How to Make a Mix Louder

While some mixing and mastering engineers might roll their eyes at this, most clients want a louder mix. And it’s not for nothing – despite the “normalization” if you will of normalized audio on most streaming services, a louder finished song still sounds “better” than a quieter song when played back to back whether that normalization is on or off. And a GOOD sounding louder song all begins with a louder mix, so let’s talk how to make a mix louder.

Making a mix louder isn’t just about slapping a limiter on the master bus (or individual tracks or busses for that matter).

There is a right way of how to make a mix louder so that it’s devoid of clipping, not to mention so that it can BE louder in the mastering stage.

This process of responsibly making a mix louder begins with gain staging.

Gain Staging

I talk about gain staging frequently in equal parts because it generally makes individual tracks sound better but is also the foundation of how to make a mix louder.

This entails placing a gain plugin at the start of the processing chain for every single track in your mix and adjusting them so that their level averages -18dB.

This not only feeds an optimal level into subsequent plugins which turn out better results at that level, it keeps every track well below the point of clipping:

When your audio is uniformly well below the point of clipping, you’re feeding a much more controlled level into the eventual master bus compressor or limiter (whether that’s in the mixing or mastering stage).

Conversely, if you’ve got a handful of tracks or even a single track which are/is clipping or coming near clipping, it will make it very difficult to turn the remainder of the tracks up because the limiter is already trying to control that clipping track, thus eating up your mixing headroom.

Also a reminder – make sure you adjust the output level after every subsequent plugin to ensure you’re maintaining that same -18dB target. This is especially important bearing in mind that some plugins will drastically change the output level of your audio (like a compressor).

EQ

EQ is primarily useful for cleaning up your audio, cutting out the frequencies which are detracting from the overall sound.

A byproduct of that is that it allows you to turn up every track which you sculpt with EQ because those cut frequencies were also eating into your headroom.

The biggest example of this typically comes from applying a high pass filter to the low end of virtually every track in your mix:

There’s a lot of low end noise in many tracks in our mixes which is eating into our headroom without our even being able to hear it in some cases.

Because we need to carve out that sub-100Hz frequency space for just a couple elements in our mix anyway in the kick, bass, and any sub-instruments, a happy byproduct of cleaning up our mix is we get more headroom.

High passing every track in your mix will oftentimes free up a few decibels without even making the mix sound any different.

This is again because these frequencies exist closer to the 20Hz end of the spectrum where most of us can’t even hear, even on the best of low end speakers.

This is all expendable noise, as well; typically low end frequencies we don’t need on that instrument or ambient environmental noise from the room or outside.

Grab my free EQ cheat sheet for visual guides on where to high pass every single track in your mix to simultaneously clean up the low end of your mix and create headroom.

Compression

Compression works by attenuating dynamic range, creating a more consistent and even volume in a track.

Here is an example of a track in need of some compression:

Applying a compressor puts a bendable ceiling on those -6dB peaks in the image above, pulling them down so that they’re closer to the -20dB nadir of the track.

This in turn allows us to turn up the overall volume of that track without the same worry of clipping because those peaks are brought down while simultaneously making the quieter parts of the track louder.

You can instantly recognize the value and role which compression can play in how to make a mix louder.

Similar to not high passing your tracks, if your tracks are left unchecked in terms of managing their dynamics, you’re giving up a lot of headroom.

Of course compression also creates energy in our tracks and makes them sound better by achieving more consistent volumes, but the extra headroom which becomes a byproduct of this is a welcome benefit.

Similar to the EQ cheat sheet, grab my free compression cheat sheet for fast and easy visual guides on the specific settings to use on every single instrument in your mix to create more energy and headroom across your entire mix.

Saturation and Soft Clipping

Saturation adds distortion to fill out frequency information which didn’t exist before (like I show in this vocal saturation demonstration):

A lot of people rightly use saturation to thicken out, add body to, or warm up a track.

Another application which doesn’t get as much coverage is saturation’s ability to smooth out clipping peaks of audio.

We can apply soft clipping as a form of saturation to create a “bend don’t break” situation to the audio of a hot bus or even mix to go into clipping territory with the audible artifacts:

As I cover in my overview of soft clipping, this is typically applied in the mastering stage even as the final step in the processing chain.

Here we’re allowing the mix or master to clip, but we’re rounding off what is normally a flat top of the clipped wave form to mitigate the effect of the clipping sound.

Limiter or Maximizer

In the same vein as soft clipping and another tool which is generally best left to the mastering process, a limiter or maximizer can be applied to the finished mix.

These are variations on compressors, albeit with extreme ratios and other parameters, designed to squeeze every last decibel out of a piece of music and ideally without the aforementioned harsh artifacts.

Here is a snapshot of Izotope’s Ozone Maximizer:

This is my favorite plugin for maximizing the volume out of my masters because of its all-in-one suite of tools.

This includes a soft clipper like I just mentioned but also an upward compression control. This is important for attenuating dynamic range and creating a louder mix or master by turning up the quieter parts of the mix.

Of course you still need to be responsible when you’re bouncing/rendering your final mix or master and planning on uploading to the streaming services of the world. The plugin’s “True Peak” feature helps to ensure your song doesn’t see any artifacts come up as part of their encoding processes (as I detail in my overview of true peak limiting).

A BONUS tip is to trust your mix with a mastering engineer who knows how to effectively make it as loud as possible without compromising its quality, so consider my services (and get a free test sample) at MusicGuyMastering.com.