volume levels

M

mfro98

New member
Im fairly new to home recording with a small stuio setup....

Mackie 1402-VLZ Pro mixer

Echo Layla card

Event PS5's

Cubase, Sound Forge, Friuty Loops

and various instruments.

Im trying to make sure that my volume levels are not clipping and
at the same time not to low. My main question is... do you record
around 0 db's (which when played in cubase seems low
compared to mp3's i have) and boost the volume in cubase
for you final mixdown, or do you keep it low and then go into sound forge or wave lab and normalize the mix to bring the volume up?

I noticed that a recent mix, when normalized, clipped and

sounded a little distorted, but before normalizing it sounded fine.

I suspect that I had the volume levels set too high in cubase.


Any comments appreciated

Thanks,
Matt


that a rece
 
Nomalizing should not cause a mix to clip. The idea behind normalizing is the find the highest peak in the wave and bring that to 0db, then bring everything else up proportionally. So if your highest peak is at -2db, the entire file will be raised 2db (including the noise floor). My guess is you had distortion in the recording and just didn't hear it until you raised the volume.

Ideally you want to record as to close to 0db, but without ever going over 0db. In the real world, most homerec'ers generally take a safe approach and peak out at around -3db. This gives you a little extra cushion against possible clipping. Tools exist to raise the overall volume of a recorded sound, but no tools exist to get rid of clip in your recording. Therefore, err on the low side rather than the high side.
 
but no tools exist to get rid of clip in your recording
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure I saw a "clipped peak restoration" plugin/tool somewhere (either in SoundForge or Vegas...)

Now whether it ACTUALLY WORKS or not....

MFRO98,
Were you normalizing individual tracks or the actual mix? If you normalize a track, and do not then bring down the fader on that track (or on the mains), it could very easily cause subsequent mixes to clip.

Queue
 
Somewhere, now where the hell was it, I read that normalization is one of, if not the biggest mistake being made in home-based digital recordings today.....
 
Maybe that's in Ed's Mixing rant/dissertation. (I'm still studying that one...) I believe dachay2tnr's point about the noise floor has something to do with this.

mfro98,
Normalizing (alone) in SoundForge shouldn't cause clipping, unless you've set things to normalize to 0db instead of just under 0. I think your self-assessment of the settings being too high in Cubase were correct. If you are comparing your mixes to MP3s that were ripped from CD's, the reason your mixes sound quiet is those professional mixes were Mastered. It takes years and years of experience and zillions of dollars of equipment to get things to sound like that.

Queue
 
It seems to me that the volume level of the finished mix is a complaint of almost everyone new to the home recording game(and believe me, I've been there, done that with the rest of you).

Normalization IMHO is a waste of time. The volume level never seems to increase that much anyway.

Take this for what it is worth - as I am far from an expert in this area - but I have had more and more success in getting decent volume levels lately. The tools that I have found to be the best for increasing the volume of a mix are compression and limiting.

In particular, the Waves L1 and C4 plugins, and/or Sound Forge's Wave Hammer. HOWEVER <emphasis intentional>, you have to learn how to use them. And this means reading all the material you can on the subject, and continually playing around with the controls until you get an understanding of what they do and how they effect a mix.

Using the above tools I am now getting mixes that are much closer in volume to professional CD's. It takes some work and effort to learn all these programs, so keep at it.

The advice here thoguh is to forget normalizing. Look to tracking right in the first place, and then using compression and/or limiting when necessary.
 
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