my sound clips but it doesnt even sound that loud

M

MegaGoo

New member
ok i recorded electric guitar on one track, acoustic guitar on another. alone, they almost clip alone. my acoustic solo'd goes to about -3 and my electric guitar clips sometimes solo'd. and when i play them together it clips a decent amount. but the sound volume overall ain't that high. i listen to what i write, then a mp3 and the mp3 blows it away. my master volume slider is on -1 on left and right channels.

any suggestions?

also, and say i record 4 tracks. to get it to mp3, just tools>mixdown>export to file ?

thanks
eddie
 
The "loudness" of a track isn't really determined by the peak volume levels, but instead the average volume levels. Just because your track peaks out, it doesn't mean its going to sound loud. Try recording with a compressor to get the overall level higher, or normalizing the wave after the fact with sound forge or something. You can even go in and manually cut down those loud peaks with a wave editor. When recording in cakewalk, or any digital manner, its best to give yourself quite a bit of headroom to avoid clipping at all costs. Even if your mix is a little quiet, you can beef it up when mastering. Check out the Mixing/Mastering discussion group for more info on that.

Oh, and to mix down you're right. Make sure you highlight the tracks you want to mix down though......i think.
 
compress the individual tracks, mix to cakewalk, normalize, mix to mp3

1. compress the individual tracks. put a look ahead peak limiter (cakewalk's isn't look ahead... sorry) after the compressor. the reason is that you're going to have to limit to some degree the sound that gets through the compressor before the clamp down. this wasn't necessary in the tape world, but in the digital domain, the slightest clipping (what use to be called saturation) can ruin the whole track.

2. mix the individual tracks to a stereo track in cakewalk.

3. normalize the mixed track. not the individual tracks.

4. mixdown the mixed track to mp3.
 
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