how to proffesional engineers get it so loud?

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idahoe

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Do they just compress it loads and limit it or do they do anything else?
and i dont mean why cant i do it with my behringer mixer and 1 week experience :D ?

But how do they do it?
 
Core sounds and arrangement aside - Without that, you have nothing.

They generally have ridiculous amounts of headroom at every stage in the game before it gets to the mastering guy (or gal).

The loudest mixes that come out of here are generally the ones that come in the quietest - I should say, the ones that come in at "normal" levels. A lot of "rookies" track too hot (which is shooting yourself in the foot before you even load the gun) and then mix too loud (shooting the other foot) and then wonder why the mastering guy can't "make it loud."

Well, there's no freakin' headroom in the signal. The signals were being overdriven from the very first step. Most of what I see people doing to get "hot" mixes will almost invariably backfire on them.
 
Massive Master said:
Core sounds and arrangement aside - Without that, you have nothing.

They generally have ridiculous amounts of headroom at every stage in the game before it gets to the mastering guy (or gal).

The loudest mixes that come out of here are generally the ones that come in the quietest - I should say, the ones that come in at "normal" levels. A lot of "rookies" track too hot (which is shooting yourself in the foot before you even load the gun) and then mix too loud (shooting the other foot) and then wonder why the mastering guy can't "make it loud."

Well, there's no freakin' headroom in the signal. The signals were being overdriven from the very first step. Most of what I see people doing to get "hot" mixes will almost invariably backfire on them.
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How much headroom would you reccomend, considering i do 'live music' and hardly ever deal with samples or midi. I split my tracks into busses quite often and hen reduce levels etc.. and i deal with quite a few tracks at a time, for example 9 seperate tracks just for drum kit etc..
 
Use your preamps as they're designed to and don't worry about the digital levels. At "normal" recording levels, you're going to find it difficult to clip.

If your preamps don't have VU meters, use -20 or -18dBFS as a reference. That's a good strong signal with a decent amount of headroom. Not a lot, but enough.

There's MUCH more to it than just getting proper gain-staging -

But the point is to get a great sound, and then not mess it up. Improper gain-staging is going to mess it up. Running it through a limiter is going to mess it up. Overcompression is going to mess it up. Any of a million things is going to mess it up.

Once it's messed up, it's hard to do *anything* postive to it besides making it "less irritating."
 
Its kind of funny really, a lot of it nowadays is "whos mix is the loudest?". I'm not disregarding some of the importancies in it, but sometimes you forget about the musicality, just my $0.02 there...
 
I couldn't agree more. There's one thing about this job that I couldn't have imagined 15 years ago. Back then, it really was about keeping it "acceptable" and "competitive" - Now, "acceptable" has taken on a whole new meaning... I mean, this has gone WAY overboard... It's horrible - Being all but "forced" to take perfectly decent sounding recordings and take them well beyond where they want to be... :(
 
Massive, you've been talking alot about leaving a bunch of headroom. How would one achieve this with the setup I've got running (see the sig).

It is basically a matter of getting my preamp feed into the computer as high as I can without tweaking anything in the virtual channel strips?

As I understand it theres the gain on the preamps on the firepod....there's also a gain on the virtual channel strip.

whats the process here?
 
scrubs said:
I'm still not quite clear on exactly why this is not called a limiter, but the pictures here aren't very pretty.
Click to expand...

Those are indeed ugly, looks like something I've done :D
 
MCreel said:
Massive, you've been talking alot about leaving a bunch of headroom. How would one achieve this with the setup I've got running (see the sig).

It is basically a matter of getting my preamp feed into the computer as high as I can without tweaking anything in the virtual channel strips?

As I understand it theres the gain on the preamps on the firepod....there's also a gain on the virtual channel strip.

whats the process here?
Click to expand...
I think there's a huge misunderstanding from a lot of people here -

I'm not talking about "leaving a bunch" of headroom - I'm talking about leaving a NORMAL amount of headroom. There's nothing abnormal about using gear the way it's designed to be used.

It *IS* abnormal to record signals that overdrive the preamps to get up 20dB hotter than nominal just to turn it down 20dB so you can mix it. This isn't anything new - The new part is everyone (no, not "everyone" but it seems that way sometimes) thinking that recording hot signals is going to make a hotter mix - It doesn't works that way.

How do you acheive it? Just like anything else. Everything else at unity, pre-gain up til the signal is riding around 0dBVU. No VU meters? Use -20 or -18dBFS. Keep the "bulk" of the signal around there.

Of course, mega-transient tracks - Percussion, etc. might require a slightly different approach even *with* VU meters (as they're too slow to read the transient). Make the absolute hottest peaks hit at around -12dBFS. Overheads can be recorded much lower (they normally are) - Maybe -30dBFS or so.

I don't mean to sound jaded, but this comes up a LOT lately - This is "day one" stuff... Operating levels and headroom - These are things that should be understood before even bothering to find out which end of the mic to sing into.

SOOOOO many people - Questions like "Why do my mixes sound 'smaller' than 'pro' mixes?" and "Why don't my mixes sound really clear like 'pro' mixes?" and "Why can't I get my mixes super loud like 'pro' mixes?" are so often followed by "I tracked everything as close to -0dBFS as I could without clipping..."

Here's a hint - Most "Pros" don't even *think* about approaching -0dBFS during tracking - OR mixing for that matter.

When you're tracking, you only have the headroom in the preamp once. If you push it, it's gone forever. If you push it in the preamp and then turn it down in the DAW, you haven't gained anything. The sound is damaged from the start. You've added distortion, you've lost clarity, you've lost focus, you've messed up the imaging, you've messed with dynamics (normally unevenly across the spectrum - The highs may get harsh, the lows may get "tubby" sounding, the mids may sound smeared - all pretty normal from running a preamp too hot). None of that is ever going to come back. It's harder to mix, it's harder to EQ, it's a pain to get a good stereo image (if you can at all) and it's noisy.

No, you don't get less noise from recording a hotter signal - You normally get MORE noise - as the preamp is making more noise overdriving the signal.

Sorry - I'm ranting again... Gotta run.
 
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It's so true. Honestly, -18dBFS might look small, but holy crap what a difference. I've been doing some songs with that proper gain staging and I went back and listened to some old mixes and I couldn't believe how BAD they sounded. Cranking the mix should be saved for mastering.
 
RideTheCrash said:
Cranking the mix should be saved for mastering.
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I'm not a fan of "self-mastering" - As in, I don't master my own mixes. But you're spot on there. Even if you're "home-brewing" from start to finish, the mix is going to have more options and the mastering should be little more than strapping a limiter across it (otherwise, you'd be better off going back into the mix anyway if you're working your own mixes) if the headroom is intact from start-to-finish.

As mentioned - You only get to screw up your headroom ONCE - Best to do it during the final stage as opposed to "every single chance you get."
 
scrubs said:
I'm still not quite clear on exactly why this is not called a limiter, but the pictures here aren't very pretty.
Click to expand...
erghh. thats not very pretty at all.
 
breeeeza said:
erghh. thats not very pretty at all.
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It certainly doesn't *look* pretty -

But if Ethan says it sounds good, you can normally take that to the bank.
 
Massive Master said:
It certainly doesn't *look* pretty -

But if Ethan says it sounds good, you can normally take that to the bank.
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of course i would be willing to give it a try, you never know but to me that really looks like the dynamics have been killed, not squashed. :cool:
 
Folks,

> Nice link. I'm going to have to try it out. I've never heard of this before. <

You can also do this manually in a program like Sound Forge. If there are only a few loud peaks that prevent raising the entire track level enough, select just the one portion that goes too high (or too low) being sure to set your editor program to bound the selection on zero crossings. Then lower the volume of just that small portion.

> I'm still not quite clear on exactly why this is not called a limiter, but the pictures here aren't very pretty <

It's not limiting becaue the volume reduction affects only single cycles, and the volume reduction has no time constant. A limiter drops the volume over time (0 to possibly a few seconds), and restores it over time (0.1 to a few seconds), but Peak Slammer or the equivalent manual editing changes the level instantly for just the offending portion.

Also, that "not pretty" screen shot could have been presented better. If you were to zoom in on the wave form you'd see that it's not really flat on top at all. That would be gross distortion! So it's a win-win all around. You can get a nice amount of volume increase, but with virtually no distortion or pumping artifacts (unless you apply too much).

--Ethan
 
Massive Master said:
Core sounds and arrangement aside - Without that, you have nothing.

They generally have ridiculous amounts of headroom at every stage in the game before it gets to the mastering guy (or gal).

The loudest mixes that come out of here are generally the ones that come in the quietest - I should say, the ones that come in at "normal" levels. A lot of "rookies" track too hot (which is shooting yourself in the foot before you even load the gun) and then mix too loud (shooting the other foot) and then wonder why the mastering guy can't "make it loud."

Well, there's no freakin' headroom in the signal. The signals were being overdriven from the very first step. Most of what I see people doing to get "hot" mixes will almost invariably backfire on them.
Click to expand...

what would you classify 'hot' as? i think im tracking to hot, my signals are peaking just below clipping. i think that might be too hot, and i cant get a decent mix.

on the other hand, if i make something using only midi, the levels are sorta pre-adjusted and those mixes sound great.
 
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