Making my song louder

[Reenen]

My experience is that I have to turn my volume up when I listen to my .it files...

How can I make my song's volume louder?

The tutorial says this:

Now, you may notice that the bass sounds OK, but could be a
little louder...  There are many ways to fix this, but the
easiest by far is to simply copy the information into another
Channel.  Copy Channel 4 into Channel 5 so that the two are
identical, and play the pattern again.

Any other ways to make your *whole song* goes louder?  Because compared to my MP3's my .it files are very faint.

[LPChip]

I would not suggest to copy the data to another channel unless you really need to.

It is logical that your mp3's will sound better than your IT files because those mp3's are mastered. Its the mastering that finalises them for the proper volume.

To make your IT louder, here are some techniques to try:

• In the general tab, put the global volume to 128, and the preamp to about 33% This way you have the optimal setting. (a higher preamp can give a wrong image of your sound when mastering your song).
  
  
• If you use a Vxx command to set your global volume, then set it to V80.
  
  
• Check all your samples to ensure that they're set to the maximum volume allowed (64)
  
  
• Check all your samples and see if any of them can be normalised. (Do not amplify the sample though, as it will clip your sample, which takes down the quality.)
  
  
• If the above ones dont give a satisfied result, then you'll need to use a plugin. Add a plugin (for instance the DX Compressor), check the master, and increase the Gain 1.0x to a higher level. This will allow you to boost your song beyond clipping levels, so be carefull not to go way over the top.
  
  
• Instead of the method above, you can actually use mastering plugins like a limiter to give your song proper boosting. A great plugin is the Buzzcomp Compression suit with the grancomp stereo plugin. It has a limiter that can be configured to do this.
  

[Reenen]

Ah... ok, I think it was my instruments that were on 64 (I think it's the default from the GM.dls file).

[Sam_Zen]

I would not suggest to copy the data to another channel unless you really need to.

I've made such suggestions in the past too, but you're absolutely right. It's a last solution if nothing else helps.

Sometimes normalizing a sample hardly makes a difference, because it contains some high peak(s). A limiter is indeed the answer to that.
Besides VST-plugins to achieve this, there is a small external app. to compress samples also : Peak Limiter (shareware).

[phanoo]

I suggest you to use a compressor on samples that need more punch. You can use a compressor VST, directX's VST or directly compress you sample with an audio editor like Audacity 

[LPChip]

Also, on the subject.

Make sure you have Mixmode RC3 for the best volume setting. Might do wonders. RC2 is very faint, unless you play with the assigned volumeslider in the setup screen. Changing to RC3 is still a better option though.

You can do this by going to the general tab, song properties.

[Saga Musix]

Please note that mixmode RC3 is enabled by default for new modules, and upgrading from any of the other mixmodes can break your module, especially when working with VSTis.

[LPChip]

Ah yeah.

Sorry, forgot to mention that. This is one of those efforts, in case you want to fix a module but not want to destroy the dynamics. This mostly affects if you want to playback a song in OpenMPT instead of another player.

[jmkz]

• In the general tab, put the global volume to 128, and the preamp to about 33% This way you have the optimal setting. (a higher preamp can give a wrong image of your sound when mastering your song).
  
  

As OpenMPT stores in the .ini file the preamp value, What is the best or default value?

[Saga Musix]

What is the best

Obviously the default value (PreAmp=128 in mptrack.ini), since that's probably what most people use.

[LPChip]

What is the best

Obviously the default value (PreAmp=128 in mptrack.ini), since that's probably what most people use.

I disagree completely.

As stated earlier, using a preamp value of around 33% gives the most balanced feel. But even better is to not use it at all by using mixmode RC3.

The science behind using 33% value is based upon that somewhere in the code when using RC2, 33% is set to be 100%. This can be noticed when using DX effects in your song. They're set to the max, which can be influenced by the preamp setting. Going lower than 33% and you'll see that it never peaks out to the max. Going over it, and you'll hear that it destroys your audio.

I've found that the same can be heard a bit with normal plugins too, but its not as clear as with DX effects. For that reason, I brought this up with Rewbs and Atlantis some years ago, which is when the entire mixmode discussion started.

[Saga Musix]

I disagree completely.
As stated earlier, using a preamp value of around 33% gives the most balanced feel. But even better is to not use it at all by using mixmode RC3.

Uuuuuuuuh excuse me, but 128 is exactly one third on the slider.

[LPChip]

I disagree completely.
As stated earlier, using a preamp value of around 33% gives the most balanced feel. But even better is to not use it at all by using mixmode RC3.

Uuuuuuuuh excuse me, but 128 is exactly one third on the slider.

In that case, my apologies I misread you because most people use the default volume probably which is all the way to the top.

128 is a weird value for being at 33% though, that would mean the max value is somewhere at 385.

[Saga Musix]

128 is a weird value for being at 33% though, that would mean the max value is somewhere at 385.

That is because the formula that is actually used for the pre-amp does not reflect the slider in the configs dialog; It would indeed be a weird value if 0 was silence, but it is not. The comments in the source code say that the slider range is "approximately +/- 10dB". From the original number (128 in this case), 64 is subtracted and then it's divided by 8. The slider range is [0...40] then.

[LPChip]

It seems that the value I am using, which seems optimal for OpenMPT is 176 in the ini.