Implications of not recording hot enough

I suppose there's two kinds of 'not hot enough'.

In my experience, tracking with the preamp too low, resulting in a signal that's not hot enough usually means that you're more likely to introduce noise when boosting the signal later.
The reason for that being that the signal level is much closer to the noise floor than it should be.

The other kind is not having the source loud enough, which I've learned can really just make things sound weak and pathetic.

Whether it's half assed vocals or a guitar amp turned down low, turning the software track up never sounds the same as capturing it louder.

I don't know how useful that is to you, but that's my experience.
 
ryukahr said:
But then the car. It sounded terrible above ~50% volume, but under that it sounded great.
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This has nothing to do with the levels you recorded at. Without hearing your mix I can only guess, and you didn't say in what way the mix sounds bad as it gets louder. But you may have too much deep bass, below 100 Hz. That causes mixes to sounded bloated and distorted at high playback volumes.

--Ethan
 
ryukahr said:
I'm wondering if the people here think that makes sense. I'm prepared to go rerecord everything, because what good is a mix that can't be cranked in the car?
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Makes no sense. A good mix will sound good everywhere, at least to the degree the system allows. If other stuff sounds good in the car and your mix doesn't then your mix isn't right yet. A good mix can be made loud with the right finishing processes.

Headphones and computer speakers won't reveal things that might cause trouble on other systems. What monitors are you using to mix? What is the room like?
 
It depends whether you're talking analogue or digital, If your recording into a DAW then your recording peaks should be around -12 db, any higher than this is too hot.
 
It is highly unlikely that recording at too low a level will cause problems. The chances are you haven't got the balance right in mixing, or your recording was not right at the source. If you are finding when the volume is boosted in your car and it turns to custard it will be your overall frequency balance that is not right, meaning your low mids and bass become preceived as louder and turn things to mush. Setting recording and mixing levels is important, and I have written a tutorial on that Record with sensible gain staging and this greatly helps to get things sounding right, but having good monitoring and recording/mixing in well treated rooms is also important to get your mixes to sound right.
Mastering is then the final chance to get the overall sound and balance right.
 
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