Im so new, I dont even know if this is a stupid question or not...

[SolomonStanding]

Hi all;

Thanks in advance to whoever replies. You'll see me a lot on here asking questions. BTW it may sound like I know what I'm doing sometimes but rest assured: I am completely lost.

My first question revolves around "loudness" amd "eQ"

Im mixing with Nuendo 2. My drums were recorded with a Roland mixer and some rented mics. When i got home I played the wavs, and they sounded decent so i fired them into nuendo (normalized all of them - should I be doing this?) and went to work editing and premixing. When i decided to "export" to see what i had, I realized how quiet it was. The equalizer bars on my winamp barely moved. I went back and used Ultramximizer on the master channel, and it 'sounds' a 'little' louder, but the equalizer still barely moves. So I went back to the original drum tracks (kick track for example). When I played it, it too wasnt very loud but the equalizer bars shot right to the top. I decided I might be exporting wrong so i checked settings and exported one .wav @ 16bit / 44.1Mhz and another .aiff @ 32bits / 44.1 Mhz. they both sounded identical, but the aiff had my winamp equalizer halfway to the top whereas the wav had them barely moving.

I put in a cd and not only do all the bars (mostly) shoot to the top, but its WAY louder with more presence.

Is it simply 'mastering' (another mystery) that does this or should I be "re amping" something!!!

The person who helped with the drums has done many cd's inlduing this one (www.cyanotic.com) and his stuff sounds great but i bug him so much i thought id try here.

Here is an example of a small wav file of mine:

www.solomonstanding.com/noobwav.wav

HELP!!!!!!!

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

Hey SS- welcome aboard.

Only stupid questions are the ones not asked, and the ones asked in the wrong forums.

First of all, normalizing isn't generally a good idea. It *seems* like it should maximize your loudness, but I find that it just maximizes noise and clipping. I leave my files where they are recorded and turn up the fader if I have to- at least that way I know what's going on with my tracks.

As for the loudness issue- have you double checked your windows mixer settings to make sure .WAV playback isn't turned down? Also, where were your master track meters in Nuendo when you mixed down? I'd trust those WAY more than Winamp's.

take care,
Chris

 

[MichaelM]

I wouldn't bother comparing the loudness of your mixes to commercially produced CDs. They will probably always sound louder, and yet mastering has a lot to do with this.

I had a listen, and imported the file into Sonar. It's not bad, the only thing I noticed is that the snare hits are a huge peak in relation to the rest of the mix (see attached pic). You could try a little bit of compression on the snare channel to tame the peaks, which would allow you to bring the rest of the mix up a bit in level.

But I don't know why the aiff file made winamp jump around more.. Might be a bug in winamp. I would try exporting the aiff as a 16 bit file the same as the wav and see what winamp shows.

BTW, nice sounding stuff. Maybe a bit too much reverb on the guitar for me but other than that sounds good.

 

[analogelectric]

I wouldn't normalize tracks. In rare cases I do but like it's been said, it could introduce distortion and/or clipping.

If I do normalize I set it for -0.5 or -1. Nuendo is pretty good without distorting while executing a normalization, just make sure you back up the raw tracks, just in case.

The track you posted sounds pretty dang good!

I've noticed as well (I own Nuendo 2 also) that the signal is hotter in Nuendo than it is after Export Mixdown. There's a reason why, in my case:
When I'm monitoring via Nuendo I'm monitoring out my digital I/O to my console's tape monitor. It's set for a +4 signal. If I listen to a track via Quicktime, or alike, that's coming out of my computer's soundcard in to a different tape monitor on my console at -10. The levels are going to be different but it's not a real loss between the two (respectively).

If you're saying (what I think you're really saying) is the EQ visual graph looks quieter than a major label CD you listen to that's because the recording you did isn't Mastered for optimal output while preserving tonal integrity.

Mastering is a different type of science. They really know how to make a CD loud using all sorts of multi-band EQ's and limiters.

Simply exporting a kick with an Ultramaximizer on the output will definitely spike the volume... it's compensating for whatever is going to the master stereo out.

If you plan on learning mastering on your own then it's going to take a lot of practice learning how a mix works with mastering. The thing I do (if a client wants me to master their recording, of which I don't like to do - it's a whole other monster on its own) I'll export the songs as Stereo Interleaved (wav or aif), 24bit @ 44.1kHz. Then I'll start a new project just for mastering the stereo mixdown.

I'll have more control and more CPU headroom if I want to use several EQ's and limiters before exporting again at 16bits/44.1kHz for final product.

In a very simple way, think of mastering as you would messing around with EQ on your car/home stereo... but also with limiters.

It sounds like you have a Waves bundle. Depending on what bundle you have there are plenty of mastering EQ's and limiters that are useful. It's very easy to go overboard with the Ultramaximizer, that's where a pre-EQ will come in handy... as long as the mix breathes well to begin with.

-- Adam Lazlo
http://www.analogelectric.com