Post fader levels

S

stainlessbrown

New member
OK- I come from an "old school" tape background where near saturation was the goal for signal levels. With digital, the consensus (amoung those in the know) is -16dB - -14dB so tere's plenty of room for compression.

Based on some rather "ugly" sessions I've done with respect to clipping and distortion I'm thinking this is true- but there's a concern about having a strng enough final mix/master

I've switched tomonitoring post fader levels, but should I be more concerned with pre-fader levels?

Trying to get a grip....
 
now that's what I have been doing, but a number of folks (elsewhere, other forums... as well as an aquaintance (can't quite call him a friend)) suggest lower levels to leave room for EQ boost, Compression, Reverb/delay, etc) with their logic being that headroom is needed for the mastering....

So do you monitor pre or post fader?
 
My setup is kind of different.

I record using Logic but I have a digital mixer on the front end of that, so I send each channel out of Logic and control the levels at the mixer, but I have the ability to control the levels at either.

What's your setup look like?
 
Personally, I do not blindly track as hot as I can without clipping for a different reason. Every converter is calibrated for it's own levels when comparing to analog. The average seems to be about -18. This means that on a digital system, -18 would correspond to the analog meter's 0. A lot of equipment out there (well most of it) has been designed for your average level to be about analog 0. I see a lot of people tracking to digital using a compressor to tame peaks and peak levels at -3 or so, with the average level being only a little below that thanks to the compression. Even if their average level were as low as -10, that means there analog preamps are hovering around +8, or maybe even +10 when you factor in the compression. For a lot of preamps, this does not leave a whole lot of room and often is well into the point where the preamp starts to change its character and gets noisier. People are right to assume that converters do a better job when you hit them harder and use more bits etc... etc... etc... However, how great is that difference in reality? As far as I am concerned, that difference is not nearly as big as the differnce in sound quality from a constant and consistent overworking of the preamps and gain staging of the analog circuitry. What good is having slightly better conversion when all it does it more accurately converts a signal that is not really the proper signal to begin with? I do agree that for certain tracks hitting a preamp hard is cool. But every track? No thanks. Especially with cheaper preamps (M audio, Mackie, Allen Heath etc...) when you push them past their sweet spot, the signal degredation is more abrupt and it falls apart pretty quick. With most preamps, staying in the reccomended range will often increase things like dynamic response, perceived depth of a track, minimal noise etc...

With analog, levels in a mix can not blindly be turned up. Every bit of analog circuitry makes some noise so tracking to quietly and then slamming it with gain in a mixdown can certainly cause issues with s/n ratios and just plain old backround noise. With digital, it's pretty easy. By digitally gaining up a few dB, all you are adding as far as noise to a track is the noise that was already there (interpreted by the converters in the A/D stage. I find tracking with proper levels does not cause me problems in a mixdown. I have no problems getting my unmastered mixes to the level they need to be. I also find that the tracks are a little easier to work with. Maybe thats just me, but the manufacturers semm to think the same as well;)
 
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