A
alevy
New member
When Mixing Down All The Tracks To One, What Level Is To High? I've Been Trying To Keep Everything Under -3 Decibals But The Songs Sound Weak. If I Normalize It Will I Distort The Track?
ecktronic
Mixing and Mastering.
Normalising will not peak your track. All normalize does is raise the level of your track so that the highest level is at 0dB. It doesnt change the track in any way apart from boosting the level.
I usualy mix down so that the peaks of the drums seldomly peak the master bounce. I have heard though that if you are bouncing in 24bit that you dont need to get such high levels. You can have your mixes sitting at like -6dB without loosing quality.
What i will be doing from now on is placing a limiter over the kik, snare and toms at like -4dB. Then i can bounce the mix a bit louder. Just the way I like to do things.
I usualy mix down so that the peaks of the drums seldomly peak the master bounce. I have heard though that if you are bouncing in 24bit that you dont need to get such high levels. You can have your mixes sitting at like -6dB without loosing quality.
What i will be doing from now on is placing a limiter over the kik, snare and toms at like -4dB. Then i can bounce the mix a bit louder. Just the way I like to do things.
A
alevy
New member
So It Wont Distort Anything If I Normalize The Entire Mixdowned Track So That It's At Maybe -1 Decibals. My Track Is At -3 At This Moment. I Have Rokit 5 Monitors I Can't Really Hear Distortion Untill I Go To My Car. I'm Trying To Save Burning A C.d. For Nothing. Lol. BY THE WAY IM JUST MIXING VOCALS THE TRACK IS ALLREADY MIXED. THANKS
ecktronic
Mixing and Mastering.
alevy said:
As long as the original tracks were tracked properly with no distortion yeah.
A car stereo may not be the best to listen out for distortion though. I would use a good pair of headphones and crank the volume up pretty loud to listen out for distrortion.
MadAudio
Damned if I do
P.S. It's kinda hard to read your posts with Every Letter Capitalized.
S
Samantha C.
New member
alevy said:
alevy,
If you have a backing track that is already mixed and mastered, then it's likely that it's already set so the peak transients hit at or just under 0dB. So if you have added a vocal line, then you will need to reduce the level of the mixed track to allow room for the vocal. Normalisation isn't going to help you here.
So if you have for example:
Track 1 - (Mixed track)
Track 2 - (vocal overdub)
Then what you need to do is take a look a where this is being summed (usually the main output bus) and make sure that the two tracks combined aren't clipping by exceeding 0dB.
You may quickly realize that to get your vocals to a reasonable level against the mixed track without clipping, you have to reduce the volume of the mixed track considerably. This is likely because the vocal track you recorded has high peak transients but a low average signal level.
If this is the case, what you should do is throw a compressor on the vocal track to tame those peak transients - all while allowing you to bring up your average signal level.
The end result will be a "louder" sounding mix with no distortion.
Hope this might help.
Cheers,
Samantha
scarboro78
NYC HIP-HOP AMBASSADOR
Samantha C. said:alevy,
If you have a backing track that is already mixed and mastered, then it's likely that it's already set so the peak transients hit at or just under 0dB. So if you have added a vocal line, then you will need to reduce the level of the mixed track to allow room for the vocal. Normalisation isn't going to help you here.
So if you have for example:
Track 1 - (Mixed track)
Track 2 - (vocal overdub)
Then what you need to do is take a look a where this is being summed (usually the main output bus) and make sure that the two tracks combined aren't clipping by exceeding 0dB.
You may quickly realize that to get your vocals to a reasonable level against the mixed track without clipping, you have to reduce the volume of the mixed track considerably. This is likely because the vocal track you recorded has high peak transients but a low average signal level.
If this is the case, what you should do is throw a compressor on the vocal track to tame those peak transients - all while allowing you to bring up your average signal level.
The end result will be a "louder" sounding mix with no distortion.
Hope this might help.
Cheers,
Samantha
What She Said..
A
alevy
New member
Thanks. I'll let you guys know how it turned out.