John


OK maybe I don't know what is going on here but I don't understand what the issues are. Why is it hard to mix in digital? It really is easy to me. Why are digital meters bad and VU meters good?

I think that analog was "sloppy" and because it was it had a fudge factor built in that allowed for bad recordings to be accepted when they never should have been. Digital is unforgiving and thus that fudge factor is no longer there. I think that is why we hear this common refrain of how great analog is when it never was. It just let poor technique be obscured by it's own anomalies.  Digital will highlight those sloppy procedures and make them stand out. Making one rethink what they were doing all along.

I really don't see what all this is about. Nor do I see why one can't get better results with digital then is possible under analog. Then of course who is really using analog anyway. Even the fellow in the OP's first post is using a hybrid system.  I view it as being unable to work in a real fully digital environment because they can't let go of those VU meters. 

 
 
Well John - You tell me?
 
Ask jsaras or any of the good mastering engineers that hang out on this forum if they believe most of the stuff they get to work on is properly balanced, gain staged correctly with good depth and imaging.
 
Why do so many major label mastering engineers complain loudly that they are being blamed for the "volume wars" when it is in fact a matter of them receiving 2 track mixes that already have no dynamic territory to play with when they arrive? - This is major label stuff here.
 
Why are the top mixers in the business repeatedly quoted as saying that poor tracking, congested and unbalanced mixes are taking them from being pure mixers to becoming editors, arrangers and that their assistants spend the majority of their time fixing clicks, dealing with clipped tracks, cleaning up digital noise etc etc..? - again - This is major label stuff here .
 
I mean - are you really suggesting that all these people are simply not as experienced or adept as you are at mixing in a digital environment or that because they cut their teeth and grew up in an analog environment they have now become inept because of they are now in a digital one?
 
Why are guys of this level talking about this in terms of it being a problem (and a widespread one at that) and yet you see it as being nothing more then these same accomplished engineers and producing purposely refusing to move to a newer medium - to what end?
 
I honestly was not expecting this to take this turn and again I am sure not arguing ( mainly because my ears have already told me that at least the parts I can understand and put into practice are true) but there seem to be some here who seem to think these guys quoted here in this article are .... clueless??????? 

Some good stuff here, even tho there is no consensus (and never will be - which makes it more fun and enlightening to get more opinions). 

As for mine -

there is no need to record digital hot.  -24 or -6 is fine.  There is enough noise floor you can turn it up in the mix if necessary.  A good, clean signal is what you need.

Analog is a more forgiving medium.  You hit good analog electronics and tape harder and they tend to round off the transients and naturally compress the sound before they go - pffftt.  Digital just goes from good to pfftt.  Also, the type of electronics in a bedroom interface don't sound as good hot.  as you reach the far end of performance they get harsh, grainy etc quicker than high-end electronics.  This is another reason to record at sane levels.

Third, we tend to use more plugins.  Tho sonar won't clip, I'm not too sure about plugins which can sound worse the harder you push them.  I leave off more and more "processing" unless the track needs it.  I do high pass tracks and have started to use to filter out more high end stuff unless it needs it.  Glad to see there is a reason or rationale.

@

In fact John, ol pal, you've got it ass backwards as far as I can tell. Back in the bad ol days of pure analog a really good engineer (you might remember such a thing) HAD to get his or her gain staging exactly right and know just how far to push (or not) the signal to get the absolute best signal to noise ratio down on tape

So what has that got to do with anything? That has not changed in the slightest. Nor is it rocket science. Gain staging is just a fancy term for getting the levels right all along the signal path. It ain't hard to do! Never has been.  If people are not doing that it has nothing to do with digital. 

yorolpal


If it's so dang easy to do why have so many folks gotten it so wrong for lo these many years...analog or digital?  Post a link to your recordings, ol pal.  I'd like to hear your E-Z-Bake oven approach.

  You may remember that I don't post songs never will either however I have posted redos of others work. Remember the thread on mastering where we showed that the guy that was speaking on a video about monster cable being the only way to patch equipment was talking out of his hat. We do redos of his master from the unmastered version. Its still available for you to listen to somewhere.

Nor did I ever say what you imply I said. The reason people get it so wrong is because they don't know what heck they are doing. I think that has to be self evident.

What I take issue with is the notion that VU meters are good in any way. I have been very consistent on This for years.

Read up if they are still around on any thread I have been on mastering and or mixing. It is not something that I should have to explain to you or the body of this forum.

record, mix and master pure analog and get pristine audio

I am not sure its possible. We started to get "pristine" audio when the record companies began moving to digital in the recording process. Using digital recording devices.

think some of the best Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennet recordings.

See this is where we are going to disagree. The only thing I can say about those sorts of recording is they are all we have. Not that they are "pristine".
Here its not the content but how HI FI they are. When they were being recorded it was state of the art but were they pristine? No not at all.
It becomes evident when you listen to a song that is recorded digitally of the same materiel and with the same level of care.

Nowadays any jackleg kid with a computer and a compressor can push digital even past the distortion point and not even care...it's the "now" sound, don't ya know.  Remembering and utilizing the lessons analog has taught us can only enhance our modern digital recording even tho it is, as some above have noted, an entirely different animal.

True but again what has that got to do with anything? People abused analog too.

Digital is much more forgiving, as you yourself allude.

No its more evedent if you do screw up.

You see when people talk about tape saturation and how good it sounds That drives me up the wall. I hate it because for years all it did for me when buying my LPs back when was obscure what I was paying good money to hear. The harmonic distortion and IM distortion that was inherent in all that stuff was not something I liked. Not to mention all the noise that was on every recording.

The so called pleasant sound that analog accords is based on people that didn't have the equipment to hear how really bad it was. Remember that what the audio engineers heard was unpressed audio from the master tapes. What we heard was from a vinyl record that varied greatly with the quality of the vinyl used and after it was compressed and EQed the heck out of it.

Bob Katz covers alot of the headroom issues in his "Mastering Audio ..."  book. He proposes the K-meter system, which can be used as a "standard" for the type of meter reference offsets ascribed in the OP's quoted article, together with monitor level setting. The metering is half of the equation, with monitoring being the other half... but the metering alone will at least get you closer to desired reference levels (i.e., away from 0dBFS).

Auditor Pro is a cool metering plug and relatively cheap (5EUR!):  http://www.jeroenbreebaart.com/audio_vst_auditor_pro.htm

Supports K-meter and also gives you intersample peak, which was mentioned in the OP's quote. Other K-meter plugs that I'm aware of: Blue Cat's Digital Peak Meter Pro, Inspector XL, and I'm sure a few others.

Some more Bob Katz metering and reference level goodies:

http://www.digido.com/level-practices-part-1.html
http://www.digido.com/level-practices-part-2-includes-the-k-system.html

Every great mastering (and mix for that matter) engineer in the world has got VU meters in their studios. (I am talking expensive high quality ones now, not those silly little things you see on domestic devices) They are vital. You cannot mix and master without them. Attempting to do so is a total waste of time. You will never get it fully right. It is not so much about what levels they are showing it is about the ballistics of the meter movement and how they respond to the music. Commercial music, well recorded music and your music. You can learn so much from watching them move. They can tell you what instruments are contributing to the mix and also when something is making the meters go wild but your not hearing anything to account for it. When that happens you then go after the track that is causing the wild movements and fix it. None of this valuable information is possible with modern peak metering. Even putting meters into RMS mode is not the same either. They also tell you how loud everything really is.

I do agree that good VU meters are worlds apart from the average VU meter most often seen on most gear. As to them telling the audio engineer more I don't buy that. It really depends on how well the engineer knows them and if they have been calibrated. Something that needs to be done often. Its a matter of what one is used to. For years I have used an oscilloscope in my stereo setup at home to check levels and look for clipping. Its far better then the VU meters I have on my Mcintosh power amp and they are very good ones.  BTW the oscilloscope I have is meant for stereos. 

I agree John that you need to spend a lot time with a VU meter and they also do need to be calibrated and yes often. The CRO idea is interesting. I have got a CRO and never really thought of using it that way.

Tell you what a CRO is fantastic for. You get a program like Cool Edit Pro to create a waveform that is not symetrical. It can do it. Then use it to test all you microphones and speakers and inputs and outputs of your entire setup. You will be amazed when you see that half of you mikes are not in phase and also what all of your gear does with the waveform polarity. (especially to those that have two different sound cards in their system. I did, and found that one of them was inverting the signal even though on the track view all the waveforms looked the same!) This is not an issue now with the V Studio which is using the one interface.

John

yorolpal


If it's so dang easy to do why have so many folks gotten it so wrong for lo these many years...analog or digital?  Post a link to your recordings, ol pal.  I'd like to hear your E-Z-Bake oven approach.

The reason people get it so wrong is because they don't know what heck they are doing. I think that has to be self evident

. 
 
This is an ender - Your arrogance astounds and offends me John..it really does
 
I have posted an article by Skip Burrows who's mixed a who's who of modern talent and Paul Frindle who is one of the fathers of digital recording -  and has contributed to some of the most prolific and popular Analog console designs in history and in use today and here we have you.. who condescends at a level I still cant fathom and as if that weren't enough... wont even post a sample of his work (and please ..spare me the "I don't post my work out of respect for those I work for" bit...please) talking down as if they or the plethora of talented engineers whom have come before and after don't have a clue as to what they are doing..
 
You don't have to agree with their views John but they and a lot of other people damn sure deserve a bit more respect and common courtesy ....
 
Are you serious???????????  
 
This thread has been derailed - time to get moved..heck shut it down completely if you want.....

This is an ender - Your arrogance astounds and offends me John..it really does I have posted an article by Skip Burrows who's mixed a who's who of modern talent and Paul Frindle who is one of the fathers of digital recording - and has contributed to some of the most prolific and popular Analog console designs in history and in use today and here we have you.. who condescends at a level I still cant fathom and as if that weren't enough... wont even post a sample of his work (and please ..spare me the "I don't post my work out of respect for those I work for" bit...please) talking down as if they or the plethora of talented engineers whom have come before and after don't have a clue as to what they are doing.. You don't have to agree with their views John but they and a lot of other people damn sure deserve a bit more respect and common courtesy .... Are you serious??????????? This thread has been derailed - time to get moved..heck shut it down completely if you want.....

Wait a second here don't be so off the wall here. You quote me answering why the engineers get poor quality material to work with. It is not me complaining about it. The the engineers are the ones  and the reason why they get the screwed up tracks is because the people sending them stuff don't know what they are doing.  Do You believe if it were done in analog that non knowledge would some how be there for those people? Poor recordings have been around longer then digital.

You assume things I am not saying.

BTW my first post was meant as a lets explain this a bit more from you as the OP kind of post. I was hoping for more info from you. Unfortunately it got hijacked by another poster.  

Here is a link to the thread I alluded to its about mastering Here.  It should be a very fun thread. The post where I talk about redoing his stuff is post 90.

Well we are probably at cross-purposes here, ol pal. You said that you thought analog "was sloppy" and that digital was "unforgiving". I believe (and so do others who've posted above) the converse to be more or less "true". Analog was a much more demanding medium if your desire was to get pristine audio on tape...BECAUSE of it's limitations. Digital is much more forgiving, as you yourself allude. You seem to contradict yourself. But maybe not. As I say, we're probably just misunderstanding one another. As to your reflections on your "redoing others work" I have no idea on gawd's green earth to what you're refering. However, I will say this. We have a saying where I happen to come from that goes "He's all hat and no cattle". Many of your posts (and please remember, I actually have grown...well...sort of fond of them) tend to reflect this attitude. In that your hat seems fairly outsized...but I've never seen nary a calf, steer or breeding bull to accompany it so's a feller could see for himself just what sort of herd you run.

Sorry man you find it necessary to attack me then try to understand what I am saying. It is not becoming of you in this.

Also if my words don't mean anything to you that they are true then what would be the point of sending you something. It could be from someone else. Although I do have a video that does show me working.
You either take me on face value or dismiss me as you please. I don't need to prove anything.  

Da=man


Let's open up this debate to the more experienced and professional recording people here.
 
Is this the way to do it? Record tracks to -20db?(to leave headroom for plug ins and mixing)

yes

Yeah, you're right 48 bits fixed point, but there's still a big difference in the way overs are handled.

Regarding recording/mixdown vs. internal mixing bit depth I just wanted some input on this, and couldn't make out any clear answers from the noise on this thread.


Sven

I was always under the impression that, when using tape, you tried to get your source as hot as possible to try and cover the noise floor, and the dreaded tape hiss. Dolby, and DBX made a fortune off of this back in the day. With less noise is it really necessary to push the envelope? Just rambling. Which gets me to my real reason for posting. What meter settings do you guys use in Sonar?

You have a very good point. Though tape noise was most often associated with cassette tape. Running at 7 1/5 ips or enven 15 ips didn't give all that much noise with reel to reel tape.

For tracking (recording) I use peak meters set at the default also for mixing.  For mastering I use RMS + peak again set at the default. To me is not the scale you use but what you get from the scale. What you understand and feel comfortable with. I also use Visualizer from Nugen audio to keep an eye on the total mix. Its always on the master bus before I mix down. Its also used with my mastering template.