tracking
- Thread starter cabbage
- Start date
scrubs
Not of sound mind
cabbage said:
No, that's not o.k.
When you are recording to a digital medium, recording a hot signal (close to 0dB) is not nearly as important as with analog. Depending on the bit-depth you are recording (16 bit, 24 bit, etc.) you will be using up all your bits well before you hit 0 dB. Also, you never want to hit 0dB on a digital track, as it will cause nasty clipping (distortion). Recording with peaks in the -6dB range will leave you enough headroom that you won't be in danger of clipping.
Also, when you mix down multiple tracks, the volumes of the various components will be added together, resulting in a combined volume that is higher than any of the individual tracks (called summing). If you don't leave yourself some headroom when tracking, you'll have to turn the individual tracks down when mixing or you'll overload the master bus, again resulting in distortion.
If you plan to have your songs mastered professionally, you should also leave some headroom on the final mix, so that the mastering engineer can apply appropriate EQ, compression, and limiting to the track to bring it up to a more commercial volume level. If the tracks you send for mastering are pushing 0dB already, there won't be much the mastering engineer can do without causing more distortion.
If you have tracks peaking at -3db, that's o.k., as long as they aren't peaking at 0db. You can turn the entire track down and/or apply some gentle compression to the peaks.