Levels Question

[spamuel]

Hey everyone. I've been reading a lot about mastering and how you're level's should be at 0 and no higher when you send your recordings off to be mastered. My question is, What is that "0" refering to?

I use Cakewalk, and my Master track seems to hit the red well below 0. If it goes higher, won't I start to get unwanted distortion?

 

[bennychico11]

actually, there is a discussion going on right now about levels:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=204358

whatever you read about needing to put your levels to 0 before mastering....ignore it. Ignore it all!
What you are hearing is a common misconception of digital mixing. The 0 they are talking about is 0dBFS...which is the top of the digital recording world. FS stands for Full Scale and it's the highest you can go in volume. Many many commercial CDs are mastered so that the peak levels are as close as they can get to 0dBFS...it's thought that this means it's louder and better. Which is simply not true. And yes, hitting 0dBFS means distortion...but even maximizing the volume with a limiter so that it's right under 0dBFS can distort your audio too...even though you don't see any red lights come on.

I do recommend doing some research on levels, gain staging, peak/RMS meters and correct calibration. It's important to know what you are looking for when looking at levels...most people just guess.

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Spami:]

Benny is certainly on the right track.

One thing I've found is that most folks don't understand ALL of the potential of their gear.

We buy it and plug it in and push up the levels, record, mix, master, burn AND, if we are lucky, we get a pretty good sound.

Of course time/experience and taking time to REMIX and explore the limits of your gear will get you to putting some good stuff on CDs.

And, asking, reading, and experimenting will increase your skills. Since the manuals are so fricking bad, we need this site and all the good folks who are SO willing to help.

Green Hornet

 

[noisewreck]

I used to push everything as close to 0dBFS as possible. Now, when tracking I usually do around -12dBFS to -8dBFS and when mixing my mix master output usually doesn't go over -4dBFS. Since doing this, I have noticed considerable improvement in overall audio quality. My mixes just sound more clear and less fatiguing... uhhhh... that is if you like noise