That is true some synths are too loud. I just lower their volume. Most have some sort of output volume control. 
 
BTW welcome to the forum and I want to compliment you on asking good questions. Ones others may want to ask but are afraid to do so. 

John
That is true some synths are too loud. I just lower their volume. Most have some sort of output volume control. 
 
BTW welcome to the forum and I want to compliment you on asking good questions. Ones others may want to ask but are afraid to do so. 

 
Thank you John.  I have been using Cakewalk products on and off since 2005, but just now became the musician I want to be and now really want to learn the DAW as much as possible.

I will try to answer threads to eventually, when I reach that level of expertise :)
 
-Alewgro

alewgro

John
That is true some synths are too loud. I just lower their volume. Most have some sort of output volume control. 
 
BTW welcome to the forum and I want to compliment you on asking good questions. Ones others may want to ask but are afraid to do so. 

 
Thank you John.  I have been using Cakewalk products on and off since 2005, but just now became the musician I want to be and now really want to learn the DAW as much as possible.

I will try to answer threads to eventually, when I reach that level of expertise :)
 
-Alewgro

IMHO, no problem. You're asking useful questions in a courteous way, and following up on suggestions. This thread is inspiring me to put some sine waves into SONAR, adjust track gains, and see what happens...

Thanks Anderton.

Interesting thing is, I see it leaving my synth hot!   This is a soft string type sound peaking around -9 db now and too hot leaving the synth?

I dont get it.
 

At the bottom at the finetuning it says Volume. Try that. BTW its a pad not strings. There is a difference. 

Ha yes :)  There IS a difference!
There was a bunch of low end coming that was making it hot, so whatever, I let it come in hot and I put a huge LPF on it sloping down from 600Hz.  did the job. :)

If you read my first post here I mention about low frequencies. 

alewgro
Ah ok, i was going to reduce the gains later on.  These softsynths by default are SOOO loud, you know?  I wonder why they do that.

 
Well, default settings and presets are generally designed to make you go "wow" during a quick demo. I find they're almost always too loud and have too many effects on them.
 

alewgro
When you say you start the kick/snare around -15db each, is that peak or RMS?   

 
RMS. I have the playback meters permanently set to RMS.
 

alewgro
What do you do if you wanna bounce a mix for the car?  It will be so low.
 

 
I have the concrete limiter last on the master bus in my general template. I use that to pull up the overall mix for work-in-progress exports. I then ditch that when I get to the real mastering step, but that's a whole other topic.
 
If you don't have the concrete limiter, Boost11 will do. I don't have it doing constant limiting. Just so I can push the thing up loud enough for a quick export. I only have occasional limiting of 1-2db going on. That generally gets you loud enough for car / ipod exports.

The -15db is just a starting point, not a rule. Generally, everything will creep up as I work through the mix.
 

Great stuff here... thanks John(s)!