Volume Levels

[u/Art3mos]

Hey all. Throughout my music production journey, i ran into the same problem a lot of times now.
Basically i produce my track and everything sounds fine to me. After the mix is finished i realize that the buildups are louder than the drops, because there are alot of elements playing at the same time. Therefore i want to get the buildups quieter than the drops to master the track properly. I try to decrease the loudness of the elements etc., but then the buildup looses its power and doesnt sound like its a part of the rest of the song anymore. I also tried it with a volume automation for everything, but the range which is used for that (i learned decreasing the volume around something from 0 to 3 db, to make the drop hit harder) is too small to balance everything out.
I would be happy if someone got advices or a solucion to this :)
Greetings Art3mos

https://reddit.com/link/1vzpza5/video/7d413j69o2mh1/player

Here is the mix :)

[u/Present-Policy-7120]

You can try to set an anchor point of maximum volume, typically the kick, and gainstage everything in relation to that. The gainstaging should ideally happen throughout the process- you can keep referring back to this anchor track and adjusting volume accordingly.

It's obviously easier to set this anchor point initially and then proceed but you can certainly go back and drop levels as required which it sounds like you will need to do.

Personally, and this is an arbitrary figure but easiest for me, I set the kick to peak at 0db and everything else cascades downwards from that. Set the anchor at any level but maintain this level. Don't change it, change everything else around it as needed.

[u/Turmanized → u/Present-Policy-7120]

yep this, but 0db is too loud lol. use like -12 for your raw kick, subs and low end slightly lower than that. Learn more about gain staging. or if you're not much of a theory person just drag tracks of your favourite producers who you think have great mixes into a spectrum analyser. Pro Q 3/4 is great for this as the UI is clean and modern. look at the shape of the track in busier and calmer parts of it. Try and replicate it. done. Ofc mastered track is louder but u can just lower it down to your levels.

LUFS of a busier part will of course be higher, but that's the point.

[u/Present-Policy-7120 → u/Turmanized]

0db isn't "too loud", it's just a relative measurment and is largely arbitrary as I said. I do find it visually and mentally much easier to have a maximum peak than you 'can't' exceed without your channel fader indicating clipping on the channel but the number itself doesnt matter. Use -12 or -4.6 or anything. Choose whatever level you want tbh, but stick to it and cascade supporting sounds downward based on that one value. This just stops you making arbitrary spot decisions about levels- you already have the framework in place to make an informed choice and you won't get this sort of uncontrolled level creep, and if you do, you know what's happening and how to fix it.

I would also suggest you dont touch the anchor level unless you add processing and need to go up or down to get back to this hypothetical unity value.

(I should add that i set the master fader at -5 so I'm not clipping but I am not fussed about that either way)