So I'm working on mixing these two new songs.  However, despite the explosion of free or cheap resources available to today’s amateur home recording musician, I'm finding the "mastering" process more challenging than ever for one single reason:  Loudness.

You may not be aware of this, but those AACs and MP3s you get from iTunes and Amazon are staggeringly loud (also, the CDs you buy).  Perhaps you've heard about what sound engineers call the "Loudness Wars."  Unfortunately the Loudness Wars impacts poor me and my songs because if I create an MP3 of my song as I mixed it, and then you put it on your iPod in a playlist with any modern music released after 2000, my song would sound like a whisper.  So my goal with these new songs is to master them loud enough that they won't stand out solely for the annoyance of having to turn up the volume to hear them.

It turns out, though, that while the theory is relatively straightforward, in practice, it's hard as hell to boost loudness beyond a certain point without serious clipping.  In my case I need around 12dB of gain before my songs are in the same ballpark as commercial rock music (which I roughly determine by comparing the loudness of the lead vocals).  But the sound quality really degrades if I try to go over 9dB of gain - it takes on an FM radio quality of mush.  The kind of sound you get when you turn up a car stereo too much and the speakers can't handle the amount of wattage they're receiving.  Distorted, in other words.  (Which is not surprising since that's what clipping sounds like.)

I'm about ready to give up on it.  If I were serious about this music I'd have no choice but to ship it off to a professional for mastering.  As it is, I'm just a poor hobbyist, so you're going to be stuck with my meager efforts.  It'll be good enough for computer speakers or ear buds, but I won't make any promises beyond that. :)