increasing volume

A

Afrosnatcher

New member
hi e'rybody. just wondering how i can make my recordings louder without making them distort from being so loud? i can make acoustic tracks ok but im worried that when it comes to drums, im just going to have reduce the volume so much so it doesnt just buzz when played! :( help? :o
 
Turn up the gain on your monitors... that'll make it louder.

Then when you have a nice smooth mix send it off to a mastering house and they'll be able to crank up volume for ya without distorting it.
 
If you wish to use compression, take a look at where your peaks are and set the threshold below that, set the ratio accordingly. If you set the ratio at 3:1, if the input goes 3db over the threshold the compressor will bring that down to one db over the threshold. Experiment with the attack and release times to find the sound that suits what you're looking for. You should be able to effectively raise the overall level of the track w/ out clipping it. Compressors can be a lot of fun once you start understanding exactly what they can do and what each knob does. You can create some pretty cool effects with them. In most cases though, sublty is the key unless you're using the compressor as an effect. Don't smush the dynamics out of everything just to get loudness.
 
honestly;

just record something before getting into all of this. you should find that you wont have any problems. really.
 
i realise this must seem really silly but i really have no idea what im doing lol. i get really good results doing what im doing but when i put my tracks on something like iTunes or an mp3 player its a lot quieter than the rest of the music on there :(

i have a budget of about £30 lol
 
Afrosnatcher said:
i realise this must seem really silly but i really have no idea what im doing lol. i get really good results doing what im doing but when i put my tracks on something like iTunes or an mp3 player its a lot quieter than the rest of the music on there :(

i have a budget of about £30 lol
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dude, you should get an award.


search for some free plugins.
 
much of the loudness you hear on commercial cd's is made with compressors that are more in the range of $4000-$5000. £30 (which is like what, $50?) aint gonna get you very far. you should get an award for wanting to do the most with the smallest budget i've seen.
 
FALKEN said:
much of the loudness you hear on commercial cd's is made with compressors that are more in the range of $4000-$5000. £30 (which is like what, $50?) aint gonna get you very far. you should get an award for wanting to do the most with the smallest budget i've seen.
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yes but he can find some rather nice VST plugins on KVR that will not cost him a dime, sound fine for what he needs and teach him a lot about audio to boot. :)
 
FALKEN said:
much of the loudness you hear on commercial cd's is made with compressors that are more in the range of $4000-$5000. £30 (which is like what, $50?) aint gonna get you very far. you should get an award for wanting to do the most with the smallest budget i've seen.
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Very true - HOWEVER - Even with a rack of $5,000 compressors, a mix still has to have the potential to handle the compression applied to it.

Obvious, yes - Just pointing it out to those who might not be aware that not *all* mixes have the potential to have ear-splitting levels...
 
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