@drod. Sorry...so basically, I should keep my master meter under 0db?

@Jeff. I like the sound of the K system/RMS. Do you know where I can read about it? I do have some trouble with how different tracks sound softer than others. I just end up turning the master fader up.

You don't have any choice but keep your master bus under 0dBFS, since (as Nigel Tufnel would say), there's none more higher than that :-)

sharpdon,

to get back to your question - as Dean sez you can't go over 0 dB - that is all the numbers you can jam into your signal.  If you go over 0 dB you are introducing distorition into your signal, and unlike the analog, Nigel 11 world, it don't sound good.

The consenus in this forum and generally is your recording should be realively benign -  15 db to - 6 peaking.  When you mix those signal at 0 dB on your faders it will be too loud for the master, driving it into the red.  That is what the faders are for, to bring down each signal so your master fader too, peaks from -6 to -3 dB (or less, even)

When you get finished "mixing" that is where your output master fader should be bouncing too.  Afterwards, if you want, you can "master" it to raise the average dB even higher w/o going over 0 dB.  If you have anything hitting the red it can mess w/ your CD.  Until you get the hang of it all, I would back off from 0 dB.  Like I tell my kids, what good is going to come of that (in your case, shaving 0 dB).  Not much, and a lot can go wrong, like sticking a fork into an outlet.  You may get a John Lyndon hair style, but probably not.

@

So, all my tracks including my master bus has to be under 0 db.

@drod. I never knew that. I see my master bus going into the red zone and it says it peaks at 3. I was just wondering at that.

If so, then it's not a dBFS meter, or it's showing you how far over 0dBFS you went, but nothing actually went over 0dBFS since that's as far as it goes.  So, what happens is the signal is going up, and it hits 0dBFS and goes flat almost instantly, then when the signal comes back down below 0dBFS it goes back almost instantly from flat to on the way back down. Those to and from flat instant transitions will cause nasty distortion when amplified because they are effectively square waves.

In the digital world you have a set of of numbers to represent amplitude (not volume which is something in the air, but relative amplitude) of the signal. That number (as it goes out the master bus to D/A, or as it comes in from the outside world to A/D) is these days pretty much always a 24 bit number, so from 0 to about 16 million (0xFFFFFF in hexadecimal.) 0dBFS is 0xFFFFFF, i.e. all of the bits are used up and you can't go any higher.

It goes down from there, approximiately 6dB in dynamic range per bit  (a relative measure of amplitude change in the numbers representing th signal in this case, still nothing to do with volume in the air.) So 24 bits time 6dB means about 144 dB of dynamic range in total from the value 0 to the value 0xFFFFFF, though down at the very bottom there (on the 0 end) you'll never really use those very low numbers for anything useful, since it's basically all noise down there.

How those numbers relate to volume in the room is purely dependent on the volume control of whatever amplifier you are pushing the D to A'd signal into. The range of volume in the room is limited by the dynamic range of the values in the digital realm, which are controlling the level of the signal input into the amplifier. I.e. at whatever level you set the amplifier, a digital signal coming out of the DAW at 0xFFFFFF will be 144dB louder than a signal coming at with a value of 1 (sans speaker his and such.) But it's a relative measure, and the actual SPL (loudiness in the room) that relates to depends on the amplifier and speakers and such.

Does that make sense?
 

Having just learnt about all of this I have mixed a song starting with the bass drum at -18db avg. by the time i finished, my avg master fader peaked at -10db. Is that ok or should i go a bit louder?
bibs

In terms of peak levels that's fine.

I did some mastering for a producer who was putting one of the songs on a radio release album with artists from different labels. We were the small fish in a pond of big names. The producer asked me to leave the level about where it was. I told him that I thought it would be to soft to compete, and would dork-out the programming directors, but he re-asserted that he wanted it about where it was (it was compressed to where compressing it more would have brought in a little of that "stuffy" sound - but it sounded pretty clear and natural, and was by no means "soft"). But when the disk with his artist's song and the other artists on it came back, he was not happy. No subsequent mastering session went by without him asking "Yes but, are you sure it's loud enough?" What do I do with that experience? I'm not always calling the shots, but I usually know what they want... isn't the customer always right? And even if you give them different masters, louder for the radio release and softer for the album, the same thing happens on a 5-cd changer or mp3 player set to random. At that point, it's almost doing a favor for the listener, to have your mastering about even with the other music in the same genre... I'd love to hear levels go down and dynamics come back, but it's a hard call. It seems like the end-user is going to have to learn about the unpleasant aspects of over-compression and want more dynamics before we get anywhere with this topic. The loudness bullies are sure to set the genre level unless the listener feels like a piece of music is over-compressed and rejects it because they can hear it and don't like it. If we can get that, we have a chance.

sharpdion23


@drod. Sorry...so basically, I should keep my master meter under 0db?

@Jeff. I like the sound of the K system/RMS. Do you know where I can read about it? I do have some trouble with how different tracks sound softer than others. I just end up turning the master fader up.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/d...reativeASIN=0240808371

Jeff Evans



These VU meters are very good and the closest thing that I have tested for a while in the VST VU meter area:

http://www.klanghelm.com/

(If those compressors that are advertised on that site are as good as their VU meters they will be fantastic!) The BlueCat meter also works well too.

All you have to do is select a particular K System ref level and work to it. Use the VU's on tracks and busses, tell them what the ref level is, simple as that. A VU meter showing you the rms level on a track or buss makes it easy to set the correct recording levels in your system and you won't clip it very often either. You still keep a watchful eye on your peak meters as well to ensure that very transient or short fast sounds that won't move the VU much will still not clip your system.

I had to fine tune the settings on the Klang meters before I got them moving in perfect harmony with my expensive hardware API meters. If anyone gets these and wants these settings I am happy to publish the settings in a post or PM then to you.

Hey Jeff,
 
I will be buying the Klanghelm VST within the next few days, would it be possible for you to display your settings either by post or PM?
 
Regards
 
Daniel