KVR Audio

peter_martin · Post by **peter_martin** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 2:45 am

HUGE topic that isn't really explored on these forums. Knowing your gain staging and how digital works is a must on getting amazing sound from a computer. yes its here, and possible...

Digital Levels

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/13770/0/

Worked for me, saves hours of time with mixing as I don't EQ or compress synth music that much if at all anymore. Its all adding good saturation and nuking damned hyper fast transients. Never limit 'into' the wave, but if it peaks at say -11.2 db, i set a hard limiter right @ -11.2 for synths. HUGE HUGE HUGE difference when mixing ITB.

I've used/heard FL studio, ACID, Sonar, pro tools, Cubase, and Logic. This method translated to all of these platforms and when used gave a nice boost in ease of mixing and sound quality.

There has been loads of discussion over at the prosoundweb forums about this subject for months.

Read up on both these posts here...
These guys KNOW whats up with good sound.

Read what Bob Olhsson said in this one, kind of sums up the 'its not good to clip in digital' thing.
http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index. ... /120/7735/

Low levels in digital.... Long post but thumb through that.
http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/15038/0/

Been a real eye opener the past 3 weeks with working on this album. Using these and watching my gain staging with my plugins saves hours of time trying to get those sounds to 'mesh' perfectly together.

Hard clipping in digital sounds like poop, its not buildt that way. Hard limiting past the peak futher than even 2 db of attn sounds like poop too...

Hope this enlightens some people. Sure did with me, wanting to share is all.

P

GreyLion · Post by **GreyLion** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:39 am

Thanks for the post and the links, Peter!

I don't have the ears, the equipment, or the experience that these guys do, but I've been recording and mixing at lower levels on my home rig this year because I found myself putting limiters on every track to keep them from clipping. And realized that that probably wasn't a good idea and that I needed to rethink the whole concept of 'hot is good'.

Shane Sanders · Post by **Shane Sanders** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:57 am

I needed that. Thanks!

Dayl · Post by **Dayl** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:02 am

Haha,

Heres the quote:

Besides, you want to leave yourself a bunch of room so some mastering hack can steamroll the mix with L2

Good stuff there, thanks for the heads up

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:08 am

mixing at 0db on digital equipment is the same as mixing at +24db on analog gear.. you're going to be into the hard-clipping region all the time.

this has been an argument i've attempted to use in float/int processing debates. it is a minor advantage with float that you get a huge headroom, but this is still only a "virtual" headroom. by using a format with the headroom available and no real rules about which levels are acceptable you open up for massive variation between different pieces of equipment, in this case plugins.

with ints you're forced to be aware of issues with headroom through the entire process, both as a developer and as a user of the software. when using floats as we have with vst, you do not have to pay any attention to headroom.. but it should be obvious that doing so provides for vastly better results. since we do have this "virtual" headroom, we have to force ourselves to be conscious of levels and headroom and this is something we CAN do. you still have the problem of plugins not operating based upon a strict set of rules however.

where02190 · Post by **where02190** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 3:46 pm

It's so refreshing to read a post where people actually get the concept of proper gain staging. IMHO probably the biggest mistake made in digital recording is engineers trying to slam the signal as close to 0dbfs as possible when tracking.

the best rule of thumb IMHO is to target your nominal input level when tracking (and mixing to the mix buss) to the converter you're using's 0dbu reference, typcially between -20 and -12dbfs.

While others will argue there's no difference, there are many that will (including the top engineers today) that there is a major difference in audio quality when proper gain staging is employed, and not relying on that virtual headroom.

ahjteam · Post by **ahjteam** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:50 am

where02190 wrote:It's so refreshing to read a post where people actually get the concept of proper gain staging.

at the session of second to last demosession that I did I made a mistake. I mixed at low volume (lets say it was 3 on scale 1-10), so the output level was really near -1 dbfs. On the last session I tried so that I put the listening volume to 8 and the output levels were pretty close to -12 dbfs excluding kickdrum hits at -6dbfs. I normalized it to 0dbfs and it sounded fabulous, a lot of dynamics. Too bad I had to make brickwall limited version for myspace

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:23 am

It's true: keep the levels down, you'll thank yourself in the end; science or no science.

I remember when I first started forcing myself to stop mixing at full tilt; it takes a brief time to get over your mixes not coming out loud as all f!@$#, but now I don't even think about it, and I'm dissapointed if I catch myself letting the gain build up and get out of control.

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:24 am

mauseoleum · Post by **mauseoleum** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 11:51 am

No shit !!!

I suspect that floating-point computing has a certain "optimum" range that doesnt introduce as much rounding errors as maybe other "less optimum" ranges.

ffFFLAMESSSSSsssssssssssss

Oh, and, btw., everybody knows that Opterons sound better because of their more musical FPU !!! Kiddies with Athlons and Cores go home. (Well - erm - gotta get me some Opteron ... )

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 9:33 pm

writing "ffFFLAMESSSSSsssssssssssss" in your flamebait post kind of cuts off it's balls doesnt it?

Nevandal · Post by **Nevandal** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 7:36 am

This is all very inspiring to me, because just a few weeks ago I was starting to realize the same exact principle. Turn up the volume of your system, and mix at lower levels...this way it just gives you insane amounts of headroom so if you need to go louder on something, you have a lot of room to do it...and you dont have to worry about clipping, ever.

Worry about loudness maximizing when you're completely done, and ready to master.

danielmm · Post by **danielmm** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:37 pm

Yes, this makes total sense...Unless you are recording with a microphone in my basement.

But ya the DAW is a virtually silent studio and there is no noise floor to compete with the instrument.
Great tip...I will give this a try today!
Cheers,
dano

mauseoleum · Post by **mauseoleum** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 8:54 pm

aciddose wrote:writing "ffFFLAMESSSSSsssssssssssss" in your flamebait post kind of cuts off it's balls doesnt it?

I don't get what you're at. Just double-checked. My post still has its balls of fire.

Btw. I read quite an ammount of woodoo summing theories (integers vs. float, too!) and kind of predicted what could possibly happen when thread evolves. Not neccessary like Nostradamus, but nevertheless ...

Reverse Engineer · Post by **Reverse Engineer** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 9:10 pm

Nevandal wrote:Turn up the volume of your system, and mix at lower levels...

So, is that basically it? I mean, there are other things to take into account, but i'm just trying to get it straight in my head:

Mix everything low with your system volume up, and then normalise the end results?

The way i generally do it is try to tame the busses, but make them as loud as i can, this seems like quite the opposite........but i do always end up with 'bricks', so...

Keeping your levels low in digital recording/mixing...