can't get the kick level high enough w/o clipping

  • Thread starter Thread starter Vurt
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Vurt

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I consistenty have problems getting the kick up far enough into the mix. The recording of it sounds good, but when I try to bring it up into the whole mix, it clips out on the individual track meter before it's loud enough. Compression helps, but not enough. The Master L/R meter doesn't clip, but then again, it *never* does, so I don't trust it. I can boost the kick track enough to where it sounds good through the monitors, but I'm worried about the clipping.

thoughts?
 
Normalize the kick track, that should boost the signal up as high as it will go without clipping..

My guess. :)
 
No, No, NO!

do not normalize......

this is the perfect job for a limiter in my opinion......
 
Sounds possibly like everything else in the mix is up too much. If the kick won't come up (you're already using compression), bring everything else down. Everyone has there own mixing style, I start with the drums, making sure that the kick and snare have plenty of power. Then I bring up bass and start filling in everything else.
 
Bring everything else down...that brings up another point.

I posted a while back about what I found to work with my 4 track: blasting the master level and then bringing up everything else until it sound good. No more distorted tunes. Some people said though that the further I was from 0, the more I was cheating my sound. So, here I am again. How far down is too far?

I tried a limiter and it sounded good, but the track was still clipping pretty hard. It's normalizing right now for comparison. God this thing takes a hell of long time to normalize a track (Korg D1600).
 
Forgot to mention - of 16 tracks, not one of them is even up to 0! I've got the monitors going strong, how can they all be too high?
 
If the kick isn't hot enough, what choice is there but to grab everything else and pull them all down equally. It's easy to let everything work it's way up untill there's no head room left.

<I can boost the kick track enough to where it sounds good through the monitors, but I'm worried about the clipping. >
We are talking about the kick's mixer track maxing out right?
 
yes, the kick's track will definitely max out. It's not a question of whether it's hot enough - it is. I'm working on it now and it sounds pretty good, but I've pulled everything down to match it. I'll put it online soon.
 
The composite power of the sum of all the tracks can saturate the mix buss, leaving you with no headroom (all dressed up with nowhere to go).
 
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Could some eq fix this. If it were clipping in a narrow frequency band, I might cut those frequencies a bit. Just an idea.

Matty
 
That's great, Gidge... thanks. I'll try it out the next time I have some time.
 
You can bring out the kick without messing with any levels.

Figure out where your kick lies in the frequency spectrum, usually it's between 64 hz or 80 hz. Cut about 3-5 db of this (narrow) frequency range from any other "bassy" tracks, like keys or bass guitar.

What I'm saying is there may be some other instruments hogging up the 64-80 hz range, making it difficult for the kick sound to "come out" or have any distinction in the mix. This might be forcing you to continually boost the kick in order to hear it, untill you wind up clipping.

Just a thought.
 
<https://homerecording.com/bbs/showth...&threadid=26731

Attachment: cix7's initial mixdown settings.txt
This has been downloaded 21 time(s).>

This seems pretty weird to me. Having some nominal volume settings to start with makes sense, but to automatically dump a bunch of eq on? Isn't that like assuming the tracks weren't recorded well to begin with? Or is it just a 'style' thing?
 
I didn't follow any of the eq or fx settings, but using the levels as a reference point helped did the trick.
 
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