Hey guys, new around here and I have a problem that you guys might be able to help me with.

When I compare my music to almost all other composers/producers, their's is just much louder than mine, professional or not. I lower my instrument tracks so that the master bus doesn't clip, but then it all sounds too low. When I put a limiter on the master bus to boost the volume, it has a crackling sound going on. I'm not really that good with mixing yet, but this has been bothering me lately, just looking for a little help, so thanks in advance.

Making things loud is easy. Making things clean is easy. Making things loud and clean is where the skill lies. It all about headroom management, judicious (where appropriate) use of dynamics processing, eq, saturation and distortion (I'm simplifying but you get the gist). Experiment with these effects, techniques such as parallel saturation work wonders for increasing loudness in a fairly transparent (or at least desirable) manner. Sticking a limiter on your master bus can only do so much. It's really a last step that has to be done on the master as it's not really possible/practical to do it in the mix.

I found this article very interesting, and it has some nice graphical explanations: http://www.dnbscene.com/article/88-thinking-inside-the-box-a-complete-eq-tutorial

Essentially, maximum perceived "loudness" is achieved by filling every band in the frequency spectrum, i.e. your mix could be at the point of clipping, but by adding a new sound in an unused frequency range you can still increase loudness. Distortion can be used to increase the range of frequencies covered by a sound, for example.

Compression can be used to make your track louder on average across the time domain, by squashing down the tallest peaks and bringing up everything else to compensate ("make-up gain").

Of course these techniques are often used very bluntly, with the sole aim of making a track loud. People complain that a lot of modern music has lost most of its dynamic range due to the popular obsession with loudness.

Thanks for the replies guys, I'll try to focus a bit more on giving each instrument it's own place in the mix and mess around with compression.

If it isn't too much of a bother, would you guys mind checking out a track I did today? Maybe you'll hear what I'm working with.

https://soundcloud.com/timmena/necro

Oh, and don't mind the mixing itself, I've yet to get better monitors than my av40's, and they don't translate well at all o.O

Try to master your audio...in simple way

use multiband compressor for 4 bands (it will make more headroom for maximizing and will make frequencies of audio near perfect for standard)

use final limiter (will maximize your audio to max level)

Uh.. no, sorry, but this is bad advice. A multiband compressor is a very powerful tool for very specific tasks. When you have access to the mix you should never even want to use a multiband compressor. Why squash and distort the mix you have so carefully created? As for a limiter, you use one to limit peaks and prevent clipping, not to "maximize your audio."

My advice is that you should create a minimum -2db headroom. At that point you must scrutinize your mixdown (in terms of leveling, potential frequency clashing, dynamics, depth and panning). When you decide that everything sounds good, wait at least 2 days and check it again.

After that, you may add a master compressor to glue things a bit (if you really think you must), a frequency exciter (be very careful with those; apply with MODERATION) and finally a limiter.

The part with the limiter might be a bit tricky. What I do, is observer the meter. If I see that there is little to no activity (the meter sticks at 0db) and the signal is attenuated too much, then... well, I know I overdid it.

Be sure to use transparent dynamic processors. We don't want any additional 'flavours' at this stage.

And remember, no post-mixdown shenanigan is a real remedy for a bad mix.