times to make cleaner sounding tracks but they just don't work for me. I usually distort sounds but try to claw them back

[bergertron]

Did you try pushing the kick or samples way to far into the red line and compressing/limiting it back to normal (well levels back to normal) and eqing it and generally just experimenting with trying to get the sample's life back into it.

Also increase the velocity of your samples. I would just mess about with breaking your samples and pushing to the very limits to see what results you get.
Side chaining the bass heavily with a kick will put alot of emphasis on the kick.

I am sure there is nice pretty right ways to do it. But no harm in going against grain to see what you get for some dirty sound design.

[Pelecaras]

Well, if distorting it to fuck, or pushing up your levels gives you what you want.. why not do that?

Good point!

[Pelecaras]

Need lots of upper mid content to make the mix sound "loud". It's the reason most Big Room House tracks sound loud as hell, it's all upper mid stuff.

The loop just an example of how my stuff lacks the aggression I'm aiming for. I don't know how to achieve it without distorting everything to fuck. I'm not trying to make gabba so don't really wanna be doing that.

Just distort it. Try to do it on the individual elements of your music as a starting point. Try different distortions, increase it but blend it with the dry signal. If it doesn't seem to get you where you want try to route it all to busses and add distortion there. Or throw it on the master channel.

Thanks for the advice Mattias, I have dabbled with distortion on the master channel, I like the crunch it gives but I always second guess myself when I do it. I also like to slap a bit crusher on the master too, quick question....should I eq before or after distortion?

[Pelecaras]

I like hard techno that grabs by the balls and doesn't let up for air, This is the type of techno i am trying to produce, the trouble is my music only sounds powerful when I push the levels.

tell me about it haha. ive tried many times to make cleaner sounding tracks but they just don't work for me. I usually distort sounds but try to claw them back

I like heavy tracks that almost seem to suffocating in bass or percussion but getting them to sound anything but muddy is tough. I need to be careful with how much distortion I add. I tend to whack it to 100% wet.

[Pelecaras]

Did you try pushing the kick or samples way to far into the red line and compressing/limiting it back to normal (well levels back to normal) and eqing it and generally just experimenting with trying to get the sample's life back into it.

Also increase the velocity of your samples. I would just mess about with breaking your samples and pushing to the very limits to see what results you get.
Side chaining the bass heavily with a kick will put alot of emphasis on the kick.

I am sure there is nice pretty right ways to do it. But no harm in going against grain to see what you get for some dirty sound design.

I tried your advice of pushing the fader and then compressing it but I couldn't get the results I wanted, I used Live's compressor so I don't know if another compressor would get better results.

[innovine]

I like heavy tracks that almost seem to suffocating in bass or percussion but getting them to sound anything but muddy is tough. I need to be careful with how much distortion I add. I tend to whack it to 100% wet.

Ugh. Distortion can sound great when several different instances are stacked. For example, a bit of overdrive or warming on the original source, then a minor amount of EQ, into a different distortion, again with eq (probably lowering the highs a bit or scooping some mids), and again something like vintage warmer across the whole drum bus. The details depend greatly on what sound you're after, of course, but it's quite common and IMHO more musical to add mild distortion in several steps, rather than one big nasty one.

If you're drowning in mud, you can try an EQ to remove bass before a distortion step. If your tune needs more bass, you split the tracks in two by frequency, one very low bass track with all the highs filtered away, and the other with the lows filtered away. Distort the track without the bass, it should be much less muddy. Then add the bass track in after the distortion again. So you end up distorting the mids and highs only.

[samnatur]

I find that distorting then EQ'ing out the unnecessary frequencies on every individual sound gives good results. Distortion often creates a lot of frequencies across the spectrum but many of them are not necessary on every sound, for example maybe your über-distorted hi-hat doesn't need all that low and your disty kick might not need the very high ring to it.

[buffered]

Maybe it's just my ears but i find that smart use of silence between hits is really key to a hard hitting sound. Like a very delicate play on contrast between silence and volume.

[surface]

Yes. Distorted silence for full effect! ..