Audio Density

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charon17

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I've have a DAW which I am quite pleased with in many respects, but there is one thing which bothers me. It seems that the audio which I record is not "dense" enough to compare to music which is professionally recorded. I've compared the waveforms of my music to those of professional songs and find that while the waveform of music I've recorded may appear to be louder (i.e. its larger) than the waveform of a professional song, there is no doubt that the professional audio is much louder. :( I have an Mackie 1202VLZpro which I run into an audiophile 24/96. All of my instruments seem to produce inefficient waveforms but for some odd reason my VCR (which I use to generate samples) produces a highly efficient waveform (small and loud). To me this signifies that there is nothing wrong with my soundcard or my mixer, but indeed something is wrong with the way the instruments are interacting with the mixer. I understand that the output impedance of an instrument must be lower than the input impedance of the mixer for the audio fidelity to be high; I also understand this can be accomplished using a direct box. What I am not certain of is whether this is the source of my problem. If some one would kindly illuminate me with regards to this issue I would be most gracious.

:)
 
If getting professional sound was as easy as coordinating your mixer with your VCR, studios would be out of business.

Stick around a while, youre sure to learn something useful. You sound like youve just begun your journey.


Briefly, youre source and signal chain have everything to do with what you eventually end up with.
 
but..

A friend of mine recently started to record with his computer. With less experience than I have and a less costly set up he recorded stuff which had that "dense" sound I am after. He plugged his keyboard directly into his sound card and used a peavy bass amp as a preamp for his mic, guitar, and bass. His success frustrates me because of the ease with which he surpassed me in the audio domain. If he can produce professional sound with very little, why can't I with better equipment?

No one on this board seems to understand what I'm talking about when I speak of dense audio - it would be really nice if someone would try to tackle this problem for me. For example, if someone could discuss at length the effect on the recorded signal of using a direct box it would be much appreciated.
 
Taking a guess at what you're after, here are a couple things...

1) -- Visuals--
The waveform you're looking at represents volume. That's it. Tall ones are loud, short ones are soft. As a very basic example, heavy rock songs without a lot of dynamics are going to look fairly even while jazz tunes will go up & down.

2) Effects like compression help to "even out" the audio, and consequently the waveforms that represent them. This site has very good articles about compression (way too much to explain here).

The long & short of it is that if you record your tracks too low, or mixdown too low, your audio is going to sound thin and the waveforms will be small. When I'm tracking, I usually try to make sure that the loudest thing I'll be recording hits somewhere around -6db. More or less the same thing when I'm exporting a mixdown.

One more thing... if you need to normalize your tracks to get them loud enough to mix, you recorded them too low to begin with. Avoid normlizing.
 
I've compared the waveforms of my music to those of professional songs and find that while the waveform of music I've recorded may appear to be louder (i.e. its larger) than the waveform of a professional song, there is no doubt that the professional audio is much louder. I have an Mackie 1202VLZpro which I run into an audiophile 24/96.
Click to expand...

How do you measure "louder"?

If you mean overall dynamics of the song, then yes, Professionally mastered music is indeed "louder" than your home recordings. But then you said:

All of my instruments seem to produce inefficient waveforms but for some odd reason my VCR (which I use to generate samples) produces a highly efficient waveform (small and loud).
Click to expand...

Sorry, but a waveform can't be both small AND loud.:(

I think you must mean that the samples are compressed, because VCR audio, especially if from TV programs you've recorded, is highly compressed for broadcast. This means that waveforms it generates will appear very even and smooth overall. How large or small they appear will be due to the record level you had set when recording them.

Maybe you just need to use some compression to get the sound you want. Learn as much as you can on this subject. Overuse of compression is a big mistake people make when starting out.

He plugged his keyboard directly into his sound card and used a peavy bass amp as a preamp for his mic, guitar, and bass.
Click to expand...

Wow, I'm surprised that this actually sounded good! Maybe your friend used the compressor on the bass amp to get that "dense" sound you're after. Sounds to me like he got lucky and hit everything just right.
 
It sounds like you are talking about how compressed the waveforms are, if you mean that pro audio has very little difference in height between the peaks and the average levels, and yours has a rather large 'height' difference, then that is simply a result of how much compression was used on the audio.

A lot of mastering engineers are being pushed to make commercially released CDs as loud as they possibly can, but being louder than the next guy isn't necessarily a good thing since you can loose all the dynamics of the song.
 
There are two ways of measuring the signal strength. There is Peak method (how high do the lines go on the waveform) and the RMS method (this is an average of the strength and it is where the dense part of the waveform is).

The way to get more RMS is with compression and the way to get your peaks closer to the RMS is with limiting.
 
Yeah I use to have a problem with my waveforms...Then i started coming to this bbs and somehow by reading almost every post there is, I suddenly got much better. Try that. Good luck. Have fun
 
For all those interested...

http://us.share.geocities.com/mewpike/samplemu.wav

Here is a sample of my music (I hope the link works). Feel free to scrutinize and analyze the waveform, find out for me if it is "healthy" or producing a reasonable volume for its waveform size. Any suggestions on how I can improve my recording technique are appreciated.

:)

Thanks to all those who have tried to assist a nescient acolyte in home studio production.

:cool:

Charon

If the above link does not work, please try
http://www.angelfire.com/musicals/mewpike/samplemu.wav
 
your waveform is getting the right amount of volume, that is relatively uncompressed compared to pro stuff. One thing you should realize when you talk about density of audio is that low end takes many more decibels to produce the same audible level, if you put a low cut on there, or even just take out a little, because there is a lot of bass, you will notice that the overall waveform will be smaller without a change in the volume of the other stuff. That will alow you to raise the overall volume a little more, so in the same size waveform, everything will seem louder, but with less bass.

The density you're talking about probably has something to do with frequency balances

Eric
 
I noticed that the bass spiked a couple of times. It's probably keeping your signal from being recorded as hot as it can be. Recording the bass through a hardware limiter and maximizing your gain while tracking will probably help.

Keep in mind, when you're comparing the visuals of your waveforms to the ones from industry pros, you need to compare similar audio. Put that next to the latest Incubus CD, and it's going to look completely different because the sound is completely different. I don't think you're as far off base as you might think.
 
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