I canNOT figure this out! Help!

[O_O_Stro]

I need some help solving a problem that's been frustrating me for quite a while, especially because I'm not at all a technician. There's some serious volume-related miscommunication happening between my Mackie Onyx 1220 and my DAW.

The problem is that everything I try to record into the digital domain sounds really, really quiet when I play it back - even if WaveLab's green meters clip to yellow (they do this past -5 dB) and cause distortion.

A recorded .wav file played back sounds loud enough when listened to through the mixer's headphone jack, but when listened to by itself (e.g., on a CD-R), it sounds like the volume's been turned halfway down. Also, recordings with "correct" volumes, such as the chime of an instant message, sound excruciatingly loud through the same jack.

This is driving me crazy. I've tried fooling with every setting I could, both in WaveLab and on the Onyx 1220 itself. After much wasted time, digital recordings still don't sound like much of anything without a bunch of artificial volume-boosting measures.

If someone here could help me solve this irritating riddle, I'd be most appreciative, because there's obviously a piece of the A/D puzzle I'm just not getting. How do CD's recorded in studios sound as loud as they do? Magic wands?

 

[drossfile]

I need some help solving a problem that's been frustrating me for quite a while, especially because I'm not at all a technician. There's some serious volume-related miscommunication happening between my Mackie Onyx 1220 and my DAW.

The problem is that everything I try to record into the digital domain sounds really, really quiet when I play it back - even if WaveLab's green meters clip to yellow (they do this past -5 dB) and cause distortion.

A recorded .wav file played back sounds loud enough when listened to through the mixer's headphone jack, but when listened to by itself (e.g., on a CD-R), it sounds like the volume's been turned halfway down. Also, recordings with "correct" volumes, such as the chime of an instant message, sound excruciatingly loud through the same jack.

This is driving me crazy. I've tried fooling with every setting I could, both in WaveLab and on the Onyx 1220 itself. After much wasted time, digital recordings still don't sound like much of anything without a bunch of artificial volume-boosting measures.

If someone here could help me solve this irritating riddle, I'd be most appreciative, because there's obviously a piece of the A/D puzzle I'm just not getting. How do CD's recorded in studios sound as loud as they do? Magic wands?

your mixer's headphone jack has an amplifying potentiometer built into it, so you are turning up the volume on that and deceiving yourself into thinking that your recording is that loud.

imagine you're looking at a 4x6 picture of a tree all by itself, with no reference point to give you any idea of how large the tree is in real life. you may think it's 20 feet tall, but you have no real frame of reference, only an assumption of how tall it "looks" in the picture. if you see another picture of the same tree with a man standing beside it, you find that the tree is actually 200 feet tall.

think of the tracks as your tree, and the im chime as the man standing next to the tree.

i'm not sure that made any sense at all, but hope it helps.

you can try an experiment: take an rca stereo to 1/4 stereo female adapter and plug your headphones into your master outs. compare that to what you have coming out of your headphone jack. i'm guessing you'll discover that you're able to crank a lot more volume out of the jack with its volume knob than you can with the master fader(s) to the main outs.

commercial cds are so much louder for 2 reasons: professional equipment puts out more clean amplitude than "pro-sumer" gear, and modern recordings get the crap squashed out of them in the mastering stage. this "loudness war" is another topic altogether, and i'm not even going to get into that now.

there's a member here who knows a whole lot about this stuff (southside glen), and here's some great info from his website that may help you understand your dilemma:

http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/metergain/index.htm

good luck!

 

[pipelineaudio]

Put a tone of known volume in your daw, play it out and wire the output to your input, see if the level coming back into your DAW is the same.




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[mixsit]

Is this with the fire wire interface? Mackie gain stages nominal 0db analog to equal around -18dbfs or so IIRC -as it should. It sets you up with tracks with the headroom to mix with. This is nowhere near -or even relates to the levels of a squashed maxed out commercial mix.

 

[O_O_Stro]

Ay de mi.

drossfile, I understand what you're getting at, but I don't think it's the mixer's headphone volume that's tricking me, because that isn't what I use as a frame of gain reference. I did try listening through the mixer's main outs rather than the headphone jack, but imagine for a second that headphones aren't even involved, to see what I mean.

Rather, I use WaveLab's meters themselves as a reference, which clearly say "any more gain and there'll be clipping" when reading a cassette (-6 dB, or the top of the green range). If I crank the gain any further, yellow appears and distortion happens. So I record at levels just beneath that yellow threshold.

The resulting visual waves of the recording, too, are almost tall (loud) enough to reach the top of the window, like they should, yet the sound is so lacking. The point, though, is that WaveLab authentically says "this is reasonable volume" even if the mixer's headphone jack says that falsely.

Of course there's a difference between the strength of studio sound and bedroom sound, but I doubt it would be this dramatic. Records that my friends have made in their bedrooms sounded fine.

I'm trying to make sense of the link you provided, but it's pretty hard to comprehend. I just play music, and couldn't have imagined what a throbbing headache it would be to try and learn to record it with the most basic of set-ups. Holy cow.

Is this with the fire wire interface? Mackie gain stages nominal 0db analog to equal around -18dbfs or so IIRC -as it should. It sets you up with tracks with the headroom to mix with. This is nowhere near -or even relates to the levels of a squashed maxed out commercial mix.

Mixsit, are you saying that all this very expensive piece of equipment does with its A/D conversion abilities is to give me some half-cooked .wav still meant to be dealt with by a producer before it sounds listenable? Geez! All I wanted was something I could play into and hear back what I'd played, I don't even want to mix - just to record!

Also, I'm afraid I really don't know what you mean by "nominal 0dB analog to equal around -18 dBfs or so".

 

[mixsit]

Of course there's a difference between the strength of studio sound and bedroom sound, but I doubt it would be this dramatic. Records that my friends have made in their bedrooms sounded fine.
I'm trying to make sense of the link you provided, but it's pretty hard to comprehend. I just play music, and couldn't have imagined what a throbbing headache it would be to try and learn to record it with the most basic of set-ups. Holy cow.

Mixsit, are you saying that all this very expensive piece of equipment does with its A/D conversion abilities is to give me some half-cooked .wav still meant to be dealt with by a producer before it sounds listenable? Geez! All I wanted was something I could play into and hear back what I'd played, I don't even want to mix - just to record!

No, that is not the case at all. In fact these tools we have for us now are fine -bargin frikin fantastic' comparred to just not long ago!
What's going on here is mostly just about relative levels, and diferent amounts of peak vs average signal.

Also, I'm afraid I really don't know what you mean by "nominal 0dB analog to equal around -18 dBfs or so".

The analog parts are designed to work around an average level around '0 on the mixer or channel. The digital converter is designed so that that 0' level comes in at around -18 below full scale in digi' land. That gives you an automatic 18db of headroom for dynamic changes and peaks. It means nothing more. Some time you may need to record/convert even lower to make room for a more dynamic track, or you may if there are less peaks, record hotter if you wish, but there is no need to go hotter'. All of the final 'loudness will be the results of all the tracks playing together, and/or compression and limiting.

..Rather, I use WaveLab's meters themselves as a reference, which clearly say "any more gain and there'll be clipping" when reading a cassette (-6 dB, or the top of the green range). If I crank the gain any further, yellow appears and distortion happens. So I record at levels just beneath that yellow threshold.

The resulting visual waves of the recording, too, are almost tall (loud) enough to reach the top of the window, like they should, yet the sound is so lacking. The point, though, is that WaveLab authentically says "this is reasonable volume" even if the mixer's headphone jack says that falsely.

Check these meters and compare how they are set. Generally 'peak meters are common in digital -but they may also be 'average -'RMS'. Make sure it's apples to apples.

add.. FWIW, very often as I'm tracking and building a mix in Sonar I'll come in several db below max level on the master meter (the master fader stays at '0 so I can see and keep tabs on this and this relative level). Any time along the way, (even for the final mix level tweek') the master trim (gain) can be brought up -to hit into compression or limiter or not- to bump the mix up for a reference cd or whatever. Till then, all it means is the monitor has to be turned up more.
It's all relative.