Too much sound?!?

Teacher said:
Bob Ohlsson told me bringing down the master fader a few DB's is the same as bring down each track the same amount(unless i miss understood him)...if its true I don't know for sure I just went off his word and with his 30+ years of experience I think I'll go with him unless i'm misunderstanding completely which could be possible...YMMV
Click to expand...

I would have to know the details of the conversation to respond. Most likely he was refering to analog consoles.

Have a look at the following article:

http://www.digidesign.com/digizine/archive/digizine_november02/protechniques/american_idol/index.cfm

In particular the paragraph below and those that follow:

"The bus is already distorting from all the plug-ins but you can't see it for all the compression," Zulla explains. "And when Pro Tools distorts, it doesn't get that typical digital distortion and popping, it just tends to make everything sound very small and shrill. Most people think they're fine level-wise when they're slamming their mixes into the compressors, but little do they know that that stereo bus is actually shrinking down from all of the clipping going on! If you go and hit the bypass button on all the compressors on that master or aux fader, you'll see the red light is just pegged all the way up! That's the #1 reason why all those mixes sound terrible and so tiny and small-sounding."
 
Beat me to it. LOL No Bringing down the master is not the same as bringing down each individual channel. if you are overloading your buss bringing down the master does not correct that situation.
 
I've been researching this further, and now I'm on the fence. It all comes down to how bit depth is handled within the bus.

For example, in the latest version of Pro Tools TDM systems the summing bus is at 48 bit, supposedly if all channels where at full volume you cannot overload the 48 bit bus. The master fader can then be used to reduce the level back to 24 bit.

See: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HEO/is_13_27/ai_110664709

and

http://www.digidesign.com/digizine/archive/digizine_october03/techtalk/


I still have a problem however with the concept of lowering the master fader rather than the individual channels in that you've introduced an additional step of digital processing to the equation (lowering the volume) which adds to digital distortion in the form of quantization errors. This processing would not be needed if the individual channels were set to the point where the volume reduction was not needed at all, and is why I suggest trying to keep faders at 0 whenever possible. The other issue is that if you have plugins operating at less than 48 bit you are distorting them as well.

I find it kind of strange that Digidesign would publish one article where reducing the channels is recommended, and another where they say that it doesn't matter.

This is a good topic for a dedicated thread ...
 
Last edited:
The thing about getting caught up with SNR and commiting to -6dBfs(or more) always is that as Tom knows i'm sure is that you might end up with something that sounds alright as a mix but leaves nothing for the mastering house. Not nothing, but maybe much less freedom. If everything was -6 then summed and the mix is -1.5 or something, there probably isn't much room for them to tweak much. I would think if you have a decent chain, you shouldn't have to worry too much about being @ -9 or -6dBfs and it wasn't accoustic or jazz recording... Rock right? On your PC to if you hit red, odds are it's clipped. Some stuff like the HD24 give you a different "clip" point like cloneboy said.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top