How to produce a louder mix

We know the ‘loudness wars’ is a constantly hot topic in music production circles and one common belief is that a loud master is produced in the mastering stage. Certainly mastering can increase the perceived volume of a mix down. However there is often a limitation to how loud a mix can get before it starts to produce undesirable side effects such as distortion, loss of detail, loss of dynamics etc. I am occasionally asked how you can produce loud mixes and I would in the very first instance suggest mixing to sound good and not just loud. People should also consider the genre they are working in, the needs for a drum and bass/dubstep track are very different for a folk or ambient piece so be sensitive to the musical genre within which you are working. Also consider that software like iTune Soundcheck is also making “loudness” somewhat less relevant as it tries to even out perceived volumes of tracks in the playback domain.

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