D K


I see there are some subsequent post after I posted this

I am not going to argue with anyone - I cant take credit for the knowledge within the text but i do know this while I respect everyone here's knowledge and experience - were talking about Skip Burrows and Paul freakin Frindle here fellas....

if you don't know who these guys are goggle them - They are advocates if ITB which most of us here do and have been pioneers and teachers of the very things we use every day to make music

..frankly guys - these gentlemen have more then enough "skins on the wall" and the technical acumen to at the very least have their opinions investigated  

like i said - take what you will...

 
DK: I hope my message didn't upset you, nor was I trying to argue. I was merely explaining my own personal experiences. I totally respect the guys that contributed to your post but we also have to remember, sometimes the skins on the wall don't merit "greatness". There are many engineers and mastering engineers that make me cringe when I listen to their material. If someone does a band with a credible name, 7 out of 10 times that band is going to sell no matter what the material sounds like if you think about it....thus, giving those engineers that worked on the project more credibility. And, in some cases, more credibility than they deserve regardless of how much math or technical prowess they have.
 
I've used the example I'm about to share with you a few times on this board. It is not meant to discredit anyone but in fact in my opinion, proves a point. We all know and love Bob Katz. I own his book, I've called on him for advice through email, I've spoken to him on the phone, and he mastered my last album. When I sent my project to Bob to have it mastered, I took the liberty to master a version myself so I could compare it to his when it came back to me. The first thing I noticed in Bob's when I got it back was it didn't sound much different than my original mix I sent to him. I had also noticed this in my own mastered version as well so I was happy that I had a clue. Mine was a little louder than Bob's but still maintained dynamics and spaciousness. Both sounded quite similar to my surprise.
 
In my opinion, if that's the case, it's safe to say in this particular scenario, WE did the work because the mix was up to snuff before it was sent away. Granted, I do not believe a mastering engineer should send you back something that does not resemble your original creation, but my point is, WE did the work and had a product that was sufficient coming out of the gate due to our properly recorded instrumentation and our final mix skills. If my album were to go gold (which it didn't of course lol) Bob gets credibility for that, and rightfully so since he DID master it and improve the quality. However, the increase in quality/fidelity is quite subjective really due to the original project being able to stand on its own before it went to Bob.
 
Sometimes the way people talk about this field turns me off. Not because I'm a dope and can't understand it, but because it reminds me of a school system curriculum. What I mean by that is, so much is taught in school that doesn't matter, and it totally deters a child away from learning because it is voice for the sake of a voice. Just think how much smarter children would be if the things that were taught in school were useful things that kept their attention. I was good in school, yet to be honest, after 8th grade, I didn't learn much more that was *truly* useful in life.
 
Compare it to the audio field and what we read/see technology wise in my opinion, is more to intimidate people to make them think those explaining this stuff are smart and "it's the right way because I'm the man and I have gold albums on my wall". It's amazing how many technical words get used in this field which mean absolutely nothing to me. It's simple...you either know how to capture a good sound to disc and work with it, or you don't. Your ears either can help you or hurt you. Do you know when I look at my meters? I look at them when I record to check my signal, I look at them if I hear artifacts to see if I'm mixing too hot, and then I will check them one more time before I export to make sure I'm at a good dB level to proceed to the mastering stage. I just don't get why these dudes need to constantly ram their intelligence down our throats with all the math, tactics, impressive gear and everything that goes with it. Yes, recording and production is a science, but it is also an art and art means "everything goes, there are no rules" to me.
I mean no disrespect to anyone with my post, I'm just sharing my perspective from what I have seen, heard and experienced for myself. I give major props to anyone who has made a name for themselves in this business, but let's be honest, it is NOT always because of their capabilities....it's most times who you know and what credible bands you worked with that exposed you. :)

lol yorolpal, the quote thing is driving me nuts over here as well!

figured out some of the quote thing,. Here it goes. In the button menu right next to the formatting buttons you have the indent button this is where you make a quote. You hi-light the quote and hit that button. Next right to it is an un-indent button. You use this to stop the quote. You need to place the unquoted line below the one you just quoted. Hit it the un-indent button and you can quote and not quote all day long. It is a little tricky but but it sort of works.

Or, you know, they could just reconfigure the quote system to be less arcane. Just sayin'.

On the topic at hand, while much of the science is beyond my musician's brain, reading about gain-staging and really paying attention to the levels in my mix and on my busses, and just cranking the monitors if I want loud, has helped my mixes translate much, much better. I've even done my best to calibrate my modest rig to the K-scale.

Let's keep the debate healthy and in the spirit of getting our mixes to sound better. There's so much I want to learn about this.

Sorry to be the thread police here but discussing the functions of the forum software is steering this thread to oblivion.

D K

Now with your tracks properly gain staged, you can add EQ/dynamic plugins and not run out of headroom. You can also insert hardware and they will operate much better as they are operating at the level they were designed to operate at.

Plugins use the same reference at real equipment. Never try and drive them to the top of the Digital scale. Don't try and make your mix look like a master. You don't do that on an analog console, so why do we do it ITB?

Just want to add here that in Sonar, you can add plugs without running out of headroom either. If you don't believe me try the following:

1. Create a clean (non distorted) audio track and route it directly to one of your audio card's outputs.
2. Turn the track's volume and trim all the way up so that the track's level meter is pinned 100% of the time.
3. Lower the level of your audio card (far right in console view) so that it doesn't clip there. The sound should be clean even though you're "clipping" terribly at the track level.
4. Insert a "clean" EQ plug (one that doesn't purposefully add distortion/analog emulation - Sonitus will work) on the audio track. Boost several bands as much as you want. Lower the audio card level in console view some more if it clips there.

You should have clean audio no matter how much you boost. This shows that, internally Sonar offers tremendous headroom both at the mix bus and for FX plugs. You clip only at the output. 

I should note that this headroom is only usable for plugs that don't respond to level changes. A compressor, for instance, will probably not allow you to set the threshold high enough to accomodate such a loud signal, and any plug designed to distort or add harmonics will probably distort terribly. So there's still good reason to keep levels reasonable. But it's the FX plug's limited headroom, not Sonar's.

drewfx

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)

One of my studio pro guys says you should be hitting -18 to -12 dbfs and as long as you don't clip any plugins or the mixbus, you should be fine.

It's so bad, people can't help themselves. Really.

+1. It's not like we haven't been posting about these things in the "designated" thread, too, to pretty much no effect lately! When I run into the obvious problems while trying to quote/preview msgs, it's very hard to resist voicing my frustration "in place"!

-Susan

j boy

Gain staging is about more than just avoiding clipping.  Starting building a mix with the right signal levels at the very top of your strips, and working through properly till the end, without over-driving any stage (even in fx bins!) yields a mix that is smooth and clean, not harsh and nasty.  Sometimes I'll set up a mix and it sounds a little over cooked, so I go back and lower every fader (or the buss if it's feeding into a bus) by 1.0 dB... and the mix just cleans up so nicely.

It's so easy to add volume after the fact with a limiter, so no need to do it in your mix.

To be clear, I don't disagree that you might not want to run everything hot. My point is that it's technically 100% wrong to say you need to reduce levels to avoid clipping inside of Sonar.

drewfx

Some of the undiscovered territory of digital mixing.

- Is there a sweetspot at some level in 24 bit recording process. Is it -12, -18 or -20. Maybe lower??
- If there is a sweetspot does it move or erode depending on the brand of soundcard i.e. the quality of your conversion.
- The big one..Even though comparison tests may sum to 0, can the ADDA conversion process (based on the quality of design) even capture subtle fast transients that allow for a decent comparison of what you hear versus what is written to a wave file?
- And of course the other big one....Can you somehow modify the EQ curve to closer match analog response. If so, why can't we create EQ models for various hardware that everyone could use to closer emulate tonal/frequency characteristics. 
- Fast transient response is not something that can be emulated or possibly reproduced depending on your converters. This is another barrier to moving digital toward analog sonics. At least in my mind.

One thing is fairly clear, people want better sound from the digital experience. Something that rivals the quality of tape, transformers and tubes; at least if you compile the interests of multiple recording forums. We are not quite there yet. Discuss.

WDI,

The short answer to your question is, because there are analog components in your signal chain that operate at an optimal signal strength.  By setting your signal at its max, at any stage of the signal path, you're forcing your equipment to work at a less than optimal S/N ratio.  This includes, not only pre-amps and other components like comparessors, but also your converters.  The coverters in your audio interface operate its best when the signal passes through at its optimal level.  All analog components have an optimal level they operate at and this will vary from one component of your signal chain to the other.

Keeping your signal flow at its optimal S/N ratio throughout the entire chain will give you the cleanest results when capturing audio.  This is why, contrary to popular believe, recording as hot as possible will not let you achieve this.  Again, doing so will push your equipment and this may or may not be desirable.  For example, in the case of pre-amps (and in certain style of music), you might want the effect produced by pushing your pre-amps a little.  On the other hand, doing the same to your converters may not be desirable.  This is why knowing what your equiment is capable of is VERY important.  In the digital world, this usually translates to recording at around -12dB FS PEAK in Sonar.  It just depends on your equipment though.

HTH

This is a quote from the legendary Bob Olhsson 
"Beware that plenty of magazine articles and software manuals have been written by folks who were remarkably clueless. This is a lot of why so many digital recordings are tracked too high.

Nobody can predict what levels they will be recording. In the analog world it's best to error on the side of too high. In the digital world it's best to error on the side of too low. This is really easy to test for yourself"

I'll save you the google search - He's one of the legendary Mixers/producers from the Mowton era and considered one of the top mastering engineers in the recording arts field today...

These people know what they are talking about ...

Also, John, if analog was so crap why do folks spend gazillions on plug ins and external processors that try to model all those old vintage analog consoles and studio gear from the 70's??

That has baffled me for some time now.

Ah! That wonderful fallacy that yesterday's technology is gonna redeem my turds.

I was hoping to lurk more on responders to Danny's comments (who always soothes my broken ego).

Academia is such a wonderful cop-out for me; Bob Katz book is so-so, IMHO. 

We all strive to produce at least one song that is Gold!  So you/I need to appreciate every critical detail of the recorded signal chain.  I've produced about 20 song-turds of late (songs forum) that all need serious overhauls before one makes the top 100 in ourstage.com.  My turds won't be fixed by mixing-mastering academia.

To re-affirm: Danny seemed to repeatedly stress (IIRC):

'Tis excellent recordings of artists and not excess academic trivia ... that seem to rule the day (for me).

Ah Philip, I'm glad someone was reading me. I thought for sure the quoted text may have been the culprit as to why. :) Yeah I too thought Bob's book was "so so" but still had some really good info as well. To be honest, I bought it because I hounded the guy quite a bit and he had really helped me out in a few situations where he didn't charge me a dime. Long, in depth emails, phone conversations etc... and told me one time "if you had my book, I cover some of this stuff" so I did what I thought was right and did learn a few things in the process. But you know how it goes, we all implement our own techniques based on personal experience so it's just like anything else really.
 
It's funny....I had this guy come out of the woodwork a few months back that was one of those "voice for the sake of a voice" types that tried to intimidate me with big words and the aesthetics of pro audio. The guy really talked the talk, had worked with a few signed bands and was a bit stuck in his ways (which we all can be at times) yet annoying. I do video lessons for audio recording on the side which is why he felt the need to challenge me. My primary objective is to teach people how and what to listen for in a language they can understand, clams and all...making fun of myself, over-use of my crazy Jersey accent and I'm very human in these. Anyway,  the guy was in a mood to challenge me...started with all the big talk, big gear, technical jargon etc. So I said "I'll tell ya what, a student of mine has sent me a mix he would like me to do a video on to show him how to fix it and produce it. How about you do the video for me and I'll pay you for it?" So he takes on the challenge. I tell the student this guy has worked with this band that band this band etc....he's gonna do your video then I'm going to do one for you. Tell me which was more helpful to you?"
 
The student gets the other engineer's video and watches it. I never told the student anything negative about this guy, nor did I mention my friendly challenge, so it's not like I set him up to fail. The student is 47 years old, has been in the audio field for about 5 years and is highly intelligent. The student calls me on the phone and says "Danny, what was that guy talking about? I'm so lost I don't even know what half the words he said meant and I'm not any closer to feeling good about this mix than I was before I sent it! Not to mention, it doesn't even sound that good to me AT ALL!"
 
At this time I was creating the student's video using my tactics and techniques. I didn't watch the other engineer's video until mine was shipped out to the student. When I watched it, I got about 10 minutes into it, shook my head and shut it down. Monotone, intimidating, power words, went totally astray at times and just totally lost my interest. The student called me after watching mine and totally loved everything I taught him...accidents and all, like me saying funny stuff about certain things that happen while inside of Sonar, and I add personality to the way I teach and really get into it. I type up little text box things busting on myself to correct things I may have said wrong instead of editing out my video mistakes, I'm never monotone, never intimidating, and I definitely try to keep interest in a language just about anyone can understand. To teach someone and get your point across, you have to know how to reach out to them on a level they can easily comprehend. To me this is what this field is all about.....learning properly. Knowing what to listen for, learning how to listen, knowing what to fix, when and why. It doesn't take a college education or an aerospace agenda to accomplish good results. You can have the greatest gear in the world, the best accurate meter system, gold records on your wall and absolute garbage mixes in your arsenal. How many of us have cringed at pro guys that have released big names? If that album sells, the engineer gets a name for himself for the sales, not always his quality.
 
I could name 5 credible engineers that the majority here would know. They've mixed and mastered some REAL country music great, (not the pop stuff that sounds like rock which I happen to like better) as well as other genre's, but had no business taking a stab at rock, blues or pop. I'd listen to their advice due to the 40 gold country albums they have if I was doing THAT side of country, but I'd walk away from their advice on anything else. It's like "oh wow, so and so mixed and produced Johnny Cash's stuff...he's brilliant!!" Yeah for that style maybe, but he made this band, this band and that band sound like @ss! Therefore, one must question his brilliance on the whole. You can't be a one-trick-pony and assume your word is gospal. Too much hype and tech, while not enough people are being human in this field in my opinion. But, that's me, I just call it the way I see it/live it. I'm like scotch, you either acquire a taste for what I'm about, or ya dont. :)

I'm going to pop back in here one more time and then let it go - to be honest , I'm a little disappointed with how this turned out - I' ll try to explain here in a minute why..

First @  Danny - I did not take offense to your post at all - You know that I have commented before that I have enjoyed listening to your stuff, believe you are pretty knowledgeable about what you are doing and most of all seem to have a humility and respect for other people's work and effort - I also think that regarding the music business from a philosophical standpoint we have pretty similar views. You are (like me) passionate about what you are doing and strongly believe in what you are trying to communicate, musically and verbally - so, we have no issues.. I enjoyed your post in this thread..

Here is where I have a problem with where this has gone and why my frustration is evident in a couple of my subsequent responses - indulge me here a minute:

If you look at my post history you will find that I have done this kind of thing before - relayed experiences that I have learned thru either 1st hand experience with more seasoned professional engineers or articles or post that I have gleaned from the many, many hours of time I have invested in trying to learn to be a better mixer. I do this because I hope that people will see something to spark conversation which increases the learning potential for me and others and making it more Sonar specific. There are quite a few around here who don't regularly peruse other recording forums so I like to bring it here. I come from a musical background as a musician first and did not really SERIOUSLY pursue the recording side of it until a few years ago even though I started messing with Pro Audio 9 way back... I've played on lot's of people albums and jingles and I am sure that at some point probably something I have played on you have heard. I only make that last statement because I know how much work it took to become proficient enough on my axe to be blessed with those opportunities.
I believe this endeavor will take even more time… The thing is when I was coming up as a bass player I had personal access to some incredible players that were willing to share with me - Guys like Chuck Rainey and Lou Fischer. With this discipline (recording) - I don't have access to that caliber of people so... I go to forums like these to glean from that experience and expertise.

Now the table is set - here is my issue with where this ended up going..

First - It really bothers me when someone shows a lack of respect for the works of others simply because they don’t agree with or like their communication style – Danny is a very good communicator and would probably be a total blast to work with and learn from but there are quite a few out there who are excellent teachers but not very good or humble in their presentation ( see Lou Fischer). By the way before I go on – I do not think Danny was showing a lack of respect at all.
 
This is the biggie though – I don’t understand why a post about the TECHNIQUES of getting better recorded audio turned in to a discussion about Analog vs Digital or a discussion about why people tend to list what equipment they work on and the words they use (as a side note – why do we only complain about people posting their equipment when it is high end gear? If you post that you use low or mid level equipment that is acceptable but if it is high end gear then you are boasting..??) any way I digress as someone only using low and mid level gear..
 Or better yet – why there is infinite Mix buss headroom and you can not technically clip a bus in a 64 bit environment – being hyper technical about the post’s technical accuracy while completely ignoring it’s point
Why did this end up being about those topics? The point was (at least I hoped the point would be ) to discuss the TECHNIQUES of getting better recordings. The only reason I made it a point to attribute this to those people was because of their past accomplishments and their history of trying to teach others that digital recording is every bit the equal of analog in a field that the majority of those at the top of the heap do not believe is true. These guys are champions of the guy in a bedroom with DAW… they unlike the majority of their counterparts believe that “bedroom producers/mixers” can be every bit as good as Big Studio mixers/producers. But they believe that there are things that still need to be learned and relearned for that to be a reality.
In the grand scheme of things – There is a still huge gap in the perceived quality of  95% of the mixes coming from Native DAW land and Stand Alone studio environments. These guys believe that is a matter of knowledge not tools and are trying get us information to learn the things necessary to wipe out that gap
 
What could possibly be wrong with that? Why bag on them? They are trying to give us something – They don’t need affirmation. They have long since made their name is this industry.. They are doing the most noble of things in my mind – Teaching or trying to teach others…. in my mind knowledge (+ experience) = Power and better mixes – Is that not what we all aspire to?