Volume Question (Garageband)

lga5824

lga5824

It's Just My Opinion
Hi - I'm recording a song that consists of loops that I've manipulated and vocals. All the individual track levels are on the mid to quieter side, because if I turn them up, Garageband tells me it's maxed (red dots light up). The master volume is 3/4 up to max volume when I play it back through headphones. I sent the song to my itunes and put it on the ipod to hear how it sounds. It's coming out much quieter than other songs I've recorded. The levels I used on the other songs are about the same. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I have been playing with changing the track volumes and master volumes, but the final result keeps coming out softer. Could there be something I'm doing with the compression or something? I am using the gate, compression and overdrive on the vocals. Same as I had been using on other songs. Could it be something with it being pre-programmed loops that makes the enter track softer?

Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if you need more detail.

Thanks!

Jen
 
It's probably the loops. Anything with large transients will sound quieter even though the peak level is maxed.

Humans don't percieve volume as the peak level, we hear the average level as volume. A sparse uncompressed track will always sound quieter than a dense compressed track, even though the peak levels are the same.
 
Thanks. So do you think there is anything I can do with garageband mixing to fix this or make it better? Some of the loops allow me to compress, some don't.
 
Well I thought I was unable to compress some of the software loops, but I'm on crack. Apparently I can compress all of them. Is that the way to make the overall sound louder? Play with the compression and then more gain?
 
yeah you can compress all of them. it's supposed to level out the volumes kinda I guess. Yeah so mess around with 'em. try using presets. that might help.
 
i don't have garageband open right now, but open a plugin box, - such as the compressor. I believe there is a drop menu that you can click on that will give you plugins like "punchy drums" or "squashed guitars " (i don't know i'm making these up)

also you can use "channel strip settings" (that's what they are called in logic, which I use.) You can select things for certain applications. for example, if you press command+i it will open the "inspector" in which you can select settings for your tracks. You can select Drums> and then click "Crunchy drums" do get an effect on the track.

cheers.
 
One thing that really screwed me up using GarageBand is that there is a setting in the preferences called "Auto Normalize" which can really mess with your levels.

I was trying to turn up some instruments in my GarageBand project and no matter how high I turned it up, the volume would not get louder. Then I discovered this setting and turned it off, and that let me control the volumes again.

I'm not sure if that's your problem but it's worth checking out. :D
 
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