Sounding good at the right levels

  • Thread starter Thread starter sjoko2
  • Start date Start date
With all due respect, I don't know of anything decent for about 200 bucks. If you have a limited budget I would suggest you use your money to improve your signal path into your computer by getting some direct boxes, or even a good 2 channel A/D converter.
 
Thanks Sjoko2. Time to start looking for values in direct boxes.......
 
i didn't read all of the posts but... in the digital world.. like one post was that he was using cubase... if your meter says your over 0bd... YOUR OVER!... simple as that. the original thread was pretty good... never go over 0 bd... EVER!!!.. on your master track... Brickwall your compressor using it as a limiter... if your pegging at .05 db.. your LOUD... commercial radio ready volume.. if your clipping.. your clipping over 0db... never ever go over 0bd...
 
Pro Tooler said:
i didn't read all of the posts but... in the digital world.. like one post was that he was using cubase... if your meter says your over 0bd... YOUR OVER!... simple as that. the original thread was pretty good... never go over 0 bd... EVER!!!.. on your master track... Brickwall your compressor using it as a limiter... if your pegging at .05 db.. your LOUD... commercial radio ready volume.. if your clipping.. your clipping over 0db... never ever go over 0bd...
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This thread is about 5 years old man.
 
i didn't notice... then will someone archive it somewhere else? lol
 
Wait... is this old post still relevant today? I was glad to see it even though it's pretty old.

Another question: The orignal poster says "aim for a level which hovers just below 0dB" when tracking. Doesn't that amount to running the level as hot as you can without clipping? There was a recent thread here about leaving headroom. Is this the place (trazcking) to leave headroom?
 
EddieRay said:
Wait... is this old post still relevant today? I was glad to see it even though it's pretty old.

Another question: The orignal poster says "aim for a level which hovers just below 0dB" when tracking. Doesn't that amount to running the level as hot as you can without clipping? There was a recent thread here about leaving headroom. Is this the place (trazcking) to leave headroom?
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The man (sjoko) has the credits, hell I don't. But it's contrary to just about everything I've learned. (digi or course) Nominal' is -18 to -12, our analog in and out included.
Wayne
 
I wish sjoko still hung out here. As far as record levels go, in my opinion a lot depends on how you're working. I treat my digital system strictly as a recorder as I'm sending individual tracks back to an analog console. So I track as near 0 dBFS as I can for best S/N ratio. Mixing in the box on the other hand, I'd be tracking individual tracks closer to their actual "mix" level as to try to avoid mix buss issues.
 
sjoko2 said:
Metering

How can you tell you are at the right levels when you only have tiny little meters? Metering is very important. Unfortunately only high-end equipment seems to have accurate, large metering. If it had large meters, it would be a lot more expensive.
But, there are cheap solutions. If you work on an analogue board, go to an army surplus place, or even radio shack, buy some meters cheap, and put them on the left and right bus of your console. A little bit of wiring, a couple of bucks, and you’ll be forever grateful you did it. If you work on a DAW, get some metering software. There are cheap ones and expensive ones; everything is better than none at all. (I use Spectrafoo software).
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InspectorXL is also a fantastic metering package.
 
I did a meter comparison, peaks in Sonar (think it may have been ver. 2 at the time) Vs my hardware L2. It was nice to see them agree within a half a dB, which is as fine as the L2's resolution goes.
Wayne
 
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