Alrighty.
I've done lots of investigating, reading, and recording lately and i've stumbled upon a concern.
My band is tracking a cd @ 24bit/44.1kHz. We're doing it ourselves and learning A LOT in the process. I've been enjoying it so far...but a couple things are bugging me now that we're nearing end game in the tracking portion.
We've so far tracked drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar.
The good news is, the acoustic, drums, bass, clean guitar, and some dirty guitar were all tracked where each track's RMS is probably around -9 to -12dbFS. We're probably peaking these individual tracks, depending on the track, around -3 to -6dbFS.
The bad news is we tracked most of the dirty guitar parts really hot. I don't know why...(inexperience)...but regardless, we did. The worst of these tracks have RMS of probably -3 to -4dbFS at times...probably peaking near -1 to -3dbFS. Now...my guitarist is very pleased with the sound of these tracks. I have alterior concerns...and they lie in our soon to be mixing process. Before we tracked him, I didn't see us needing to compress his electric gutiar work and he's very pleased with the tone/eq of his guitar rig, so I don't anticipate any real mix-down processing, save for level adjustments.
I've been reading a lot by John Scrip from massivemastering and I've become concerned with the possibility we've inadvertantly shot ourselves in the foot by recording these guitar parts hot. Now, they aren't clipping, but as I understand, we've probably introduced noise & reduced clarity by turing up the gain pots on the pre-amp.
My concern lies in the available headroom I'm intending to have on my mixes to be sent for mastering. My goal is to be having peaks around -6dbFS as so far, most of my recording is going to allow me to do so. To achieve this, I'll obviously be turning our dirty guitar WAY down in the mix.
So, my real question is this:
If most of my tracks have a built in headroom since I tracked them properly and I plan on having the overall headroom of at least 6db in the final mix before mastering, will not having the headroom in the guitar tracks have an adverse affect in the headroom of the total mixed stereo image? Furthermore, if these tracks do sit nicely in the mix, even though we must turn them down, should I concern myself with the woulda/coulda/shoulda?
note: we're not on a schedule, so the end result may be us having to re-track these louder guitar parts (i'd say about 5 hours of tracking)...i'm okay with this if necessary.
thanks for all the great information you guys have and have had at my disposal!
- j
I've done lots of investigating, reading, and recording lately and i've stumbled upon a concern.
My band is tracking a cd @ 24bit/44.1kHz. We're doing it ourselves and learning A LOT in the process. I've been enjoying it so far...but a couple things are bugging me now that we're nearing end game in the tracking portion.
We've so far tracked drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar.
The good news is, the acoustic, drums, bass, clean guitar, and some dirty guitar were all tracked where each track's RMS is probably around -9 to -12dbFS. We're probably peaking these individual tracks, depending on the track, around -3 to -6dbFS.
The bad news is we tracked most of the dirty guitar parts really hot. I don't know why...(inexperience)...but regardless, we did. The worst of these tracks have RMS of probably -3 to -4dbFS at times...probably peaking near -1 to -3dbFS. Now...my guitarist is very pleased with the sound of these tracks. I have alterior concerns...and they lie in our soon to be mixing process. Before we tracked him, I didn't see us needing to compress his electric gutiar work and he's very pleased with the tone/eq of his guitar rig, so I don't anticipate any real mix-down processing, save for level adjustments.
I've been reading a lot by John Scrip from massivemastering and I've become concerned with the possibility we've inadvertantly shot ourselves in the foot by recording these guitar parts hot. Now, they aren't clipping, but as I understand, we've probably introduced noise & reduced clarity by turing up the gain pots on the pre-amp.
My concern lies in the available headroom I'm intending to have on my mixes to be sent for mastering. My goal is to be having peaks around -6dbFS as so far, most of my recording is going to allow me to do so. To achieve this, I'll obviously be turning our dirty guitar WAY down in the mix.
So, my real question is this:
If most of my tracks have a built in headroom since I tracked them properly and I plan on having the overall headroom of at least 6db in the final mix before mastering, will not having the headroom in the guitar tracks have an adverse affect in the headroom of the total mixed stereo image? Furthermore, if these tracks do sit nicely in the mix, even though we must turn them down, should I concern myself with the woulda/coulda/shoulda?
note: we're not on a schedule, so the end result may be us having to re-track these louder guitar parts (i'd say about 5 hours of tracking)...i'm okay with this if necessary.
thanks for all the great information you guys have and have had at my disposal!
- j
).
