Doubling tracks for volume

[pappy999]

Hello,
I have been trying to master a recently recorded album and discovered that if you use two identical 24 bit stereo mixes to bounce to one stereo mix, the result is a louder somewhat compressed final track that sounds almost as compressed as a commercial CD. I did this on all ten songs of the album with no digital clipping or distortion. Does anyone else do this? Are there any negatives I should look out for?

I am using Pro tools LE if anyone was wondering.

[Ford Van]

Uhhhhhhh...so double posting make your post twice as right?

Go read your other thread bub.

[pipelineaudio]

believe it or not I actually lose business to people who do stuff like this, when they charge one tenth of our price

[Ford Van]

I think you might still be able to delete this thread dood.

[Raw-Tracks]

YUP! 1+1 still = 2!

[pipelineaudio]

Originally Posted by Raw-Tracks

YUP! 1+1 still = 2!

Technically in this case (some DSP guy is going to bust my balls!!!), I think it is actually

(1 + 1) / number of channels = 1

[LordSire]

anytime ive ever done this, all i heard was a difference in volume. I'm not hearing the compression part at all. Matter of fact, i heard no difference, then if i just turned up my original track twice as loud.

[Raw-Tracks]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

Technically in this case (some DSP guy is going to bust my balls!!!), I think it is actually

(1 + 1) / number of channels = 1

No. If you sum 2 channels of the exact same audio, it will be 6dB louder. 6dB is the same as multiplying the signal times 2. Always has, always will be (I hope).

[pipelineaudio]

see I knew I would blow that

going to #musicdsp foir the real formula lol

I suck

(dB1 + dB2) / (dB1 * dB2)

I think

probably wrong again

[giraffe]

so how many tracks of the same thing do i need if i want it 5 times as loud?







for the record, i'm in favor of eugenics

[LeeRosario]

Well there's no real benefit to doing that. Basically you're just having two identical waves reinforce each other, along the same lines of turning up the volume. Except with other serious drawbacks. Unless you had a compressor on your master fader, I don't know how the songs got compressed.

A short true story if you will:

I worked under a very misguided producer who seperated his stereo mixes into two mono tracks. He then assigned outputs 1-2 AES/EBU to the left mono track and 3-4 to the right into a masterlink. He then recorded this musical atrocity into the masterlink. He did this because "it widens up the sound, dude!". Along the way, he also managed to do about a million sample rate conversions to finally end up with 16-bit 44.1 audio. All in stunningly distroyed fidelity.

The end result was the worst thing I had ever witnessed in music production history. Not only did it throw a beatuifully mixed song out of whack, he was convinced it was the best thing since sliced bread. Those songs are still packed in the deepest archives of hell, untouched and unheard.

The moral of the story is, if someone is so anxious to make something sound wide and loud as #%$#, without the mastering engineer and considering natural dynamics and phase correlation, then your better off with an L2 and stereo expanding. Both equally dangerous in the wrong hands.


However, I didn't mean to scare you with that story!