Recording level...

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I sort of inadvertantly hijacked the other thread so I thought I'd bring it here into it's own thread. Apologies!

This was my response:

Sorry for the delay in response! It's been a busy holiday...

Turning the track fader up about +9 to +12db (obviously not letting it clip) should let you hear it just as if it were normalized.

But when mixing, it is always recommended around here to mix to -12. +9 to +12db is a bit out of that ballpark.

Turn up your monitors. Your recording level and you playback volume have nothing to do with each other.

My Wharfie's are cranked. When mixing to -12 with a track recorded at -18 I can't hear the lows (drums and bass) well enough. And THAT is where I have the most problems getting a good, full sounding mix. I can't seem to get a mix to sound full UNLESS there is a comp across the bus. The lows always sound dead as hell.

There is also a zoom control for the waveform so you can see it.

Never thought of the zoom...

Who cares? Since when does the waveform - Especially on one individual track mean much of anything anyway?

I only mention the wavform being non-existant because literally EVERY example I see that shows a track, whether it is a pic or a vid, the wavform is VERY visible, where mine look like little dashes. So I figured that the examples show the way it is SUPPOSED to look. NOW, I wonder if there is something extremely wrong in my software setup somewhere.

On top of that, I've not seen a DAW that can't vertically zoom in on a waveform in over a decade.

Well, maybe the pics and vids that I've seen were zoomed in on?

Ok, I talked with Glen by phone and we went over my setup and we both came to the conclusion that something is wrong somewhere. We just couldn't figure out WHERE!!!!! I recorded a test track using a keyboard at -18. On playback, the actual levels were right around -30. Hmmmmm...

 

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This was Glen's response:

Just to detail that a bit more, I had 7 (Jeff) record a solid steady organ sound from his keyboard through his 2496 into his GTPro3 so that he'd get a fairly solid and regular RMS level with which to set his digital recording level.

Over the phone we went through all the gain stages on the digital side - including the Windows mixer, the control panel driver for his 2496, and his DAW software (GTPro 3) - and Jeff tells me he had all recording and playback sliders (track and master bus) set for unity gain.

The metering in GTPro 3 was set to show a range of 40dB at peak speed, and it showed him taking in and recordig a steady -18 to -20 dBFS from his keyboard through the 2496. The problem was his playback level was very quiet and registered on his meters at -30dBFS.

The question I have is what funk might be happening or set in GTPro 3 that would cause that discrepency in supposed record levels and playback levels?

I advised Jeff to update the drivers on his 2496 as well as check with some 2496 owners on a couple of driver settings that I didn't quite recognize - which I still recommend he do - but I can offhand see how that would cause the symptoms in GTPro that he is experiencing.

Anyone with any ideas or expereince with GTPro 3 that might be able to help?

G.

 

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And my reply to Piplineaudio:

is there a chance that some sort of panning rules are going on here? Though -18 is a lot more than the -6 I usually see.

No panning rules. The test that Glen and I did was straight up center.

See what happens in reaper, itll only take a second to download,k then you can configure the RMS meter in the master and look at peak and RMS at the same time

I recently moved out in the country and they barely have electricity here let alone high speed Internet. I hate dialup but believe it or not it's the ONLY thing available here so downloading anything takes about 3 days IF it downloads at all. Whenever I try to download one of Rami's songs in the clinic I get about 30 seconds into the download and then it says, "Download Complete." It gives me about 15 seconds of the song.

Otherwise stick a metering plugin inside gtp and see if you can find where in the chain it gets silly

Is there a master output meter in that app?

Yes there are master output meters.

Thanks!

 

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I advised Jeff to update the drivers on his 2496 as well as check with some 2496 owners on a couple of driver settings that I didn't quite recognize - which I still recommend he do - but I can offhand see how that would cause the symptoms in GTPro that he is experiencing.

G.

Well, that was fun. I spent all that time downloading the supposed driver from M-Audio's website. I ran the setup and it DELETED the driver that I have and that was it!!! So I either had to do a system restore to yesterday or go through about 40 unpacked boxes to find the install disc that came with the card. Guess which I did?

 

[pipelineaudio]

I recently moved out in the country and they barely have electricity here let alone high speed Internet. I hate dialup but believe it or not it's the ONLY thing available here so downloading anything takes about 3 days IF it downloads at all. Whenever I try to download one of Rami's songs in the clinic I get about 30 seconds into the download and then it says, "Download Complete." It gives me about 15 seconds of the song.

Use a downloader with resume. You are in luck, REAPER is TINY

However, Wavosaur is even tinier and should be able to get you figured out.

Dialup takes about 3 minutes for reaper and 30 seconds for wavosaur

http://www.wavosaur.com/download.php