signal chain

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rightbrainnow

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Ive always been told that when recording, your sound can only be as good as your worst piece of equipment in the signal chain. Ive got a good mic, but just basic pre's in the firepod. Ive got good music equipment to make the actual music with. When i listen to professionally mixed songs...they always seem louder. I always keep my guitar amp (fender reverd deluxe 22w) on 10, and my guitar (standard american strat). This provided me a very loud, and very distorted sound. When i record this...ill fix the gain on the firepod to allow as much volume before clipping. When i listen to the recording...while sound may be good, its just not as loud. Is this the result of generic preamps? ive been in the market for a good preamp for about half a year...still havent bought one. If i include a high quality preamp in my signal, how will this negate the generic preamp in the firepod? does it just kinda shut off?...If i take a mic>quality preamp>firepod...does the firepod preamp still affect the signal?...would i need to bring the firepod pre gain to 0 and then crank my other pre? would this help aid in the "volume" of the sound?
 
The Loudness of your Recordings doesn"t have very much to do with the Volume that you record your instruments at....

Usually the Loudness that you hear from Retail CD"s gets that way when Mastering the CD....

So when you are Mastering your Songs you can use Plugins and such to Boost the audio Level to a More Reasonable level.....

Cheers
 
yea, im not saying that the loudness of my instrument will have that affect..i thought the input of the signal determines the volume of the sound.
 
rightbrainnow said:
i thought the input of the signal determines the volume of the sound.
Click to expand...

nope...not with peak meters at least
loudness to the human ear is not perceived as rigidly as your peak meters in your computer software represent. It's the RMS levels that help measure the loudness we hear. The ear pays less attention to short duration/loud levels (ie. peaks) and more attention to longer sounds of the same level.
RMS meters have a slow response time that help measure these levels...which we perceive as loudness. It's a good thing to get in the habit of paying attention to both peak and RMS levels, IMO.
However, Minion is right. A lot of the "loud" sound you're hearing in professional CDs comes from being professionally mastered to acheive that. Doesn't necessarily mean louder is better though.
 
Recording and mixing "loud" is the best way to make sure that your final product will NOT be loud.

Headroom is KING. If you're going to use it all up (as most do during the mastering phase) use it up ONCE - Not at every single chance you get.

0dBVU is NOT the same as -0dBFS...
 
Massive Master said:
Recording and mixing "loud" is the best way to make sure that your final product will NOT be loud.

Headroom is KING. If you're going to use it all up (as most do during the mastering phase) use it up ONCE - Not at every single chance you get.

0dBVU is NOT the same as -0dBFS...
Click to expand...


Recording and mixing "loud" is the best way to blow out your eardrums. Fatigue on your ears will distort what you hear and cause you to wear a hearing aid down the road which means you might as well sell your gear now. Your ears are a delicate instrument, essential part of the recording prosess. Honestly you are not going to get the quality of a proffesinal recording with low end gear, but you will get decent to good quality if your engineering skills a good. If you have no ears (and they dont grow back!), you could have the best equiptment in the world and not be able mix worth a crap. Remember High Freqs. go first. Modarate levels with adjustments as needed. As far as levels and meters I agree with the rest of the threads.
 
I was actually referring to recording levels - Not monitoring levels. But good point.
 
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