Recording guitar & bass using T7 at

[pough]

Is this a setting I need to be using as part of mixing ,and if so, am I using it for the right purpose?

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you're using it as though it's a compressor/limiter with -15 db as a goal. it doesn't work that way. It's a volume knob. Setting it to -15 db is telling it to turn everything down by -15 db.

I normally use that if the whole audio clip is either too loud or too quiet. Another case use is when someone's performance is inconsistent in terms of volume. I would split audio clips and add or remove some gain to be more consistent.

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

You might want to experiment recording "squeaky clean" guitar. Just like in real life, an electric with nothing but a clean amp and not overdriven tends to sound a bit boring (ever plugged a guitar straight into a mixer ?). Recording with the levels too low should not affect the sound quality, but you may get some unwanted background hiss, which is one of the reasons to push as close to the upper limit as possible without going over.

Yeah, I know, but I really can't play without the intended tone I want with a clean tone, then adding to it later. It really affects my playing. Say I wanted an auto-wah effect. No way in the world could I play that with a clean tone, then adding the auto wah later. I may tweak my tone a bit with time based fx, like delay/reverb. And often with a compressor, to "tighten" up the tone.

So you want it somewhat below your maximum threshold...

I think that's a good practice in any recording condition- as a broad generalization. The more I learn about recording, the more I see where exceptions are made, depending on your intended goals.

I'm used to sharing my guitar stems in online collabs, so I'm used to not going into clipping territory, and that gives room for the one mixing/mastering to manipulate as they please. I'm getting into my own mixing/mastering, and recording midi, because I wasn't happy with a lot of mixes others did. It's time I did so anyway, as I'm getting into cinematic scoring stuff, and why I've hardly played my guitar.

I have an old Digitech pedal - one of those all-in-one things with wah-wah and 120 presets. You can run it squeaky clean to verify your signal path, and then add in eq/overdrive/amp simulator on the pedal BEFORE it hits the mixer or Waveform. It does have the unfortunate side-effect is that you can't "undo" it's internal effects later, other than re-recording it. (Or by using sends and rerouting back in, but you need extra interfaces to do that).

Those Digitechs are great bang for your bucks. I think the latest one runs about $130 USD. I went all out with a Helix, after having numerous interfaces, and amps that are also interfaces, e.g. Yamaha 10-C, and the Katana I mentioned.

You can undo with plugins, like Bias amps/fx, but like I said earlier, I always seem to get a lot of noise from them, and it just sounds very artificial to me. I always hear the "core" tone of my guitar, and it's as if I just slapped distortion over that core tone. It's probably psychological, because *I* know what I've done. I've heard really amazing stuff by Youtubers, and always wonder why I can't get the same great tones. I've realized I'm a tone whore, and really OCD about. I don't mind not having an undo. With solos, I do a maximum of 2 takes, to have a fresh feel.

[GuitarPlayerinNYC]

One additional question would be how and when to use the Gain setting in the Audio Clip Properties section of Tracktion 7. When I record electric guitar or bass and then try to use this setting to manage the level of the track and set it to around -15 db, it does reduce the amount of gain but also affects the overall tone and volume of the guitar. Is this a setting I need to be using as part of mixing ,and if so, am I using it for the right purpose?

Thanks again!

Is this a setting I need to be using as part of mixing ,and if so, am I using it for the right purpose?

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you're using it as though it's a compressor/limiter with -15 db as a goal. it doesn't work that way. It's a volume knob. Setting it to -15 db is telling it to turn everything down by -15 db.

I normally use that if the whole audio clip is either too loud or too quiet. Another case use is when someone's performance is inconsistent in terms of volume. I would split audio clips and add or remove some gain to be more consistent.

Is there a way to multi-quote? Anyway, I managed to quote both of you, for reference.

I think some definitions need to be had. Gain vs. Volume. They're often used synomously, but they're 2 different things.

Gain is the "strength" of the INPUT, while volume is loudness of the OUTPUT. Yes, you can create clipping on a track by raising the volume of the track, but that's because the volume of your headphones/monitors, or output device distort.

You can have clipping at low volumes, if your gain is too high. Reducing that volume, doesn't make the clipping go away, reducing the gain does.

So, with that all said, I would say, in the absence of any mixing/mastering plugins, I would use the gain for recording purposes. (Mixing/mastering is a whole 'nother discussion, imo). Why? Because you want to record a *track* the best way you can. You can further tweak the track when you're done recording. Then you mix all your tracks to see how the fit together, then you move on to mastering. I personally don't see why you couldn't/shouldn't use the gain at the mixing level. It's one way to get a bit of hair on your guitar tone, without resorting to a plugin, among other reasons.

Try this: have the track VU meter at 0. In the properties panel, adjust the gain to -6dB as a starting point. Have the master volume at 0 as well. If you need to turn up the volume, do it from the interface. You can do it from the DAW as well, but raising the Master volume in Tracktion goes into the rendered file. This is where you have to "play with it" to find your own workflow routines.

I'm more than willing to be corrected, if I'm off anywhere. I was still going nuts over my own guitar mix, and discovered I put a mastering plugin on the backing track's track, and I've spent 10 days trying to figure it out. The plugin has its own gain functions. This goes back to being aware of everything affecting your input gain, and, I would say, the master volume.

Hope I didn't muddy the waters.

I fired up T7 for the first time in about 3 years. I didn't see anything about RMS, and don't recall ever having messed with it. Here's my screenshot:

t7 properties.JPG

[Watchful]

There's a ton of good information in Guitar Player's posts.

[I will follow]

Thanks again to everyone for their comments and advice.

Excellent forum!

[I will follow]

Hello. I've discovered that alot of the problems were caused by my preset levels and the effect plugins I've been using so have just gone through all of them and brought the levels down.I also took out compression and eq from most of them.

When you're looking to record say a guitar track and already have a drum track, bass track etc. recorded, when you record a new track while playing along with these existing tracks, the overall level then overloads pretty quickly.

What is the best way to control levels? Does this involve freezing the other tracks?

Thanks

[Watchful]

There's no "best" way to control levels, but you're finding yourself moving from "musician" to "audio engineer!" That's a good thing, because (in my opinion) a musician only becomes better the more he or she gets into audio.

I think you're considering the process of "gain staging," where you start paying close attention to the input levels of different tracks. Remembering what GuitarPlayer accurately said, "gain" is how loud the sound is going into a track, and volume is how loud a sound is leaving a track.

Gain staging is the process of setting up your project's audio levels in advance.

If you know about how loud your guitar is going to be, you can set the input level accordingly--as you've figured out!

But, as you add other tracks, you have to think about how loud each of them will be, too! With plugins, that can be tricky as different plugins have different sound levels, and sometimes even on the same plugin, one preset can be very different from another.

Fortunately, all you need to do is get close.

1. Try to keep the peak (the loudest split-second of sound in a track) around -6dBFS .
2. You can average around -18dBFS for dynamic tracks (like drums), or go a little higher if your track is fairly stable (pads, or a long, smooth bass sound).

Don't worry about perfection--that comes in the mixing process, in which you can fix a lot of gain or volume issues.

Let's say you record a live bass track, and the whole track sounds great--except there's a little loud part about two-thirds of the way through the track that hits orange or red.

You have some options:
1. Automate the track so right at that spot, you get the volume level of the track to dip a bit to bring it back below -6dBFS. You might or might not notice the volume dip, and you'll probably wind up adding in some bumps and dips in every track to taste.
2. Use a compressor and set its threshold down to just trim off enough gain to where it's at or below -6dBFS.
3. Live with the distortion, but know that if you send the track to a music service, they'll "correct" the peak their way, which might involve dropping the volume of the entire song to match!
4. Use a combination of 1 and 2.

Believe it or not, as you begin mixing your song, you'll be taking a ear to all your tracks, one by one, and adjusting the volume or gain after the fact. This can take minutes or weeks, depending on how much fun you're having with it. Just don't try to mix an entire song at one time, take frequent breaks, and remember to listen to how the tracks work together. Use solo to fix a specific problem, but always listen to every track in relation to the others to make sure the gain and volume of each track works to complement the whole song.

[Double Tap]

There's no "best" way to control levels, but you're finding yourself moving from "musician" to "audio engineer!" That's a good thing, because (in my opinion) a musician only becomes better the more he or she gets into audio.

I think you're considering the process of "gain staging," where you start paying close attention to the input levels of different tracks. Remembering what GuitarPlayer accurately said, "gain" is how loud the sound is going into a track, and volume is how loud a sound is leaving a track.

Gain staging is the process of setting up your project's audio levels in advance.

If you know about how loud your guitar is going to be, you can set the input level accordingly--as you've figured out!

But, as you add other tracks, you have to think about how loud each of them will be, too! With plugins, that can be tricky as different plugins have different sound levels, and sometimes even on the same plugin, one preset can be very different from another.

Fortunately, all you need to do is get close.

1. Try to keep the peak (the loudest split-second of sound in a track) around -6dBFS .
2. You can average around -18dBFS for dynamic tracks (like drums), or go a little higher if your track is fairly stable (pads, or a long, smooth bass sound).

Don't worry about perfection--that comes in the mixing process, in which you can fix a lot of gain or volume issues.

Let's say you record a live bass track, and the whole track sounds great--except there's a little loud part about two-thirds of the way through the track that hits orange or red.

You have some options:
1. Automate the track so right at that spot, you get the volume level of the track to dip a bit to bring it back below -6dBFS. You might or might not notice the volume dip, and you'll probably wind up adding in some bumps and dips in every track to taste.
2. Use a compressor and set its threshold down to just trim off enough gain to where it's at or below -6dBFS.
3. Live with the distortion, but know that if you send the track to a music service, they'll "correct" the peak their way, which might involve dropping the volume of the entire song to match!
4. Use a combination of 1 and 2.

Believe it or not, as you begin mixing your song, you'll be taking a ear to all your tracks, one by one, and adjusting the volume or gain after the fact. This can take minutes or weeks, depending on how much fun you're having with it. Just don't try to mix an entire song at one time, take frequent breaks, and remember to listen to how the tracks work together. Use solo to fix a specific problem, but always listen to every track in relation to the others to make sure the gain and volume of each track works to complement the whole song.

All of this, plus, you may get good results from using a limiter like d16's Frontier (which is free). It brings up the volume of the track it's on, although I imagine that if the track gain is much lower then you might end up adding background noise as well.

In Waveform 11 you can adjust the gain of individual clips in... I think it's loop properties, you select the clip and it's in the right tab of the info page. I don't know if you can do that with T7 but I'd be surprised if it was different.

[I will follow]

Thanks for you advice with this. That's really helpful.

[I will follow]

Good evening

I'm looking now at sorting my bass guitar presets. Again, all of them are too hot and need pulled back.

My question is about using a compressor during recording. Should I use one, and if so, is the one that comes with T7 good enough or is there something better you use or would recommend?

I'm using bass amps and cabs bought from the Custom Shop such as the B15-R, Ampeg SVT-CL, the BA-500 and the SVT-4 -PRO . A couple of these amps have compressors/EQ built in. Should I be using them at all during recording?

Any advice on the use of compression(and standard bass settings) along with any good bass presets or amp/cab combinations, would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Watchful]

There's a bunch on the market, some expensive and some cheap, and some are even totally free--and some of those can be just as good as the priciest ones!

Any compressor needs to have five elements: threshold, ratio, attack, release, and an output gain makeup. And great news: Waveform's built-in compressor has all of these (at least the one in W11 does; I don't think they've updated it, so T7's is likely identical).

There's really only one thing missing from it, and that's a level meter. But guess what else you get for free in Waveform?

1. Drag the "Compressor" plugin to your bass track.
2. Command/option-drag the output meter in that track to copy it on the other side of the compressor. Your track's output should look like "Meter" > "Compressor" > "Meter." This will show you a "before and after" of your efforts. I'll explain more about that in a bit.

Threshold is where you set the limit... anything "above" this threshold gets compressed. As you play back your recorded bass--or play live--watch the levels in those meters. If they turn read, turn the threshold DOWN until the second of the two meters stops going red. There's no recommended setting here--it's going to very much depend on your specific track at the moment. Just keep adjusting it in small moves. Dial it down so that you're more-or-less around -18dB on average, and peaking at or below -6dB on the SECOND of the two meters.

Ratio is how much the compressed portion of your signal is compressed. With bass, this isn't such a big deal, so you can leave it at 2:1, or maybe mess with it and see if you like 3:1. I wouldn't ever go more than 4:1 (not sure I ever have).

Attack is how fast the compressor will kick in when you hit the threshold. Keep this between 10-50ms for a bass. You typically want this pretty short.

Release is how quickly the compressor stops doing its job. Experiment between 100-1000ms for a bass. You might not even notice a lot of difference, but if you hear your bass notes starting to squeeze a bit, dial down the release: what you're hearing is the compressor is holding a note too long, and it's still compressing the note that follows (even if the next note is below your threshold).

Output makeup gain is important. Because you're compressing your notes, it's possible you can hear a drop in overall output (the bass track is quieter). Basically, turn this UP until your track is as loud as it can go before it starts hitting red (that's the second of the two meters). With moderate compression, you might not need this at all, but if you're going for power, you might notice the compressor is cutting your output too much, and you want it to come back a little bit.

Can you use the EQ on your amps? Absolutely! What about the built-in compressors? Absolutely! The problem is that you don't have good visual feedback to see if they're overdoing it. You can daisy-chain compressors: that way you're only trimming a little bit off each.

So here's my recommendation: use the amps' built-in compressor to get the sound you love first... then, when you're recording, use the T7 compressor to perfect that sound. By using both, neither will need to work that hard. And if a compressor is hardly working, you're hardly noticing its effects. But your resulting recording will be much less "hot" and ready for more fun.

By the way, as long as we're on the subject, feel free to try the other built-in effects on that track. See how T7's chorus or flanger work on your bass. Just put those plugins AFTER the compressor.

Also, consider using the low pass filter: the LPF can cut out any messy fret noises or string wipes from your bass if you don't want them for a particular song. Put that before or after the compressor, and see which you like better. Sometimes it's better to have a cleaner sound hit the compressor, other times you might want a little more compression before it gets to the filter.

Have fun!

[I will follow]

Thanks very much for taking the time to get back to me with such a comprehensive and clear response - really appreciated.

Sorry but I have just one more question connected to this. If I use compression and/or EQ plugins while recording guitar or bass, would I want or need to to apply further compression or EQ during the mix?

Thanks

[Watchful]

You're very welcome. You ask good questions so it's great chatting with you.

You certainly can add more EQ and compression. Some guys will even daisy chain compressors on the same track just to add color to the sound.

FYI, you can add compression or EQ to a track... then add both to a group... then add it to the master buss at the end. The reason for all this is not overkill, but when you start producing projects with a lot of tracks, the net effect of all that audio hitting your buss can put you back in the red. It's happened to me a few times. One more compressor can help trim that back somewhere along the chain.

And as you get more tracks going, you can muddy up a song fast! So adding an EQ on the master bus can help dial that back, too.

It's easy to go overboard, and sometimes you'll see folks with dozens of compressors feeding into each other, which can suck the sparkle out of the song, but have 2 or 3 going (amp, track, master bus) is totally good. The goal is to not make any one compressor or EQ work TOO hard.

[I will follow]

Thank you.

I've been going round in circles for weeks trying to work things out and getting more confused. This forum has been a great help.

[pough]

Sorry but I have just one more question connected to this. If I use compression and/or EQ plugins while recording guitar or bass, would I want or need to to apply further compression or EQ during the mix?

Just to be clear, using EQ and compression plugins during recording does nothing to the recorded audio.

1 [input device] -> 2 [recorded audio clip] -> 3 [plugins] -> 4 [output]

The EQ and compression plugins in stage 3 do not fold back into the recorded audio clip in stage 2. Those plugins affect what you hear only; not what's recorded. This is one of the nice things about Waveform: the audio flow is arranged left to right.

Apologies if I am getting the wrong idea, but your comment reads to me as though you are under the impression that recording a guitar with effects in stage 3 will remain in the recording in stage 2.