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starfox

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I'm having a hard time gettin good recordings. I use a Tascam us 122 with a marshall mxl 900 mic. Threw cakewalk sonar on a pc with a pentium 4 2.8 512 ram. My guitar rig is a Peavey transtube head threw a crate 4 12 cab, my guitar is a Hammer (PRS lookalike) Duncan pickups.

Now I can get good tone but every time I bend a string or play a note hard I peak out. I dont know what I'm doing really, I'm just learning the art of getting good recordings. How far and where should I put my mic? Should I use the instrument mic that came in the package with the mxl 900? (I just assumed the larger omnidirectional would be better.) Are thier some settings in cakewalk I should pay attension to? On the tascam where should I set the mic gain and output level to (right now I have the mic at 3/4 and output to headphones full)

Also Should I record at low levels and crank it up while mastering?

I know I have alot of questions, any help is gratelly appreciated!
 
The short of it is to put the mic where it sounds right. That may be close, far, on or off axis, and of course it's dependent on the tone also.

As far as levels are concerned, I'm a big fan pf peaking somewhere around -12 dBfs or so during tracking and -6 dBfs (give or take) during mixing.

Mastering is a whole other game...
 
starfox said:
So do I want to record with my mic at a real low gain then increase volume when I mix?
Click to expand...

NO!

Trust me, when you start adding up (i.e. "summing") multiple tracks you will end up pulling some things down and end up with a total mix around (optimally) -6 dbfs. This is normal. In a typical mix vocals are usually around 0 db, snare around -1 db, kick around -2db, overheads around -6 db and so forth. You'll find that when you do a mix correctly everything will slide into place, sound great and *STILL* hit that -6 db mark.

The reason -6 db is a good place to be is because you are getting bit good resolution on your stereo mixdown AND the mastering engineer still has room to maneuver with EQ and compression.

If your mix is around -2 dbfs the mastering guy technically has only 2 db of room to positively EQ anything... unless they attentuate your signal a few db to EQ, and then raise it again to the "too loud" levels desired by most record labels (and thus 90% of clients on a label or not). This can raise the noisefloor and in my opinion makes mixes sound thin.

The reason that -12 dbfs is such an audio recording standard is because that translates to 0 db in the analog world. It's best to CEMENT that fact in your head as early as possible.

Another thing I teach my interns is to record *EVERYTHING* at the same dbfs level (starting at -12 and then lowering by 3 db for every full 24 tracks to keep your mixdown levels sane). The reason why this is important is so that your mixer faders MAKE SENSE TO ONE ANOTHER. You can see at a glance what is louder in the mix. If you're inconsistent with gain or do the "mix while I'm recording" game the faders mean less at a glance.

Believe it or not that does help when mixing, especially if you have to do it fast like most professional settings.

I've done a few mix sessions for stuff I didn't record when the recording engineer had the levels screwy... it's never very pretty. But the first thing I do is get everybody on the same level as far as unity gain is concerned (my trick is to use McDSP Analog Channel 1 to adjust input and output gain until I have parity among the tracks).
 
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