What Recording and Mixing Levels preferred?

Post Mix

Established standard is -18 for Audio, -27 for Video. Everything goes on this one as we've learned from letting A&R people make decisions about relative volume versus the technology used to play it back.

Engage in the loudness race if you feel you need to, but bear one important rule in mind. You are remembered for how badly the final product will sound long after the reviews are written for the quality of the writing/playing. The majority of what is produced this decade will be forgotten shortly after as the pendulum swings back towards the audiophile market again - so plan ahead. Better to do it right now, than try to recreate it later.

Just a thought.

ORIGINAL: spheris

The majority of what is produced this decade will be forgotten shortly after as the pendulum swings back towards the audiophile market again.

I hope that happens, but I do not expect to see anyone going back to average levels of -18 (I often show clients the average levels from U2's Joshua Tree, which is in that ballpark). IMO, you can preserve dynamics and have a great sounding master in the -10 to -12 range.

ORIGINAL: spheris

3. Bit Depth level set to target medium and conformed (usually 16 bit depth for CD otherwise 24 for DVD-A, though only a few dozen houses are set up for it in the states currently)

Sheris,

Surely you're not advising people to track at 16 bit depth just because their target medium is CD. That's a good argument for tracking at a sample rate of 44.1khz, but not a bit depth of 16. While there are reasons some choose to do this, I don't agree the target medium should be one of them.

Given that good dither tools are available in many mastering software suites and bundles (and Voxengo's R8Brain is free), there is no degradation in quality when reducing the word length from 24 to 16 as a final step in mastering. The advantages of 24 bit depth projects outweigh even settling for Sonar's built-in dither.

I have read many of your posts, and respect your experience and opinion. I must be misunderstanding you.

Why limit yourself to -3db, rather than -.1 db when mastering? Seems like thats a lot of room you can use to avoid the "flat tops"

my mastering house does -0.3. I wonder if that's what he meant. -3 will not compete with system CD's.

I have read many of your posts, and respect your experience and opinion. I must be misunderstanding you.

Steve-he's not talking about tracking is he? Looks like he's talking about mastering-16bit for CD , 24 bit DVD.

ORIGINAL: spheris

Per Track Pre-Mix

1. -27dB Starting Volume -Phase Correct (that means check your MS and correct for problems.

2. Bandwidth not to exceed 20hz-20khz, trim everything under or over that before you start hearing really hideous side effects from DAC correction & bandwidth accumulation.

3. Bit Depth level set to target medium and conformed (usually 16 bit depth for CD otherwise 24 for DVD-A, though only a few dozen houses are set up for it in the states currently)

ORIGINAL: spheris

Post Mix

Established standard is -18 for Audio, -27 for Video. Everything goes on this one as we've learned from letting A&R people make decisions about relative volume versus the technology used to play it back.

Engage in the loudness race if you feel you need to, but bear one important rule in mind. You are remembered for how badly the final product will sound long after the reviews are written for the quality of the writing/playing. The majority of what is produced this decade will be forgotten shortly after as the pendulum swings back towards the audiophile market again - so plan ahead. Better to do it right now, than try to recreate it later.

Just a thought.

ThankYouVERY-MUCH
Or “Amen, brother, preach the word!”

Although multi-media markets in these times are basically money driven, the population explosion and demographic shake-ups are rushing ANY evolutionary process.

Medical worries may effect concerns about sound dynamics in parallel.

The competition is complacency and excuse-making in places like these boards.

Re: “It’s only for demo purposes.” “Fix it in the mix with fancy plug-ins!”

A wise “seller” carefully targets their FIRST “buyer”, the A&R person.

Please give us some hard talk about their receptiveness, for real, from real.


If only we could “print out” our subconscious selves and check our “sound/musical LITERACY” in private! Where have we been sonically, musically? How has it affected our MIXING, etc.??
Does intelligent self-awareness matter or does competition rule our lives? Consideration is one thing but blind (deaf) submission is quite another.

I wish that all those eye-glass shops would offer hearing tests also. I’m working on it behind the scenes.


Save yourselves lots of time and money, seek/promote dynamic civility in your music (the opposite of the loudness race). It can be pumped up later. It WILL secretly impress.

The future is already here. . .

I want an SPL Transient Designer so I can reduce time and effort doing what it does by hand.

What ?

Pilgrim. . .

I hear folks say get the recording to about -0.3 db

Then I hear get it to around -3.0

Is this at the mastering stage or what?

Right now most

mastering stage. To try and track like that you will kill the performers and lose creativity which is much more important than gain, and to mix like that you'll kill yourself and have to over compress and limit. Leave it for the mastering
-0.3.

ORIGINAL: michael japan

Steve-he's not talking about tracking is he? Looks like he's talking about mastering-16bit for CD , 24 bit DVD.

Thanks Michael. I think you must be right.

I can see it's still confusing for some. Maybe this will help:

Studio Mix Levels Short Answer:
A studio mix should have peaks between -10.0dBFS and -3.0dBFS to allow headroom for mastering. A good mix with peaks at -6.0dBFS should put your RMS between -18dBFS and -12dBFS for most pop and rock music.
http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=81256&mpage=1&anchor#81888

Studio Mix Levels Long Answer:
http://digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=119

Final Master Levels Short Answer:
Don' t flat top your masters with a brickwall limiter. Leave room for dynamics. Final mastering should have peaks limited to -0.3dBFS to allow for intersample peaks that may not be revealed by your application meters, or that may be exaggerated during any sample rate conversion (SRC) you may be doing for the target medium.
http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=81256&mpage=1&anchor#81850

Final Master Levels Long Answer:
http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=59

steve-that was a lot of digging. I'm sure many will appreciate the effort.

Michael

Final output was the meaning for target resolution of 16 or 24

What target depth you mix at bears directly on the final output yes but that's an entire thread unto itself and would probably only confuse the issue for anyone but the dedicated. But if there's a real show of hands for it. I'll try my best to elaborate.

ORIGINAL: spheris

Final output was the meaning for target resolution of 16 or 24

What target depth you mix at bears directly on the final output yes but that's an entire thread unto itself and would probably only confuse the issue for anyone but the dedicated. But if there's a real show of hands for it. I'll try my best to elaborate.

My hand is up!
With the basic understanding that I could sell a microphone with mastering hardware to this bunch.
. . .and I only need about 8 bits to play back a thoroughly squashed song.
And I once upon a time could (did) mix a band while recording using a baseball bat, just hit the loud one and goose the not-loud-enough-one.
EQ was done with embouchure flexing (variable mute with plucked strings).
And we added (adjusted) reverb by either turning the whole band or moving to a new room.
Sometimes, we even re-arranged the band instead of the music (worked!)
and our stereo recorder (two track ;-)) cost over $1000 in today’s money.
Phase was easy, we listened and tweaked one of the two cheap mics.
Got some great stuff too! 1958 So what about sound has changed?
What did we know. . . I believe nothing
The tools should be making reproduction better. Help


See below. . . I am starting there. . .

ORIGINAL: spheris
Post Mix
Established standard is -18 for Audio, -27 for Video. Everything goes on this one as we've learned from letting A&R people make decisions about relative volume versus the technology used to play it back.

Engage in the loudness race if you feel you need to, but bear one important rule in mind. You are remembered for how badly the final product will sound long after the reviews are written for the quality of the writing/playing. The majority of what is produced this decade will be forgotten shortly after as the pendulum swings back towards the audiophile market again - so plan ahead. Better to do it right now, than try to recreate it later.

Just a thought.

Thanks much, SteveD,
Do you think that we could require this (your) post at the top of every thread in these forums?

This is quality information that is somehow being excused away often.

Pilgrim

ORIGINAL: Pilgrim

Thanks much, SteveD,
Do you think that we could require this (your) post at the top of every thread in these forums?

This is quality information that is somehow being excused away often.

Pilgrim

Glad this was helpful Pilgrim.

This information has been discussed many times on this forum and on the Techniques forum. If you do an expanded search, you will turn up lots of discussion on it. I just tried to summarize it to clear up some confusion.

I'm not sure anyone is "excusing this information away". It's just something that has to be learned, either by reading and studying, or interacting with others, or just through personal experience. I think the fact that the studio mix maximum peak target is -3.0dBFS and the mastering peak target is -0.3dBFS, can be confusing. I even mis-typed one for the other in one of my own posts, and needed to go back and correct it.

Anyway... we're all at different places on the same journey. This is a great time to be a musician and a recording enthusiust with a passion for technology.

ORIGINAL: spheris

Final output was the meaning for target resolution of 16 or 24

What target depth you mix at bears directly on the final output yes but that's an entire thread unto itself and would probably only confuse the issue for anyone but the dedicated. But if there's a real show of hands for it. I'll try my best to elaborate.

Spheris,

Technical difficulties. Sorry. Please send me a note through my web site and I'll get back in touch.

Thanks.

I hear you, we had our PBX system down for 3 days during the system switch, so I do relate.

I'll catch up later today or tomorrow, maybe.

SteveD,
Thank you for your response.
Yes, my post was a rant because I was rather astonished at the misunderstanding by longstanding members of these forums for whom the information (subsequently) presented by you surely was “old hat”. (My misunderstanding.)
In their defense, Spheris has a certain way of presentation that requires being careful but it is, nonetheless extremely important and scholarly.
Your constant help with the technology and supporting information is widespread on these boards and greatly appreciated. (Very!)

My comments regarding your posts were not about the specific technical items (short answers) but to the more general and also completely supportive “long” answers, which MAY be more specific to my “rant”.

Your intervention and help was and is always very helpful. Thank you.

As to:

Anyway... we're all at different places on the same journey. This is a great time to be a musician and a recording enthusiust with a passion for technology.

Thanks for the Smiley.
May I request that, though the above quote may apply to the vast majority of participants on these boards, it may not very well describe a tiny minority of which I believe I am part nor refer to my position or journey.
I seek talented musicians and producer/engineers current and future but acknowledge recording and the current technology as tools.
I enjoyed over 35 years bringing technology and its related markets to some point recently but have now focused my passion and enthusiasm on musicians/artists and their place in the multimedia market.
Yes, very yes, producers and engineers are artists and in no way excluded. “Tools is tools” and will pass. People and the presentation of their music WILL continue regardless.

Yea, seems a bit dry, I know, but movement begs balance and some seriousness may be needed from time to time.

Please continue your passion, enthusiasm and good help.

ThankYouVeryMuch,
John the Pilgrim

this should be bumped, methinks

I firstly like to say thanks to all the people posting on hear, its really helpful to newbies like myself!

I am trying to record using a DAW with a guitar going through a preamped M-Audio DI box. The sound card input is set at +4dBu. The guitar runs through a guitar rig effect with distortion. I am recording at 48k/24 bit.

After reading this I am trying to get my input level around -6dbfs to -10dbfs, which I am doing, but to achieve this, the line level knob on the physical box is hardly turned up and while the dbfs I am getting is low, it doesnt seem to give me enough pre-amp gain to give a nice distorted sound, its a little weak. Should this be happening? Are we able to fix this up down the track after recording? What do people think the best approach would be? My wav file pic also seems to look quite a bit lower than what I used to record at when playing around, I was under the impression my wav should look a lot bigger, but after reading posts here I dont think thats what I want until final mixing stages.

[edit] actually - I may have posted too soon, I noticed that the input/output controls on the guitar rig do not affect my input signal sound (kinda makes sense actually, since its an effect applied after the input signal) and therefore is not affecting my input dbfs, but gives me my gain for distortion.

Many thanks in advance!

ORIGINAL: SteveD

My own personal experience:
I have found that limiting to -0.1db at sample rates greater than 44.1khz many times causes overs in CD Architect PRIOR to sample rate conversion. Yet, if I convert to 44.1khz before loading the file into CD Achitect, there are no overs.

I could understand overs resulting from disturbances or slight changes during sample rate conversion, but -0.1db in Sonar should be -0.1db in any other audio application supporting the same sample rate... right?

Wrong!

I actually contacted Peter Haller at Sony Digital Media and described the problem. He had me send him 2 second clips of each example. Peter had the samples analyzed and there were in fact overs that could be detected on both the 24/96 file as well as the 16/44.1 file. However, in the 16/44.1 file, they were "hidden due to either metering conventions, internal limiting, or requantization".

To correct the problem, the analyst recommended that I "prep the tracks with more headroom (-1.5 dB or so) and add gain in CDA if desired/necessary." - 12/26/03

----

S:
I've had the same experience with the Sony products. If you read This Post
you'll find my details on the Sony issue. Unfortunately the server that I hosted the very detailed images is missing so the text will have to suffice. AFAIK much of the Sony issues are reconciled based on Sample Rate - not a good answer but I like you spoke with Sony engineers and they just wanted lower energy going into their mix engine - I believe the discussion centered around being 'more conservative about reaching DBFS.

-D

if anyone is interested here is a very good forum and discussion on this subject.

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/15038/7478/

that flows from this

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/mv/msg/4918/0/120/7735/

well said Yep

The thing of it is, when you play live, this stuff is happening anyway. There's seperate sources for every sound, for the guitar, the keys, the hat, the bass, the other guitar, the vocals, the snare, the kick drum, the other other guitar, and all of these things are individual sources coming from human musicians all listening to each other and playing off of each other in dynamic, subtle, exciting ways. But then you go to record it, and you only got two speakers to get all that wild energy to come out of, and everybody's playing one at a time with a click in the headphones, and nervous about their sound and focusing on not making mistakes, and all that stuff, and it ends up a totally different vibe from those beery, sweaty, bright lights, dark corners, dancing people nights in the local club. So the trick is to find creative ways to capture and/or fake that energy and vitality that happens in the room when it's really hot.

I record mostly live and i go out of my way to create that vibe where everyone is as close to their comfort zone as possible-the technical side is straight forward-capturing the vibe is not-it`s amazing how confidence levels drop when you replace the sm58 with a NT1-A when overdubbing!Getting the best out of an artist is half the battle.

-12db mixing and recording
-0.3db final master.

Forgot to say all on a minimum 32bit float, on 32bit you will have no need for any kind of limiting or brick walls