I’ve been paranoid with digital compressors lately, I didn’t have this problem before, but lately it has been itching me badly. Looks like my ears have grown a lot within last 6 months. A lot of what used to be a good sounding record sound like crap to me now.

When I put mastering compressor/limiters like L2 or Voxengo Elephant on the top of the mix & I start to compress, the more I do it the more 1k to 12k area comes forward & starts to get harsher & harsher. Is this one of the reasons we don’t like digital compressors or that’s a balance problem in the mix? I notice the same behavior when I use other plugin compressors on individual tracks, not so apparent as L2 or Elephant do to the whole mix, but it’s still there. Now my question is if buying a Distressor will save me from this problem on the tracking side, which is my main concern? I understand that this partially can be because of a/d converters too, but I thought ADI8DS should get me pretty far, may be I was wrong?

What do u use as monitors?
How much GR do you apply on the mix?

I would call the L2 and Elephant a Limiter and use it as such.

quote:

What do u use as monitors?

I use Dynaudio BM5As in a well treated room. I'm not proud of these monitors at all, but they seem to be the best for the money. Unfortunately I can't spend 5K on new monitors at the moment to get myself into satisfactory monitoring system. Anyway I don't think that my problem is monitoring here.

quote:

How much GR do you apply on the mix?

I apologize for my lack of knowledge, but could you tell me what "GR" stands for?

As an example I had a light rock project lately(usually I'm into metal, so there is a lot of compression going on). My mix came out peaking somewhere in -6dbfs area, sounding very good & warm with no harshness(it was a light rock project so there was little compression applied per-track). I applied L2 on top of it & I stopped at the point where I already could feel some harshness, but not much. It turned out to be at the level of -15.5db RMS. I guess it's pretty low considering that I could already feel some harshness & loss of warmth.
With metal projects things get tougher, as there is more compression on per-track bases. By the time I get to somewhere near -13db RMS area it craps out the mix.

I don't get me wrong, it's not that it sounds like shit. I just put System of a Down Hypnotize CD where they compressed ti up to -9db RMS on peak points & I'm pretty sure those tracks have been mastered in some BIG$$$ mastering facility & I hear the same crap going on, with exception that they went 4db higher than me.

With GR i mean Gain reduction.

Any chance i could here a before and after example?

Not the same project I was talking about as I'm not allowed to post it, but here is something that can be used as a reference.

Pre
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Post
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I believe threshold in L2 was set somewhere near -8db area.