Setting recording levels per track

[black aspirin]

OK, I'm obviously doing something wrong, because I noticed in the 'post your last recording' thread that my mix is extremely quiet compared to everyone else's (the people who actually know what they're doing).

I had been leaving my individual track faders at 0, and then lowering the input signal on my Firepod until the db level maxed out at about -5db.  I leave the master fader at zero, which I understand to be the rule.

Then, as I keep adding new tracks, I have to keep lowering the individual track fader levels in order to keep the entire mix from going above 0db on the master fader, and clipping.

But I'm seeing online advice that the individual track faders should be set anywhere from -12db to -18db.  Or do they mean that the actual signal I'm seeing on the meter should be maxing out somewhere in that range, or do they mean both?  It sounds like they're saying you should record at a low level, and leave plenty of headroom for final mixing.  Is this the reason my final mix is maxed out at 0db on the master fader, but still way quiet?

Any advice on these dumb questions is appreciated.

[JemDooM]

I leave the faders and the master faders all at 0, then adjust my interface/amps/instruments volumes so that the meter maxes out on green and slightly goes into the orange, I vaguely remember my tutor in college teaching me this, not saying that's the right way it's probably a terrrrible way to do it knowing me but I'm happy with my results ps, I have no idea what I'm doing so don't take that as advice

[da_qtip]

I usually set it so my track peaks into the yellow. If you're recording 24bit you can go a bit hotter.

Now the reason other tracks are louder is because they "mastered" them. You've heard about the loudness war right? You're about to start fighting in it. Add some compression on the 2bus followed by a limiter to stop any stray peaks from hitting the red.

It sounds like you've got your gain staging under control though, making sure you aren't overloading the master and all that.

[black aspirin]

Thanks for the replies.  This was a good article I found on putting it all in perspective, and the 'loudness wars':

http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/index_files/Proper_Audio_Recording_Levels.php


I realize that mastering is the real key to a good finished product, but I didn't think that all of the clips being posted in here (like Cory Y's riffs) were mastered.  Cory Y?

I still have a lot to learn, but it's been fun thus far.

[eyeprod]

I believe the faders have to be up pretty high if  you want that beefier volume. It's weird how sometimes your main levels look ffine but the volume level just isn't there. Make sure the individual levels are almost peaking, set your mains as usual and you should notice a difference. You might even be able to crank each channel higher than you might think, just watch the mains for clipping. Might vary depending on your gear and setup.

I'm no expert btw

[Submarine]

Rule of thumb for tracking in digital is -18db from zero.  You can keep your fader at zero but the incoming signal should averaging -18db.
Its generally recommended to not drive your master buss when mixing, which is what it sounds like is happening to you because you are tracking much higher.

As others have already mentioned you can get your overall track louder in the mastering process.

[da_qtip]

Thanks for the replies.  This was a good article I found on putting it all in perspective, and the 'loudness wars':

http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/index_files/Proper_Audio_Recording_Levels.php


I realize that mastering is the real key to a good finished product, but I didn't think that all of the clips being posted in here (like Cory Y's riffs) were mastered.  Cory Y?

I still have a lot to learn, but it's been fun thus far.

I put mastered in quotes because they probably just compressed and limited the master track in their mix session rather than actually getting it mastered. I do this with a lot of my little projects. Mastering brings up the overall loudness of a track to what you heard on CDs and whatnot but there's a whole lot more to it, so this is like ghetto bedroom mastering.

[jibberish]

record tracks for a clean take. so set levels up as high as possible without crossing 0dB. I like shooting for like -3 or -4 just to leave some headroom for an extra loud whatever

Don't get confused by the master mix volume. ignore it while recording tracks. you just turn it down if it starts getting zero'd out as you add more tracks. deal witgh that on final mixdown.

Also, here is THEE GOLDEN CURE ALL TRICK for getting as hot as possible without compression file:

once you have your output wave done, run it through your wave editor, like even audacity. check the peak volume and gain option out. it shows that you can boost the whole file X dB to max at 0. I always dial mine to max at -0.1 just because I am funny about digital absolute zero dB. but this way, your file will be as loud as anyone else's

edit: if some of your file is still too quiet after maxxing the overall volume, you then have no choice but to compress to bring all the quietest parts up in volume.

[AgentofOblivion]

Master should be put in quotes in the context of posting online clips here.  I "Master" things for the reason you specified:  to make it louder.  All I do is throw a compressor on the master channel with a 2:1 ratio and a very low threshold so everything is squashed a bit and then put on a limiter to about max out the volume.  I might also add an EQ before these two things if necessary, but that's about it.  Good enough for an online mix.

[lordfinesse]

If you're taking your stuff to a proper mastering place, then this:

As others have already mentioned you can get your overall track louder in the mastering process.

I mixed the WHB record way quiet, leaving probably 12db of headroom for the mastering guy to do his thing. And I instructed him not to squash the shit out of it. I couldn't care less about a loudness war.  When tracking, I think I may have hit one yellow on the interface meters a few times, but mostly it was all green, nowhere near the top.  Right way or not, I don't know.. this is just how I do it.

And even if you're mastering it yourself, you could still do it this way, leaving the level makeup for mastering. Plenty of good mastering software out there.

[black aspirin]

I'm definitely not taking my amateurish stuff to be mastered, as to not get laughed out of the place.  Just trying to slowly learn more about how to record properly, and make the best-sounding stuff I can on my own while I also improve my playing, writing skills, etc. 

I'm gonna do some new tracks this weekend as the article I linked to suggested, somewhere between -12 and -18, and see what the results are when I start mixing.

[Ancient]

Input recording level is kinda irrelevant to a point, as you can turn it up or down at the input of your first plug in or piece of outboard gear. My professors told me aim for around -6db as it leaves plenty of headroom, as subtle nuances and quieter parts aren't converted to digital as well if your level is too low, plus its easier to turn something down without affecting the tone than it is to raise the volume without affecting tone. Really as long as you don't have any peaks during recording your fine. As far as the master peaking out you have to remember if you start doubling things, like recording a second identical guitar track your effectively doubling the volume of the track as well so you have to turn both tracks down to compensate, and that could be anywhere from -6db to -10db.

Have you gotten into sub buss mixing yet? It makes life so much easier when mixing to bounce, then trying to get every single tracks level perfect to the master.

[jibberish]

I think you should learn it all.  knowledge is power.  plus then you can just crank the shit out without depending upon anyone else...definitely keeps things moving at exactly the pace YOU want heh.  besides, you're having fun. besides besides you know you wanna

your creepy recording was crystal clean fwiw.  it sounded like you are tracking just fine.  no noise floor, no +dB crackles. in fact it sounded like you were plenty below due to the whatever opennesss, like it implied much headroom left.
if you like how it sounds, there is no mastering to be done. just the volume boost and it is done.

the goal is to get it to sound like you want it. mastering is just the final polish as per needed.

hope that different angle of looking at your projects can help you out.

oh yeah, I just remembered that I try like hell to do the first mixdown as clean and perfect as possible. ill play it over for hours tweaking position/volume and sometimes eq
then if I do it right, post processing =boosting the overall volume up to -0.1 and done. I guess that would be exactly what father O'blivion said he does: make it louder, done evidently he likes to get it right on final mixdown too.

fwiw, this creepy trance piece I am about to upload to soundcloud came out at -4.6dB max volume on the render.  my tracks all bounced from the floor of -20(peak levels), which is my bottom line, sort of manual compression limits if you will, and worked their way up to -4.6. I want some dynamics in my music. this was 6 very busy tracks, but only 6 and the 16 bit sounds pretty good. although a synth isn't natural so garbage is just more synth heh.
and you can bet , I then put the 4.5db boost on it to take the peak to -0.1


fucking it all up helps you learn too. you have to know the limits of your shit as well as the sweet spot.


    I also learned, the less fucking around i do with eq, effects, comps..the cleaner the whole thing stays..like there is an accumulation of error or something that eventually smears your shit up. digital is actually fucked up if you are not careful. we need some new media, one that handles easily like digital but works like analog.

sometimes the rendering to 16bit  fucks up the 24bit reaper tracks too.  I think my black song did that. it was like 28 tracks and during the vocals at least 20 tracks were going together. I mixed for a day with that shit to get it so I could hear every voice separately. After I render a copy, I always fire up my wave file in windows media just hear how it does in a shit player, and I sort of couldn't hear the separation in one whole phrase anymore.  the thing was an idea more than a run at a grammy so I didn't do it over, but it is smeared and extra dark and it shouldn't be.

yeah baby, I have my sleeves rolled up. i'm right in the middle of all this shit too, loving life, so this is also all fresh on my mind right now.
let it snow , let it snow, let it snow.

[black aspirin]

Have you gotten into sub buss mixing yet? It makes life so much easier when mixing to bounce, then trying to get every single tracks level perfect to the master.

No, I haven't gotten to that yet.  I have several books and online sources that I'm reading, though.  It's a lot to take in at times.  But I'm having fun, and getting a little better as I go.  I can't wait until I know much more about what I'm doing, so I can get more creative with ideas.

[black aspirin]

your creepy recording was crystal clean fwiw.  it sounded like you are tracking just fine.  no noise floor, no +dB crackles. in fact it sounded like you were plenty below due to the whatever opennesss, like it implied much headroom left.
if you like how it sounds, there is no mastering to be done. just the volume boost and it is done.

Thanks, I appreciate the compliment.  As I've listened to it more, I think I need to go back in and tweak the bass and guitar EQ's some more...they sound like they're fighting each other too much in the midrange, and I wish the bass sound was tighter.  But given my limited knowledge, I was pretty pleased in the end.  

The rest of the tracks are all digital.  The synth, the drums and samples.  So it's kinda hard to fuck those up.

The other thing I'm in the habit of doing now (after learning the hard way) is testing the mix on several different sources.  It almost always sounds great on my headphones, but might sound so-so on my monitors, and then like total shit in my vehicle or my computer speakers.  In fact, my final test was always in my vehicle, because it seemed to reveal problems that the other sources didn't.  That's where I'm still noticing that the guitar and bass seem to be fighting each other, and need tweaked some more.

Oh yeah, and I had no headroom left on the master.  It was peaking right below zero.  But I had not used a compressor or limiter on the master channel, so I'll play around with that as well. 

[jibberish]

no shit about the trying it out on different systems. little nearfields have shit for bass, then you put it on a regular system and "shit REEEEMASTER

danny G just did a month or so back heh. I was laughing. been there a lot too.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I figured out a ghetto trick to skip the nasty processing error of a delay: make your own

dupe the track twice and bump the copies however much delay time you want for 2 echos and just drop the volumes umtil it decays like you want it. super clean.
you could make more, or just one for a slapback

edit: PLUS you can put the echoes wherever you want in the stereo field

[Ancient]

No, I haven't gotten to that yet.  I have several books and online sources that I'm reading, though.  It's a lot to take in at times.  But I'm having fun, and getting a little better as I go.  I can't wait until I know much more about what I'm doing, so I can get more creative with ideas.

It's basically setting up 4 different buses, guitars + bass / drums / vocals / other, and sending the respective instruments to the buses but not the master putting a slight compression to meld them all together, and then mixing the buses to the master. It makes life alot easier hwne your mixing and your like shit ALL of the drums need to come down, instead of bringing down each individual drum the same amount you have one fader to bring down, but you can still retain the control of individual volumes going into each bus. You can also get more complicated into it and split the drum buss into two chains, one with slight comp like 1.2 to 1.4 and the other smashed into oblivion like 20:1 comp you then use the use the slightly comp'd one for your main drum sound and bring up the squashed track really really quietly underneath and it will make each drum hit pop out even more and cut through. This also works for clean or acoustic guitars but not so well with distorted guitars because they are all ready pretty much squashed, it basically makes percussive sounds pop. There's alot of interesting stuff the more you get into it.

[jibberish]

^ wow. (don't mind me im in the middle of this too) good info. I get it too. that drum trick sounds mint. next project is going to have some drums in it. drums that pop now. hah!

I will mention that sub buss idea to my son when he starts multi mic recording of his drums. and make sure we have software/gear to do that.

heh, now that I understand wtf that is, I actually have ghetto sub bussed. only it was just to unclutter shit when I only had 8 tracks. I would do like the drum/percussion/bass section, mix it to itself, then crunch it to one track and put it away, and so on. then mix the couple 3 final tracks with each other. obviously, the giant flaw is that if anything turns out wrong in a sub mixdown when working the final mix, you have to re-do that sub mixdown, but I had no choice.

[AgentofOblivion]

I believe they call that "ping ponging"--when you mix multiple tracks down to one to free up tracks.  The beauty of bussing is nothing is rendered, it's just routed, so you don't have the problem you mentioned and can always tweak the components.

If you use Reaper, another very easy way to do something similar is to insert a new track and then click the button that looks like an envelope that basically tells Reaper it's a control track--there may be a more official name for it, but it basically just controls the tracks that are in its folder.  You put the tracks you want it to control under neath and then click that same envelope button twice on the last track you want in it so that Reaper knows it's only the ones in between that will be controlled.  Then you can add effects or use it's slider to control the "master volume" of those tracks combined. 

Maybe this is different than bussing in some fundamental way, but it's the way I learned to handle those problems.  They're probably both just as easy as the next if you've done it once or twice.  Anybody else know why one way is better than the other or is it two ways of doing the same thing?

[eyeprod]

This is some great info. I am going to try this stuff on some upcoming studio shit I'll be working on. I don't see it being especially useful when i'm working with only 8 to 12 tracks, but for more complex stuff it sounds great to utilize busses. I figured they were for grouping tracks and would make my life easier, but I have been too lazy to delve into it.

I have to add, as per the topic at hand, that I do use some compression and a limiter on the masters for my home recorded shit. Forgot to mention that. I don't really look at numbers, db levels, etc on my hardware or software. Just watch the levels and keep it from clipping and it's fine by me. I tend to go for a higher volume level so as to match up with the other tunes on my player.

I guess it depends on what kind of music you're doing. That will always affect your methods of setting levels. I overload the fuck out of my stuff lately and that's the sound I'm going for, intense and up front, mostly. I think I'll try some mellower shit soon, and for that I still want some meat to it while working the dynamics or tone and volume more. I'll likely set my levels quite a bit lower than I set up my edgy stuff. I think a lot of music sounds better if it's levels are lower in volume and you have to crank up your sound system to hear it good. ok, I'm going to get back to drinking and drugging now. IT's 2014 eve! have fun

[jibberish]

thank you father o'blivion.    heh

no seriously, you just pulled it all together.   
I push and prod at reaper, so yeah!

I also see the concept can be solved in several ways.

speaking of limiter.  I get crazy with mics and guitars so I bought an alesis nano compressor whatever 25years ago when I got my 4 track cassette. outboard comp is super easy/lazy heh. I really only use it for the limiter. also it doesn't add digital haze either since it is just part of the original analog source. but I never had to mic a kit. I could see wanting a pair of those 4 ch rackmount comps. each mic gets its own comp channel.  so ok, buy me 8 mono Avalon channel strips please...

maybe I am learning why protools is worth x grand. almost anything you do to process digitally seems to fuck shit up on this cheap crap I have.

[Corey Y]

Man, I really should have noticed this thread earlier, haven't been online much in the last week.

I do a really rudimentary mastering on the demo tracks I post on my soundcloud. Usually at the very least I will just use a leveling compressor on the master buss, to bring the volume up without squashing everything too much. Other tracks, usually the ones that are full songs and not just tone/gear demos, I will actually do something more like a proper master. Generally some EQ from a channel strip plugin I have, then a multiband compressor, then the leveler. No matter what I generally try to keep a lot of headroom in my mixes, but that starts right from the beginning.

Regarding the whole thing about levels. The -18 to -12 dB is a good guideline for input signal on a digital meter. That has nothing to do with the faders and mixing, just the level you're getting from the mic/input into the preamp at the time you're recording. Every good mix starts there, because if you're clipping on the input you can never get rid of it without destroying a lot of the signal you want. If you record very quiet it's not a problem, you can turn up the faders and add some leveling on the master stereo track without any problems. Digital has a very low noise floor, so turning things up is never really a problem. Having too hot a signal is the problem with digital, because unlike analog digital clipping is TERRIBLE. Analog clipping tends to happen on a slower curve, it sounds more musical, people generally like it. Digital clipping sounds like white noise or nails on a chalkboard, it's awful. If you have the faders turned up too high and you're getting clipping, you can always turn them down, if it's in the recorded signal (because you recorded with the mic preamp turned up too high), you're stuck with it.

I do generally turn all my faders down when mixing, but that's more of a psychological cheat. Like setting your alarm clock ahead, so you wake up on time if you sleep in. The best way to look at mixing is to figure out what you want loudest in the mix and turn everything else DOWN. You don't want to keep creeping up and up on your overall levels, that's when the mastering tends to get squished and you get into that "loudness wars" sound. It's not adding a lot of volume that makes it sound bad, it's adding a lot of compression and reducing the overall dynamics of the sound. When I'm "mastering" my tracks that I post on here, I'm usually adding something like 12dB of volume to the stereo track, sometimes more. If you get to the end of your mixing session and it's not loud enough for your taste, you can always just turn up the levels of the individual tracks a little, before the leveling compression, and find a good balance of volume and compression that sounds good to your ear. Some compression is desirable, it adds some weight and density to the sound, but that's not always the thing that's needed or wanted.

Having an understanding of gain staging is a pretty critical skill for recording and mixing. Determining if you have too much or too little signal and where it needs to be changed to fix things. Part of that flow of signal is fixed, the part that happened before mixing (in the room, in the mic, in the preamp level). So yeah, to sum up:

- Keep your input level low (I usually go with -12db, there's no hard rule. Certain sources/mics/gear could require something different, you just don't want any clipping at your peak signal level)

- Instead of turning tracks that are too quiet UP, turn everything else DOWN.
     - Side note: If something is getting lost in the mix and you keep raising the relative volume, try panning or EQ to help it stand out. There's a lot of tracks in a typical mix, they can't all compete on loudness alone.

- Give yourself some headroom on your stereo track BEFORE mastering (at least a few dB at peak signal, depends on the mix, how loud it is and how loud you want it. Use your judgement).

- Add a leveler (brickwall limiter, mastering compressor, they go by a lot of different names. They're just a simplified compressor with the ratio set permanently to max) to the master buss (stereo output, if you don't have enough processing power to do it all at once, bounce your project to a stereo track and then master THAT, but you might have to go back and forth a few times when you're dialing everything in).
     - If you've maxed out of available signal boost and it's not loud enough, go back and turn your individual tracks UP a little (or send everything to a stereo buss before the master and turn that up, depending on what you can and/or know how to do with your DAW). If you're easily loud enough but everything sounds too compressed and squished, turn your individual tracks DOWN and adjust the boost on the leveler to taste.

[black aspirin]

Thanks for that, Corey Y.  Much appreciated, and I gotta say...everything you record sounds amazing to my ears.

[Corey Y]

Thanks for that, Corey Y.  Much appreciated, and I gotta say...everything you record sounds amazing to my ears.

No problem, thanks for the compliment. It's a skill like any other, just need a few fundamental principles and a lot of practice.