10dB boost with Limiter on Master bus and auto-disables when rendering? [SOLVED]

[Lynx_TWO]

Not sure how useful this might be - but a couple of posts and talking with a friend of mine triggered the idea - for people who are using Reaper to mix for movies and things like NetFlix, the one thing I hear is that they are not used to mixing at such a low level (for example, Netflix requires dialog to be at -24LUFS/LUKS and then everything else mixed in reference to that level)

What if Reaper had an option to raise the Master bus by 10dB with a limiter that automatically gets disabled when rendering out?

[karbomusic]

If it helps, you can put that limiter on MonitorFX and it will never end up in the render - since FX there only affect monitoring.

[JamesPeters]

Just turn up the send of the master track (the send to the audio device output). That's only for how loud your output to your audio device is; it doesn't affect a render. You can make that setting part of your default project template if you want.

[mschnell]

There is a JSFX plugin dedicated to mastering that does something like this and additionally allows for auditioning the mix with and without the mastering plugins in the FX chain of the master fader.

-Michael

[Lynx_TWO]

All great suggestions, but I definitely like the one regarding the master send. The reason I thought of a limiter is that I could totally see someone accidentally blowing their studio monitor amplifier if mixing full-scale movie FX, but yea I guess people should know how to handle that scenario...

[mschnell]

There is the Master FX chain that is processed with rendering, and there is the Monitor FX chain that is only processed for the main hardware outputs for such purpose.

-Michael

[karbomusic]

Originally Posted by mschnell

There is the Master FX chain that is processed with rendering, and there is the Monitor FX chain that is only processed for the main hardware outputs for such purpose.

-Michael

Correct and this kind of thing is what it's for.

[ashcat_lt]

How can one actually mix without having any idea what it’s really going to sound like? You’re going to squash the top 10db of your dynamic range the whole time you’re mixing, then take that off when you render and have no way of knowing where the peaks will actually be? Your explosion isn’t loud enough, so you turn it up more and more and finally it’s still not as loud as you’d like, but fine good enough. Then you render and that explosion hits like +20.

If your speakers can’t get to the SPL levels you want without exploding, then you need bigger speakers. Or else you need to learn to mix at lower levels.

[plush2]

Originally Posted by ashcat_lt

How can one actually mix without having any idea what it’s really going to sound like? You’re going to squash the top 10db of your dynamic range the whole time you’re mixing, then take that off when you render and have no way of knowing where the peaks will actually be? Your explosion isn’t loud enough, so you turn it up more and more and finally it’s still not as loud as you’d like, but fine good enough. Then you render and that explosion hits like +20.

If your speakers can’t get to the SPL levels you want without exploding, then you need bigger speakers. Or else you need to learn to mix at lower levels.

This is the answer. Best practices would say one should grab a dBSPL meter, some uncorrelated pink noise and calibrate the -20 dBFS output level of Reaper through the monitors for mixing Netflix shows. If one puts a little marker on the soundcard master volume one can fairly easily toggle between that calibration and what one likes to mix music at.

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.c...Practices-v1-2

Jump down to 2.3 for an spl level to calibrate to.

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by ashcat_lt

How can one actually mix without having any idea what it’s really going to sound like? You’re going to squash the top 10db of your dynamic range the whole time you’re mixing, then take that off when you render and have no way of knowing where the peaks will actually be? Your explosion isn’t loud enough, so you turn it up more and more and finally it’s still not as loud as you’d like, but fine good enough. Then you render and that explosion hits like +20.

If your speakers can’t get to the SPL levels you want without exploding, then you need bigger speakers. Or else you need to learn to mix at lower levels.

Oh I agree, but I also know people who mix audio for netflix movies who only own nearfield monitors, and I know of zero nearfield monitors that can handle the kind of dynamic range movies have _at reference level_ without clipping the amplifiers.

If anyone out there does know of some, let me know and I’ll pass on the info.

Also, depending on the limiter, I doubt the average mixer is going to hear the 10db difference in an explosion since from what I understand, a lot of that energy is focused around 16-25 hz, and certainly below 125 Hz, so we must remember the context of what’s being limited in these examples… and this is likely why Netflix requires movie-reference mixing but seems to normalize it for the end-listener. Most people don’t have subwoofers that’ll go high spl below 25 hz. Hell, most people are surprised when they hear a true 30hz sine wave at 100dB.