Question from Owsinski's Mixing Engineer's Handbook

Talking about Level Setting Methods, Ed Seay is quoted as saying "Usually a good place to start is the kick drum at -6 or -7 or so, ..."

When he says -6 or -7, is he on the same scale we are when we're looking at our peak meter in Sonar?

As always - thanks,
Sam

It's also kind of meaningless in a way since it would depend on how prominent the kick is in the song. In some song styles it and the snare may be the highest peaking things, in other styles the vocal may very much be more dominant, or huge guitars, or whatever it happens to be.

Ultimately, in a DAW, it's not much to worry about anyway. Get a rough mix up. If it's coming up too high or too low, just select all the faders and pull them down or up a smidge. It's not like an analog console where you might mess up carefully set up balances if you did that. In the DAW you can move them all as one very easily.

Continue mixing, and then if necessary adjust again as you refine it.

Also you can do a mixdown of the track and look at the resulting wave form and figure out where the peaks are occurring. If your peaks are coming from a small number of unusually high peaks (not unusual), then go just deal with them in the tracks that are causing them. A wee gain envelope dip and it goes away. You would have ended up putting a limiter on the track to get rid of them at the end anyway, so might as well deal with them much more cleanly and transparently at the mixing stage and get your levels adjusted during the mix so that they are closer to the final product.

If I record audio tracks, and create MIDI tracks at -14, and I need to raise something in the mix, I would move my fader above zero. Is that normal practice? Or, start with faders down at -6 or so and use the trim control to get me back to -14 on everything to start?

Am I way off track and do I make things too complicated? 

Yeah Middleman, you're right on to what I'm asking about. I saw that radio shack meter coming too.

Thanks a bunch. You're a big help.

If you are worried about pushing up tracks because you have level sensitive processing on the buses, then start with your main buses down a little so that you have leeway to push them up. Ultimately, in most mixes, you are going to end up with every track going to some bus, and some of those feeding higher level buses, so that ultimately you end up with a handful of main sub-buses that are feeding the master bus. You can start with some extra leeway on those. Since they ony feed the master bus, they won't affect any downstream processing if you push them up.

Well, they may at the very end if you add overall mix level stuff on the master buss, but by then you should have your levels pretty well worked out.

I think the point of that section is to start with the loudest instrument and build the other levels in relation to it. If you didn't do that, you'd run out of headroom real quick.

Like pretty much all newbies you are stressing for fixed answers to things that have no fixed answers. You can't be wrong because there's no really right answer. Just start the mix. See how it turns out. If it's not optimal, then adjust. After you've done a fair number you'll start seeing what works for you and your type of music.

Just get a rough mix with nothing but balancing track levels. It's easy to make broad adjustments at that point to get yourself about at the right levels for the overall mix. Then work from there to apply processing. If you just get completely twisted up, throw it all away and start again. Do that enough times and you'll get there eventually.

There really isn't a short cut for that process, unfortunately. More and more lights start slowly going on over time.

You might/will also benefit from starting to balance your faders with everything in Mono.

Get the whole mix working in mono before you start panning stuff out

Talking about Level Setting Methods, Ed Seay is quoted as saying "Usually a good place to start is the kick drum at -6 or -7 or so, ..."

All these engineers are referring to real VU meters and the figures mentioned here are definitely nothing to do with peak readings. They are rms VU readings. You can mix to a certain extent with VU's but it is only a guide. Ultimately you need your ears to tell you how a mix is sounding. But VU's are a good start.

For those who don't have them the Klanghelm meters are pretty decent and cheap too.

http://www.klanghelm.com/VUMT.html

You can mix of course without VU's but it is much better to mix with both VU and peak metering. Once you get a decent VU into the equation then you can adopt the K system of level setting on tracks and busses (and monitor levels of course) and you will never have a problem with levels ever again! Also with VU's you can leave your master buss and all sub busses at 0dB or unity which is where they should be and should stay. There is NO need to ever move them in fact.

Yes I agree with you Dean. I too think that buss faders are there to be manipulated for sure. I suppose I was referring to a situation where if they were right down at -20 (or right up at +8 dB etc) or something then I would re evaluate track levels being sent to them.  And with digital unlike analog it is OK to send higher levels to a buss fader and pull the buss fader down a little to compensate without any loss in quality.

I still think the master fader needs to stay at unity though, slight adjustments there maybe OK but by keeping the master fader at unity it keeps you in check with everything else that is being sent to it either from tracks or busses.

What I have found is that when you work with VU's a lot, the buss and master faders very rarely get moved from unity (unless it is an automation move of course) This is because the VU is showing you the real underlying power of the signal present unlike a peak meter.

I did want to add that using VU's to mix can be a bit hard as well because the ballistics of the meter will effect whether a kick is going to reach say -6 or -8 dB etc. And also the power of the kick. ( it could be a very wide open 808 kick or a very sharp short rock kick with lots of damping inside etc) The Klanghelm meters are very good because the ballistics are fully adjustable unlike a real VU meter. (both attack and release times)

But for the OP if you are reading about famous engineers referring to levels here and there they are most often looking at a very expensive set of VU's. VU's are still present in nearly every professional studio and always present in mastering studios.

I wasn't advocating pushing anything into the red by any means, so if anyone took that from what I said then I was misinterpreted.

I like to start setting my mix levels at the loudest (busiest) part of the song. Once you have that section of the song nailed, doing the rest is much easier.

I usually start around the --6 or -7 area too. I have learned through trial and error that extra headroom makes a huge difference.