whats the 'standard level'

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blackmusic

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hey guys... i dont know if its my lame ear, but most recordings sound like theyre at the same level. back in the 80s all the recording were at lower levels and had less bass on them, now-a-days it seems as though theyre louder and thick (i was just giving a level comparison). How is todays standard volume level reached?
 
Compressing the hell (life) out of everything.
 
Indeed. Compression is bad. Kills the dynamics and makes it boring. I don't like that compact kinda sound... Rather have it sounding open...
 
yeah....its a shame how much dynamic range we are wasting.

to put it in laymens terms...if you arn't up on compression too much or whatever -

16 bit CDs have about 96db of dynamic range. If you "average" recorded passage was at say... -10dB, then you have a lot of headroom to play with. A vocal can swell to -1dB at some point...or...whatever the hell you want to do. Things get louder and softer at different points (thats not to mention the actual "life" that compression takes out...in terms of squashing the sound...but thats another story for another day)

The reason we are in this mess...is basically radio -
and,personally...I blame hip hop/dance type music. Every record executive wants their mix to sound "hot" on the radio...they want it to sound like it has more "punch" or "impact" than the next guys - so that people will buy the record. So, they tell that to the mastering engineers...and what do the engineers do? They use dynamics processing (compression..limiting..etc) and squeeze everything up into the top 1 or 2 dB. this makes the whole thing louder..."hotter" - at the same time it ruins the musical feeling.

Dance music.....or hip hop...stuff with a lot of synthesis, and what not....isn't going to suffer as much from this. And hell, it was probably that "hot" to start with. But, when you have something based on real instruments...it's a tragedy. (even if most radio music is worthless anyways..hehe)

This spreads down though all the way...the indy artist who had some great recording sessions starts listening to stuff in the car and thinking "man....my record just doesn't sizzle like these major label releases" - so, they have it remastered...crammed up to -1db, etc. etc.

If your stuff doesn't have much dynamic range to start with...then, sure....get as good a signal as you can...no reason to have an album at -10db the whole way through for no reason...when it could be at -3db...but,whatever.

So yes, things are getting louder. It's a radio war in many ways. Albums suffer.
 
I listen to a lot of classical music,which is recorded without much compression and it has GREAT dynamic range.Also listen to movie music for the same reason.
Its a horrible fad to squish the life out of everything like most popular music has been recently.Since I upgraded my soundcard from 16 bit to 24 bit last year,the dramatic increase in headroom allowed me to back off the levels a bit and eliminate my use of the compressor at the input stage.
Tom
 
What do you guys consider a good dynamic range? If you have peaks at -1 where should the RMS be on the mix, NOT MASTER?

I am doing my first acoustic recordings and try to figure out how much I should compress. I keep getting little spikes from the acoustic guitar and I dont want to compress too much until I get better compressors. I'm more used to electronic music where this isnt so much of an issue.

I realize there is no right answer, just curious what you guys aim for in a mix, particularly acoustic folk/rock.
 
i'd like some responses to that as well Tex.

thats kind of the type of music I do...but, I am not very good at it really. hehe.

Generally I try to track without any compression....so, I play the guitar as hard as I could see myself playing it for the track....and set the mic gain to that...so that my loudest parts go to maybe -1...then my "real" playing normally averages around -8 to -10 I guess. In a way I sometimes feel that I am underdriving my preamps....or that the track isn't going to sound "in your face" enough....but doing it that way is a reality for me becuase I don't have any hardware compressors - I had a Behringer Composer Pro, but...it just wasn't good enough.

When I get an RNC - may change the way I do things...a bit...but, I still wouldn't want to compress to where I could really hear it.
 
The peaks in my latest mix didnt really bother me until I converted to MP3. It was way too low overall. When playing on winamp the spectrum analyzer would only register the peaks. I like the sound and room I'm getting in the mix but I need to tame some of the spikes.
 
Amen to this thread! I use compression as little as possible because I record country, mostly all live intruments. I can't afford a great compresser so I use scenes to tame peaks and employ careful fader and eq adjustments where needed. Then I lite pipe the mix to a wave editor in the pc and actually make a mix down of 2 stereo files running side by side. This dramatically increases volume for buring. You have to be careful with your first pass into the pc or you will clip when you add the other stereo file. If you can, try it. Works wonders without all the squashing!
 
On the subject of peaks, how do you end up with a peak on one side of the axis and not the other (when viewing the waveform). I would expect that there would be at least one cycle on the other side. Is this actually a digital glitch?
 
the amount of record labels that ask my studio for a radio hot mix is unbelievable. every company needs that radio mix to compete with the other bands. "research" has shows that the listener like the louder song, bullshit in my opinoin, but lol, if the labels want that, then who am i to argue, especially when they pay nicely:-)
 
so would all you guys suggest just putting, for example, a limiter at something like -.01 db or something, just so it doesnt clip...and then just use as little compression as possible to make it sound good?
 
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