Quick Sonar 3 Question

[socalledsin]

Ive recently started using sonar 3 and was wondering wether i should be trying to avoid the meters going red when recording a guitar track. I know thats got to be a super noob question, but ive always used acid and just tried to avoid any clipping. I just have some confusion to getting my levels where they need to be to get a good clean sound. Im running as clean as possible to the pc from my mobilepre and using the jcm900 plug along with classic compression and master limiter. I dunno if thats really the right route but its got a nice crunch. But where should my meters be averaging too? Thanks in advance for any help, you guys have no idea how helpful some of your posts are.

 

[karyoker]

I'm a long way from being a sonar 3 recording expert but I like to record -3 to -6 db Just for the hell of it I'd arm another audio track with the same input turn on the audio engine on that trk, insert the Sonitus:fx compressor and try some of the presets. Then compare the two trks.

 

[socalledsin]

Thanks for the reply, I'm averaging -9 and occassionally it will jump to -6, its plenty loud so i guess it will do, i can always raise it in the final mixdown right? I tried your suggestion , tho it sounded about the same i get a bit of a crackle without the limiter, wasnt sure if you meant keep the plugins i had and add the fx compressor, or to just use that alone. Ill keep playing with it though. Thanks again.

 

[socalledsin]

posted too soon, while recording, with echo on,both channels are averageing between -6 and -3 and it sounds excellent. but during playback channel 1 is a lot higher and i can hear the distortion effect, in channel 2 the level is about where it should be but its all clean. I believe its the jcm900 plugin wich is a bummer, i cant get both channels the same.