Getting The Right Volumes...

[gkowal]

guys ok some of you know how to make a good quality TRACK in a home studio of yours.. I am having problems with gatting that good QUALITY because i am still missing Studio monitors ( which AFTER such a long waiting i will have in about 2 weeks), but you guys know some tricks with mixing right?..
I read few articles about compression and Eq's and other stuff but none of them talk about VOLUMES...
In trance music what should be the loudest sound if you look in DB? Kick? The loudest sound should be at around -3db right? Should that be the kick? what about snare and hihats and LEADS and PADS and other addons you have? There has to be some sort of RULE with that? When you compress tracks you still won`t get a good result if you have wrong VOLUMES... Can somebody who does their mixing and mastering home look at your DB meters and tell me where does kick, snare, hihat , leads, pads reach on DB meter?

 

[nessbass]

I think you don't really want to know how other people mix their music, 'cause that just wouldn't help you mixing YOUR music. Mixing depends on so many variables, that there is just no point in comparing relative levels between songs. Try listening to music you know and think of as being good and comparable in style and try to listen to RELATIONS. How loud is the bass relative to the drums, especially the kick? How loud is the vocal relative to e.g. the snare or relative to guitar/keyboard parts? And I'm not talking about dB values here, listen how loud it sounds. I think I'm not of much help here, so I better shut up.

David.

 

[TexRoadkill]

The problem with trying to use the meters for mixing is that there are two levels that really effect the perceived loudness of a track. The Peak level and the RMS (average). The RMS is what really makes a track seem loud but if you go by meters then you are only taking the peaks into account.

There are no easy tricks. You just have to trust your monitors and ears.

 

[LI_Slim]

If you are assuming that the volume levels necessarily control how prominent a given instrument/vocal will be in the mix, you are making a natural but incorrect assumption. Placement in the frequency and/or stereo field is also very important. You have to think of the entire process.

Keeping that in mind, it is indeed a good idea to have things peaking at approximately -3db (although in the home recording context -1 or -6 is probably going to be fine too), so you are not distorting or leaving yourself no headroom, while not recording so low that you will increase the noise when bringing everything up at the end.

Once you have everything in its place, then you can you a limiter to bring everything up to whatever level you like.