Help with CEP Peak Levels

Y

yup im a newb

New member
i noticed that CEP peaks at very low volumes... thus all my recordings cant be near as loud as other songs without becoming distorted due to turning up the volume. is there any way i can make my recordings louder without peaking? thanks!
 
Search on this board for compressing and mastering threads.

Final compression is what can boost the overall volume of your mastertrack. The Waves L2 is great for that.
 
And after you learn how to compress tracks, learn how to operate the 'normalize' function in Cool Edit as well.

First compress, then normalize.

But don't compress too much.
 
alright so i messed with the compression and normalizing/hard limiting features in CEP but it still seems to be much more quiet compared other songs, even when i boosted to as much as 2db. can anyone give me a specific route to take on CEP like which presets to use that CEP offers? thanks
 
Look, don't take this the wrong way, but... don't use the presets in Cool Edit.

Try this: for each track in multitrack that has lots of spikes in the waveform, compress it until the worst spikes are squashed. Try these settings for a start. Ratio 3:1. Attack 20ms. Release 100 ms. Threshold -10 dB. Forget the make-up gain for now.

After each of those tracks is compressed, get the level of each track to where you like it in the mix. Then boost the overall multitrack volume level so the whole thing is playing close to 0 dB, but doesn't clip.

Mixdown the whole thing and take it into Edit View. Check how spiky the waveform is there. If there are spikes sticking up and down, then run the compressor as a limiter. Try these settings: Ratio 12:1. Attack 0 ms. Release 20 ms. Threshold -2 or -3 dB.

After that, normalize the whole thing to about 99.99%.

If, after all that, your mix still isn't loud enough, then just turn up the stereo LOL :D.

After that, spend a few months reading and studying and doing different mixes in Cool Edit, and then you can disregard that entire approach I outlined above. Cuz it's a preset. :)
 
If you don't have something like the L2 or L1 from Waves, don't be scared to Hard Limit the crap out of a quiet mix in CEP. It's limiter really isn't too shabby. "How Much is too much" totally depends on how hot you originally mixed it down, what type of music you're recording, and how much you can get away with before it starts either distorting sounding squashed.

I've used the hard limiter with gains of 10db and more, although not often, b/c I try to mix down something that doesn't have huge (unintended) dynamic swings. But regardless, before you mix down, run the tune all the way through in the multitrack and see where your hottest peak is. If the mix never gets louder than say, -3db, then turn up the master fader +3db so that your first mixdown will peak somewhere below (but close to) 0db.

For a good starting point on the hard limiter, I find it helpful to just kinda' eyeball the wave...ignore the transient spikes, and just guestimate where most of the mix is averaging out by looking at the db markers on either side of the wave form. Like mentally look for the 'meat' of the mix, lol...and if most of the mix is around, say -6db, then start by hard limiting with an output of 6db.

From there, I think the best way to use final mix compression is to listen to the drums. If you're mixing rock or hip hop, turn up the gain on the hard limiter in preview mode until you can feel the drums start to lose power...then back off a couple of db. That's the best way I can describe it.
 
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