Correct Levels

You need to do some research into a process called "Gain Staging" which is where we maximise the levels at each i/o stage through the signal path, starting with the instrument you are recording (could be line-in, microphone, soft synth etc).

Ideally, you should be able to plug anything into your interface's input, route it through sonar and back out and never have to touch an "internal" volume control.  An ideal that never happens, and also would miss a lot of the fun in recording of mixing and matching levels.

I suppose you are talking about an already recorded signal.  If not, that is an entire different subject.  The gain knob, as above, controls the level that your signal enters sonar.  It is best to keep this at 0 dB unless you have a reason to (too much or little signal recorded).  The trim/gain knob was actually quite useful in the analog days since output faders were mechanical and had the smoothest changes around  0 dB so you could set your gain trim to place it at the 0 dB mark and make incremental changes to volume from there. 

But gain is less so in a virtual digital mixer.   As stated above, unless your signal is badly recorded, gain should be set to 0 dB.  You can also saturate/distort an internal effects like the Prochannel, but that is a special case. 

In general, there is no reason to go into the red, even on a channel or bus.  There is the possibility of digital distortion.  But if you can't hear it in the output, no harm is likely done.  It is a nasty habit, tho, and you should try to stay away from it in future mixes.

@

Jpok1000


Hi all I was just wanting to know if anybody could tel me if it is a wise idea to have the gain higher then the volume level on an individual bus. Also does it matter if the volume meter on a bus is peaking in to the red zone so long as it still sounds OK.  

In a word, no, it doesn't matter. However......


If your master bus is peaking into the red you're going to get nasty, digital distortion


Also, you might find you're overcooking the levels being fed in to the inputs of any plugins, you don't want this


The guys are right in that you need to learn about gain staging, though running a single track way, way into the red will NOT distort this track in isolation. Not in Sonar thanks to its floating point architecture

Okay Peeps, I've done a bit of reading, and I'm going to try and put what ever I have learned about "Correct Levels" here. I've got to be honest and say that much of my time with Sonar has been spent just "winging" it, hoping that I was doing it right. I'm self taught, and I just suss things out as I go along, using the help files and offline manuals as and when I needed to. If I got really stuck then I would turn to a forum such as this...

So, onto the "Correct Levels" subject.

I realised, as I was preparing my responses above, that I didn't know as much as I thought about the Signal Path within Sonar X1. This is quite important, so I opened the massive manual provided and started searching for answers. Just to avoid confusion, and make sure that we are all reading the same thing, I will be referencing the manual provided with X1 and it is called "SONAR_X1_Reference_Guide_EN.pdf." This is, as I said, a massive document, with an amazing 1850 pages, and I can understand it if some peeps are put off straight from the off, opening such a large manual. Everything appears to be in there though, and I have been using the PDF search tool, and the index, to find the stuff I need. If you can't find the manual, you can download it from the following link:-

http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013228

I searched specifically for "Signal Flow" and I was pointed to a page that contained a pictorial view of Sonar's Signal Path. You will find that on Page 811. I must admit that at first glance, I didn't fully follow what I saw. Also, for some reason, the Signal Flow page was near the start of the chapter dedicated to Mixing. I find this a bit strange really, because I would have thought that it would have been within a chapter for Recording. But, what ever... I think it is good to have a peep at this first to give you an idea of what is involved in the signal routing in X1.

Looking at Page 811 in more detail, there are seven grey "islands," each dedicated to a particular component of the signal flow. Starting at the top, we have two components, Clip and Input. The Clip component relates to existing audio clips. And the Input component relates to two input sources, a) a hardware input, which could be a synth or guitar, whose signal would come into X1 via a sound card, or b) a soft synth, which is integral with Sonar (there may be other examples, such as Reason, but my knowledge is a little short in that department).

Then there is a Track component, and this is quite a complex component, and I will only be touching on certain parts that, I think, pertain to "Correct Levels." The important sub-components, for me, are the Input Gain and Volume Fader. The Phase/Interleave are left as their defaults, for most of what I do. Even if I am recording a mono signal, I leave the Interleave as Stereo because there will be stereo effects and the like somewhere further down the signal path, and the audio clip is still mono, which is determined by the Input source. The ProChannel component warrants a topic all of its own, and I will ignore it for now. The same with the Effects Bin.

The Send component will be ignored for now, but I do use this a lot, and is by no means unimportant.

The Stereo Bus component is more important when it comes to the final mix, so, again, for now I will ignore it.

The Surround Bus is somewhere where I would love to go, but I don't think I have the hardware in any case, so I will also ignore this, and I will return to it at some point in the future. And, like the Stereo Bus, it doesn't really feature when you are determining input levels.

The final component, Hardware Outputs, is just that, the outputs from your sound card, and will be your headphones socket and outputs to your monitors. Again, not important when you are determining correct levels.

Anyway, back to the beginning. This part confused me a little, but I can only accept what I can see... The Clip component enters the Track component upstream of the Input Gain. This suggests that, during playback, you can tweak the level of the clip before the signal reaches the next sub-component, which is Phase/Interleave. For some reason, and I have no real issue with this anyway, the Input component enters the Track component in between the Input Gain and Phase/Interleave components. So tweaking the Input Gain has no affect on any levels sent from the Input component to the Track component. From there onward, the signal path is the same.

Back to the Input component for a minute, the manual shows an Input meter. I think I know where you see this meter, but I find the way it is shown on Page 811 to be a little bit confusing for my simple mind. In the Track component you will see two meters; a) Playback Meter (pre fader/pre effects bin) and b) Playback Meter (post fader). This suggests, to me at least, that there are three separate level meters visible, but clearly, there isn't.

I had to do a bit of digging in the Reference Guide, but it is documented that, in Track View, Inspector and Console View, the Level Meter changes its function depending on what you are currently doing with a particular track.

For instance, if you are simply playing back a track, the Level Meter shows the current sound level of the clip as it appears after all the ProChannel/Effects Bin have been applied, and post (after) the Volume Fader. You can, if you wish, set the Playback Level Meter to display levels post (before) the fader and effect, but I'm not experienced enough to know why you would do this, and I always leave my Playback Level Meter to display levels "post fader."

If you are going to record onto a track, as soon as you arm the track for recording, the Level Meter changes its function to display the level of your incoming signal from the Input component. Unlike the Playback Level Meter, you are unable to select a pre or post route for the Record Level Meter, and as the graphic shows on Page 811, the measured signal is taken before all the effects and faders. I experimented, trying various things, while twanging the bottom string of my SG, and if I turned on/off ProChannel, or raised/lowered the Volume Fader, the level of the Recording Level Meter did not change, although the monitored sound did.

This is good to know. So, when doing your "Gain Staging," once you have set the level at your sound card input, you use the Recording Level Meter to check that the signal is not clipping, or, indeed, not too low, as it is recorded to a track.

Thinking about it, the initial "Gain Staging" process is quite simple really, because we can, for the moment, forget about the signal levels through the various ProChannel and effects bin modules, because the signal that is recorded is only controlled at the sound card/audio interface. It would probably be a good idea to just make sure that each signal effect is low enough not to cause audible clipping, but at the point of recording your audio signal, you have a second bite of the cherry after you have your clip saved.

Once you have recorded your killer guitar/synth/drum track, you can then go back to your different effects staged and tweak each input/output level at your leisure. If you are only involved in the "tracking" process, this is great, because once you have your different takes, to the satisfaction of the various artists, you can send them home...


Okay doods... I've been slaving over my posh backlit laptop keyboard for quite a few hours now, and I need to hit the "Post Message" button and get on with something else. I've enjoyed doing this, because I've learned a few things myself, along the way. The supplied Reference Guide is a great document, and I, for one, will be using it more and more, as I get to grips with all that is X1 (and it makes me wonder why I haven't done it before now lol).

Oh, before I do go, here are a couple of pages that I used to help me create this rather large post:-

Page 245 - Recording (a whole chapter, but there are links on this page that take you elsewhere).

Page 271 - Recording Audio.

Page 806 - Configuring the Console and Track views.

Page 820 - Metering.

Obviously, there's more to it than that, but I am hoping that I have covered the basics of "Correct Levels," up to the point of getting a recorded track, in a simple way. If there are any glaring errors up there, I'd appreciate it if peeps would let me know...

I rarely use the trim controls. I use them if I have volume automation on a track and I need to easily add a couple of db's. I'll also use them if I'm running over 0 db on the fader and but for some reason I don't want to add process gain.

Rocky

Trim is a great feature. 
It comes in very handy for quickly setting levels & calibrating effects in the fx bin.