Loudness: first or last?

21:55 Following his limiter shoot-out, we asked Charlie when he gets the limiter in on the action.

“It’s an ‘egg-chicken’ thing. Generally, I put it on first, to get the track to the rough level I want, and then start addressing problems after. It’s a backwards way of doing it, but people often want the masters loud.

“Luckily, Cygnus have a nice feature where you can choose a ‘dynamic’ or ‘loud’ master. When I get the former, I’ll probably EQ first and then get the track sounding nice, rather than just loud. For the latter, it’s about getting it loud, then fixing the problems caused by that major level increase. Most people ask for a dynamic master, which is nice, because you don’t have to slam the hell out of it. Louder is harder work, as the track shouldn’t really be that loud, so you’re defying sense a little bit – but I know a lot of people want that, and I make stuff pretty loud, so I know what it’s like!”