Setting An Input Recording Level, recording levels - hot and too hot |
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Setting An Input Recording Level, recording levels - hot and too hot |
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Oct 13 2007, 02:07 AM |
Hi all,
I'm just gearing up to write the next two tutorials in the on-going series on how to record. As part of this I was playing back a few recordings that people have posted in GMC - members and instructors. In so doing one thing I've noticed is that a lot of people, members and instructors, seem to like to record 'hot'. That is they like to have their levels at or very close to 0 dBfsd. In quite a few instances recordings are over 0 dBfsd. Now for personal use/practice and so on it's really up to you what you set your levels at. It's also been fashionable (but not necessarily right) to record 'hot' for sometime now. A lot of people think that recording like this is great because they believe that it makes their mix louder and so it is more likely to stand out from a quiet one. Notwithstanding the above my advice would be not to record hot - either individual tracks or the mix - prior to mastering. If you record hot you are getting closer and closer to saturation and you may well clip. Digital clipping is not nice. If you want to hear clipping then load up Reaper and go through some of the downloaded takes - quite a few clip: when they do you get some very unmusical distortion. Also if you record hot, whether itb or not, your faders will be closer to the extent of their travel. It's known that faders actually offer better performance in the first part of their travel then at the extreme. Further whether you record itb or not at some stage a mix is summed and recording a lot of tracks hot can result in summing issues. Also as you approach 0dBfsd you reduce the dynamic range available for adding eq, reverb and so on. Keep in mind that something like eq can be used to increase the gain of a frequency band in a track - if you are close to clipping and you eq gain you will clip. Apart from effects, if you have several individual tracks that are all close to 0 it is possible to saturate and you will end up with a dynamically compressed mix. The closer you get to 0 (or worse exceed it) the less natural your mix will sound. If you are recording with the intent of producing a CD/MP3 or similar then you will probably send your mixdown to be Mastered. Let the Mastering guys normalise to unity - they almost certainly have better speakers and outboard then you have and probably a lot more experience. As a suggestion, focused on guitars as its GMC, you should try to set your gain so that your average level is at -10 to -12dB and your occasional peak is at -6. This will provide you with more headroom to add/adjust reverb, eq, gates and so on and you will be less likely to clip/distort and generally saturate your track and mix. (Note- most home studio setups have sufficeint nois floor on a good audio card to do this.) In brief the art of recording is not to produce the loudest recording but one that sounds as good as possible. The above is just my 2 pennies worth. If you like recording 'hot' fine but I personally believe that a lot of 'hot' mixes would sound better by lowering the gain. Cheers, Tony This post has been edited by tonymiro: Oct 13 2007, 10:01 AM -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 13 2007, 02:25 AM |
Great advice Tony - you can always normalize, but you can never undo digital clipping.
-------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Oct 13 2007, 02:42 AM |
Absolutely Andrew though personally I'd leave normalising until as late in the day as you can. (I've seen people applying brickwall limiters and normalisation to the recording part of recording/mixing long before they even got near mixing never mind mastering )
One other bit - most people here are likely to be recording a distorted guitar - clipping that (even analogue clipping/tape saturation) is likely to result in a mess. You will lose dynamics like pick attack and lots of subtle nuances if you ride the gain on a distorted signal too high and your wave form will end looking like a series of rectangular boxes - not good IMHO. Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 13 2007, 03:11 AM |
Thats what I meant actually, meaning you can always normalize (late in the process) but you can't undo it (if you do it earlier), I was agreeing but rereading it was a little ambiguous! With 24 bit systems today, headroom and noise is much less of an issue than it used to be with 16 bits, so keep your headroom high as long as possible just as Tony says!
-------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Oct 13 2007, 09:29 AM |
Might be worth stickying this Andrew - or I could cut and paste it into the sub - to avoid it getting 'lost' in the rest of the on going discussions?
Cheers, Tony ps I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who wants to put the alternative view for recording 'hot' as none of this is set in stone - it's largely opinion and what you get used to doing and what you think sounds good... -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 13 2007, 09:33 AM |
I Moved it into your forum as it is a kind of lesson
-------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Oct 13 2007, 09:37 AM |
Sure np. Cheers, Tony guess I'd better do a lesson on normalising pdq then -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 13 2007, 09:52 AM |
Just stick a fancy title on this post and you're there
This post has been edited by Andrew Cockburn: Oct 13 2007, 09:52 AM -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Oct 13 2007, 10:03 AM |
TNX Andrew .
Title is now about as fancy as I can get at 3:30 in the morning . Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 14 2007, 07:26 AM |
Hi Ballistic:
If your master is peaking in the red then the mix is too hot. IMO if its peaking in orange (and personally I'd say yellow) it's too hot. On most digital meters with a 'standard' calibration if you get the master peaking over 0 that's hot. (Meters often have different calibrations though - if you listen to the a 'hot' mix it will sound odd and distorted.) Track width can be altered and rescaled on pretty much every DAW I've seen so the extent to which a wave fills a track lane, or appears not to have much activity, doesn't mean a great deal to me - it depends on how it's been scaled. What I'd be more interested in is the dynamic range. Basically you need as wide a dynamic range as you can get and that means having as low a noise floor as possible with a ceiling where your peak signal doesn't clip both at recording and mixing. -10/-12 rms and -6 peak should be fine for virtually any DAW. If you need more range you should try to lower the noise floor - removing hiss etc from your system and/or getting a better sound card - rather than increasing the gain and recording 'hot'. I know of some pro recording engineers who actually record with an rms of more like -18dB and peaks at -12 in a DAW. Their argument is that they find that to be more 'open' and natural as the closer the DAW comes to 0 the harder and more congested it can sound. That sort of thinking though really only works on a really quiet system - for most of us -12/-6 should be fine. Drums are a challenge to record as they are very dynamic. A single drum hit goes from near silence to full scale very quickly. You need to set the gain so it doesn't peak in to the red at all or you will get a distorted drum. 0 and over in digital will produce digital distortion and a clipped and heavily compressed signal. So you're reasoning for staying below 0 us spot on. What a wave actually looks like depends on the instrument/source you are recording and to some extent the type of music you are trying to record/mix/produce. A clean wave form though should produce a series of peaks and troughs - troughs where there is silence and sudden peaks as the instrument is hit/strummed, hammered... The peaks may have different intensities/heights depending on how loud the signal gets and the width of the rise from silence to maximum will depend on the actual instrument (all sound sources have different characteristics for their attack, decay sustain and release.) A distorted guitar will give a wave that gives little in the way of peaks and troughs because a distorted signal has a compressed dynamic range and usually the signal doesn't get the chance to fall to silence before the next note/string/chord is played. (A very distorted guitar wave can look pretty much like a rectangular box from the start of the passage to the end.) A clean guitar will give lots more peaks and troughs because the range will go from near silence to maximum as you pluck the strings, slide up and down and so on. One of the difficulties with a heavily distorted signal is if you have to edit the wave form. If you can't see where a note starts and ends (no picking attack, no peaks and troughs etc) then its really difficult to see where you can splice the wave, where the beat is and so on. Other difficulties, as already mentioned, are that you have so much less room to work in with regard to adding effects, eq, panning laws and so on and whilst you can normalise a signal easily its not as easy to remove digital distortion. One thing that is nice about DAWs is that you can record clean and add a distortion post recording. If the distortion effect doesn't work, fine you still have the clean guitar track, just change the distortion model. Record a distorted guitar and if you don't like the distortion well re-record the whole take . I think I'm right in saying that much of Pink FLoyd's/Dave Gilmour's more recent stuff has been recorded clean into the desk and distortion added later with maybe some reamping. At the end of the day its really important to get your input levels right, right from the start before you start recording. You're better of spending a few extra minutes setting up and reducing the input gain to avoid clipping then recording too 'hot'. Record too 'hot' and there is little you can do except scrap the take and start it all again with the levels set up more appropriately. Hope this helps, Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 14 2007, 07:39 AM |
I think I'm right in saying that much of Pink FLoyd's/Dave Gilmour's more recent stuff has been recorded clean into the desk and distortion added later with maybe some reamping. Dave has been reamping for years, back to at least Wish You Were here days maybe earlier - I read about this somewhere but I don't recall exactly where, could have been Sound on Sound, or maybe Nick Mason;s Autobiography. -------------------- Check out my Instructor profile
Live long and prosper ... My Stuff: Electric Guitars : Ibanez Jem7v, Line6 Variax 700, Fender Plus Strat with 57/62 Pickups, Line6 Variax 705 Bass Acoustic Guitars : Taylor 816ce, Martin D-15, Line6 Variax Acoustic 300 Nylon Effects : Line6 Helix, Keeley Modded Boss DS1, Keeley Modded Boss BD2, Keeley 4 knob compressor, Keeley OxBlood Amps : Epiphone Valve Jnr & Head, Cockburn A.C.1, Cockburn A.C.2, Blackstar Club 50 Head & 4x12 Cab |
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Oct 14 2007, 08:12 AM |
Interesting - hadn't realised he'd been doing it that long .
Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Oct 14 2007, 07:16 PM |
Pleasure Ballistic .
Cheers, Tony -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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Feb 10 2008, 06:49 PM |
These tuts are great TOnyMiro, thanks for sharing your mighty knowledge!
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Feb 12 2008, 01:36 PM |
Hi tony I was wondering if you can help me fith this question up steirs..thanks:)
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