tracking

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mixaholic

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i was just reading another post about tracking and i see that people commented about the mix being at around -20 RMS. the only thing i track is vocals and i make the beats on reason and fl studio and other software. the fl studio already came with sounds like drums so in order to get a good level (not to make it too hot) do i just lower the drums or is it too late because they tracked it themself and i can't do anything about it? also when recording vocals, i have a yamaha mg/10 (not too good) and i plug my mic in the preamp so do i aim to hit the 0 point on the mixer or is that too hot cause when i'm at the 0 part sometimes my peaks are like -5. this is my mixer if u wanna read the info about it

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Yamaha-MG102-Stereo-Mixer?sku=630048
 
anyone have clue what i'm talking about or is it really that stupid of a question? lol
 
Not sure about the first part, but peaking at 0db on that mixer (which is actually very nice in the price:quality ratio) is good. This is NOT the same as 0db in FL Studio, so don't get confused when your mixer is saying 0 and FL Studio is saying -15 (I believe that's the correct conversion, correct me if I'm wrong).

Maybe I read your post wrong. When you say "0 point on the mixer" do you mean the input gain, or what?
 
mixaholic said:
so in order to get a good level (not to make it too hot) do i just lower the drums or is it too late because they tracked it themself
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It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

If you just want to lower your overall RMS level, then for sure, turning down the drums will work fine.

But turning down the drums WON'T increase their dynamic range if they were tracked too hot. That is, if the drum sample rides at -9db RMS, lowering it to -20db RMS won't increase the amount of headroom on the drum track.
 
I mean my external mixer. when recording should i be trying to reach "0" on the peak meter cause my mixer doesnt have a VU meter so i dont know where "0" is on the VU. all it has is a peak meter
 
mixaholic said:
I mean my external mixer. when recording should i be trying to reach "0" on the peak meter cause my mixer doesnt have a VU meter so i dont know where "0" is on the VU. all it has is a peak meter
Click to expand...
Peak what? There are "peak meters" that use all sorts of different dB scales.

I'm not sure how many times it needs to be repeated, but let me do it again: the word "decibel" or "dB" by itself has no meaning. One has to specify dBm, dBu, dBV, dBVU, dBFS, dBFS RMS, dBSPL, etc. before any actual meaning can be applied to the number. And then one has to understand the relation of the different dB scales to each other, because they all mean someting different and use different values. This is as true of "peak meters" as it is of any slower-ballistic meters.

G.
 
In short though, yes, turning down the drums is what you're going to need to do. The damage, if any, is already done to them - The best you can do is try to control any further damage. And you certainly don't want to overdrive the vocal track just to spite the beat.

And your mix should be hitting peaks somewhere *below* -0dBFS, with no limiting on the main buss. -3, -6... Somewhere around there is fine.
 
southside glen i dont know what my peak meter on my yamaha mg/10 mixer is measuring by db's. i thought it was just measuring peaks so that's why im askin where is a good place to hit on the peak meter on my mixer when recording. It was says peak meter on the mixer. It doesnt have dbu dbvu or anything. Please take a look at the mixer and see what im talkin about.
 
Almost no doubt, it's a digital dB peak meter (-dBFS).
 
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