Level Question

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NickSpringfield

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I've read literally hundreds of articles related to mixing and the absolute do's and don'ts. One of those don'ts that is mentioned in every single article is not to go past that 0 db level. That seems like common sense. BUT when I take a dre beat or song into a wav and view it in Cool Edit (Program I use), all of his levels clip considerably. I'm left confused, because I obviously don't want my recordings to sound like absolute shit, but I don't want then sounding way lower than any commercial recording. Any insight or help would be welcome and appreciated.

Also, I use Cool Edit Pro and the panning goes from left to right. What would be considered a 2 o'clock position and so forth? Thanks again.

-Springfield
 
NickSpringfield said:

1) .....BUT when I take a dre beat or song into a wav and view it in Cool Edit (Program I use), all of his levels clip considerably. I'm left confused, because I obviously don't want my recordings to sound like absolute shit, but I don't want then sounding way lower than any commercial recording. Any insight or help would be welcome and appreciated.

2) Also, I use Cool Edit Pro and the panning goes from left to right. What would be considered a 2 o'clock position and so forth....
Click to expand...

1) How HOT did you record the Dre into your computer?

2) Pretend that your panning knobs are the face of a clock.
 
All I did was download the instrumental of such songs as 'What's the Difference' and the full song of 'Guilty Conscience' and when I converted them to wave the levels were far into the HOT area.
 
from my limited experience

the peaks your looking at are mastered bits, when your tracking and mixing(and this is just how my amateur ass does it), you don't want peaks until your in you final mix and mastering. when your mastering, sometimes you want your shit to go above 0db as long as it doesnt distort. I think if you use cool edit, you can go close to the +4db point without distorting(depending on the mix), what you want to do is to get yourself some nice mastering plugins, and be able to maximize every track in your mix, because that will eventually give you your levels. Like I said, thats just my experience, don't always believe what you read guy, because it's what it sounds like in the end, and not what someone says you should do--------every song is different, and therefore deserves a different application a track in a song can go well beyond 0db and still sound good, it all depends on the mix. If you take any song from a commercial cd and put it into cool edit, chances are its gonna push that 0db, or if it's mastered so, it'll peak right at 0 or very often at -0.3, but as far as home recording, what you want to do is to maximize your eqing in every track and bring that out and that starts right from when you recording---------like I said every situation is different, if you going through a mixer, your process is going to be different than if your recording direct to a daw(because you have the option of hardware eqing going in). But basically to answer your question, ------one part of your song might clip and it'll still sound good, but if every part is clippin--------then you got problems.
 
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