Gain VS the fader and bounce questions

[Vario]

Hi all,

I am in doubt about a couple of things.
I am trying to get my song ready to mix and was told it's good to render/bounce out the tracks at -12db to preserve some headroom.
Steps before I start to mix: Render all VSTi and midi tracks to audio tracks so I can slam them with VST plug ins if needed.

My questions are?
1. Do I need to lower the sample gain meter to -12db or the actual channel fader? Do you always keep you sample gain meter on 0db?
2.When I am EQ-ing let's say a kick drum. The master bus or the channel bus do not go in red but the EQ VU does. Am I in red or not?
3. Explain headroom to me please. In what situation do you need this? I was always assuming that the headroom was to make EQ-ing more easy. I thought that it was because of the headroom i could make the different frequencies volumes up without hitting 0db right away. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Extra information:

I am using Ableton live 8 and/or Cubase 5
Track needs to be mixed to be mastered later.

Hope I make sense

P.S Sorry if this is in the wrong thread.

 

[mjbphotos]

You would do better to put this in the 'Mixing' section of this forum.

 

[jjjtttggg]

I'm afraid I don't completely understand question 1. Please give some more details. I will say that unless you are going to send your track(s) out to somebody else for mastering, there is no reason to stay at -12 for the final mix. for the final mix, you can boost up to as near to zero as you can get without actually getting there. There's lots of debate around here about whether/how much you should compress your final mix (or pieces of it) to increase the average loudness of your track, but I think most folks would agree that even if you don't compress at all, or compress only slightly, the peaks in the final mix should be close to zero. It won't actually affect the sound/quality of the song one way or the other (compression DOES, but not just scale the peak level up). It will just affect how loud your track sounds in comparison with other tracks out there. If you leave it at -12, somebody listening to it will have to crank the volume knob a bit to get it to a "normal" listening level, and then the next track they play will be too loud and they'll need to turn it down. (Actually, in comparison with most commercial recordings this will be they case anyway, because they are usually pretty heavily compressed so that even the "Quiet" parts are loud, but that's getting into the debate I referred to above.) If you don't have any or don't have much compression and your peaks are at -12, your track will seem very quiet in comparison with most other recorded material.

As for your question 2. I don't know what DAW you are using, but I think they're probably all the same: If you EVER see a meter go into the red, you need to do something about it. The meter is just reflecting a number that reflects the value of the audio waveform at that moment. That number has a fixed maximum level. It cannot and will not go above this level. A Red light mean you've hit the maximum. Unless, you just happened to exactly nail it such that for the single instant, the maximum value was EXACTLY what the waveform wanted the number to be, which is really unlikely, then you'll have shaved a piece of the waveform peak off, because for whatever length of time the waveform "wanted" to be beyond the maximum, it will be flatlined just AT the max value. Wherever and whenever this happens, it is bad thing. If it happens in your EQ, the waveform is now clipped. Even if a subsequent step scales it back down so that your master meter says it's ok, it will still be clipped. You'll just have a quieter clipped waveform now.

So. . . To put it more succintly...If there's a red light anywhere, anytime you should do something about it.

J

 

[jjjtttggg]

PS - again I don't quite understand the question, but I just re-read it and have another idea as to what you might mean... If your individual tracks are already recorded, you don't need (or want) to render them individually at a different level. Just mix them as they are, and then render the entire mix as your final track. If they are not recorded yet, you DO want to record them at somethng like -12. Once they're recorded, they are what they are. There's no need to rescale them. If you find your faders at their extreme's (can happen if you have one really quiet track, for example, and the rest at normal levels or vice-versa), look for a gain setting somewhere in the DAW that will let you boost or cut the track pre-fader.