ORIGINAL: yep
To recap what jack said: ideally, your main input and output meters should never hit the "clip" light (0dB), which is slightly different from "in the red," since sonar's meters turn red at -6, if I'm not mistaken, as a kind of early warning. At the inputs and outputs, any information above 0dB will be simply chopped off (clipped) and will sound nasty.

that is what i meant to say... =) the red bit is ok on the meters, but the peak dB number stays yellow (over -6dB) until it clips, at least in sonar 3. i typically put a multiband on the master bus to limit the peaks but set so there's no compression or gain. so basically a hard limiter which keeps things below clipping. once i've got the tracks sounding the way i like then i play with the multiband to find that spot between hot signal and over-compressed.

Anybody here mastering w/ separations? - http://www.johnvestman.com/separations.htm

A sort of summary found @ -http://forum.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=480862#480862

Any advantages on "Home mastering"?

Junski

I have a question for anyone really. If I know that Im NOT planning on sending my final mix out to a Mastering Engineer, why soundnt one simply record with the signal as hot as possible? Like instead of recording some acoustic guitar and leaving plenty of room, why wouldnt you just make it come in at say -3 db, then just mix it down later? Wouldnt that make it much easier to achieve a final output level thats much closer to commercial volumes? thx

ORIGINAL: atreal1_1

I have a question for anyone really. If I know that Im NOT planning on sending my final mix out to a Mastering Engineer, why soundnt one simply record with the signal as hot as possible? Like instead of recording some acoustic guitar and leaving plenty of room, why wouldnt you just make it come in at say -3 db, then just mix it down later? Wouldnt that make it much easier to achieve a final output level thats much closer to commercial volumes? thx

Whether to record loud or to leave extra headroom is a decision that depends on the recording meidium, not on whether you are going to hire a mastering engineer. With 24 bit recording destined for 16-bit medium, there is no advantage to recording with the levels hot, unless you count not having to raise a fader "much easier," but that doesn't even make sense unless it's just a one-track recording.

You can of course record at whatever level you want, but the practical advantages of recording with headroom are significant. And moreover, if you are making a typical multitrack recording, then individual tracks that are at -3dB are apt to be too loud and to clip the main outs when you mix them together, if you want to use that kind of logic.

Finally, if you read this thread, you will see that "closer to commercial volumes" is not necesarily desireable, especially as the output from a bedroom studio.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: atreal1_1

yep,

I heard that there is a "no fader above 0" rule (I hope that doesnt sound uninformed). Was that something that was only really relevant in analog world???

Yeah, that's basically an analog thing. With 24 bit digital the issues of noise increase/resolution loss are basically insignificant.

Finally, what are some of the significant advantages of recording with headroom. I've been doing this stuff only a year and a half now, I have TONS to learn, and everyone here is really helpful and informative, and for that I THANK YOU ALL !!!!

Primarily that you can just record and not worry about managing your levels.

If you spend half an hour trying to record a vocal or acoustic instrument track with the peak levels coming in at say -3 you can get an idea of how frustrating it is. It is almost impossible to push the record levels that close to zero without occasional clipping from signal over 0dB, or without having the level drop down quieter than you meant it to be. Musicians just don't perform that way.

This basically forces the recordist who is trying to record hot, consistent levels to use a limiter or compressor on the incoming audio to bring up the level while avoiding digital overs. Using a compressor/limiter at the tracking stage is fine except that it can be helpful to save compression/limiting decisions for the mixing stage for a whole bunch of technical and aesthetic reasons.

With 24 bit digital you can basically throw all those rules out the window and save all the time and frustration of trying to tweak your record levels, and all the second-guessing of compressor settings, and all the frustrations from getting that one perfect take and realizing it's clipped and so on.

You just set the levels low enough to allow plenty of headroom so there's no clipping and hit record. It's a much easier, more creative, and more spontaneous way to work, and it avoids all the potential pitfalls from improperly-set compressors and so on. It's the way recording should be, IMO, just common sense.

Cheers.

Hello - I have been reading your post on Mastering at home with HS 6XL and it is about time I've found an article that promotes the idea that well mixed songs can then be "mastered" with the processes you suggest. Since I am a relative rooky I have a few "dumb" questions to clarify a few terms for me that you used. Forgive my ignorance:

Digital overs -

RMS level (83 dB SPL) - I've seen RMS before but not sure what it stands for and how would I check that my monitors are at or near this ? Mine are Edirol MA -15 D's)

One other quick question - WIth a recent keyboard purchase - an M-AUdio Oxygen 8 I got a disc for Abelton Live 6-Lite. Not to appear as a trader on this forum - but wondering if you have any opinion of it versus Sonar...


Thanks

Completely Off Topic:

Interesting how this 'holy' mastering discourse actually resurrected on the 3rd year.

With inexplicable attention to detail, purity of technique, and compassionate simplicity for even the least discriminating of music nerds (me) ... I durst not ask any more questions (yet).

I'm almost persuaded to leave my comfort-'Zone3 for another painful reality check ...

... and toss this into the 'holiest of holy' stacks for repeated ponderings(s).

Man, I'm glad God made musical geniuses and saviors for us struggling musical aspirates!

I get my mixes to sound as good as possible and then run a plugin called "Ozone3" from Izotope. Works great and my sound on many different players sound professional.

In response to a PM:

Hi Yep

I recently tried your home mastering techniques with very good results indeed. Thanks for that - worked a treat, and, for once, got an album that was consistent in RMS levels and track spacing etc.

One question I have is, when I'm at the stage of adjusting the OVERALL level of the album (Stage 2 I think!), this only seems to work for me using the TRIM control - is this okay?? I couldn't seem to raise the *meters* any other way.....kinda confused me, but TRIM worked!!
Any suggestions on that?...

I think this might be more of a "how to work Sonar" than a mastering question, but here goes...

First off, in the digital realm, all gain is created equal, so technically, it doesn't matter which knob or fader you use to adjust level (note that this is not true in analog, but that's a separate topic). The main thing to be careful of is to make sure you know where all of your processors and potential clip points are. Even though the "trim" level works exactly the same as the master fader, it also comes before any eq, compression, etc, and changing the trim level may affect the response of downstream processors. A lot of this is adjustable in sonar and other DAWs, and the particulars of gain-staging and signal routing in any particular program are a little outside the scope of this thread. But the principle still holds-- with digital, gain is gain, and it doesn't really matter where it comes from or when it happens, as long as you're keeping track of your processing downstream.

That said, the working practices developed over decades of multitrack audio work quite well, and in practice, the technical facts are often less relevant than the real-world usability of a system. Mix engineers have developed a standard practice of using gain knobs labeled "trim" or "gain" to control the channel input level so that a healthy, useable signal strength is being fed to the processors that will react and respond in predictable ways to favorite presets or settings. Then, the engineer typically uses the level fader to alter the mixed signal strength without changing the "sound" of the processed track. Most people find this methodology much easier to keep track of, but whatever works.

If you follow my write-up above exactly, it is a non-issue. You are mixing individual songs without much regard for the overall level, then you are dropping the completed stereo mixdowns into a new project as separate clips of audio within a single track in your DAW, then you are using track automation to adjust levels throughout the album. But again, you can use whatever tools work.

Kyle, for many of us (on this forum), Ozone3 works fine (albeit, not as well as a mastering engineer) and is an excellent learning tool for EQ, Reverb, Compression, harmonic excitation, dynamic freq enhancements, and stereo widths of various freqs.

Even after months of Ozone3 myself, the preset "Mix-Master" (with minor tinkering) has brought several of my mixes the right punch at the right frequencies. I'm pretty sure mastering engineers have Ozone3 in their arsenal of magic.

It would be interesting to know more of what Yep may have to say on this.

Well, the whole idea is to do whatever works to make the product sound subjectively better. The objective is easy to understand. The difficult aspects have to do with the ways in which we fool ourselves due to a lot of factors, but primarily the loudness effect coupled with very short auditory memory. This is how a beginner can spend a whole weekend "improving" a track just to have it come out sounding noisier, weaker, and more distorted than when they started:

Every time you add a little bit of level, the track sounds a little better. And everything adds level. So if you add a little reverb, the signal gets a little hotter, and sounds better, but maybe a little less distinct due to reverb masking. So you turn up the highs a little to add clarity, which makes it a little hotter, it sounds a little better, but could use a little more bass to balance the increased highs, so you add a little bass, which makes the signal a little hotter, and it sounds a little better, but now it's clipping, so you turn down the track level a few dB. Now the track is sounding a little weak, so you turn up the mids to get more presence. The track is also starting to sound a little dull, partly because you just turned it down, partly from all the phase distortion from all these eq boosts, partly because your ears are getting burned out from listening to clipped audio on headphones for two hours, and so on. So you turn up the treble again, and then the bass again, for the same reasons as before, and it starts clipping again. When you turn it down, it sounds like crap, so you turn to the compressor/limiter for help. When you come back to listen the next day with fresh ears, you've got a flat-topped square wave with massive phase distortion that hurts the ears to listen to. The solution? Buy more plugins (or preamps, or whatever), which will ultimately be used to add more of more to the sound that is already overloaded.

Whatever you use, whatever you do, make sure to do your before and after A/B evaluations at the same apparent loudness, so that you are compensating for the illusory benefit that comes from simply goosing the level a few dB (which all processors do). This is the single biggest step to "golden ears," and the best hype-deflater ever made. There are a lot of ways to do it, but the main thing is to make sure you do it. The understanding is worth a hundred gigabytes of presets and plugins.

Cheers.

Thanks YEP, as usual your explanantions are clear and easy to understand. Many thanks :-)

Every time you add a little bit of level, the track sounds a little better. And everything adds level. So if you add a little reverb, the signal gets a little hotter, and sounds better, but maybe a little less distinct due to reverb masking. So you turn up the highs a little to add clarity, which makes it a little hotter, it sounds a little better, but could use a little more bass to balance the increased highs, so you add a little bass, which makes the signal a little hotter, and it sounds a little better, but now it's clipping, so you turn down the track level a few dB. Now the track is sounding a little weak, so you turn up the mids to get more presence. The track is also starting to sound a little dull, partly because you just turned it down, partly from all the phase distortion from all these eq boosts, partly because your ears are getting burned out from listening to clipped audio on headphones for two hours, and so on. So you turn up the treble again, and then the bass again, for the same reasons as before, and it starts clipping again. When you turn it down, it sounds like crap, so you turn to the compressor/limiter for help. When you come back to listen the next day with fresh ears, you've got a flat-topped square wave with massive phase distortion that hurts the ears to listen to. The solution? Buy more plugins (or preamps, or whatever), which will ultimately be used to add more of more to the sound that is already overloaded.

sooo true...ouch. I"ve spent weeks turning fairly good recordings to ^%$#. Not only, but every little futtle and nudge of those boosts ruins the rest of the mix too. All those individual sounds are painfully dependant on each other in that sonic community of "the song".

ugh man you just described my mixing experience. in the last couple months or so i've been able to work out of those ruts to great success. when i get something where i like it, i do a save as before i hear that one little issue that will suck me into the spiral of mixing a decent project into oblivion...

I second the tips on assembling these great posts into a book, and I've got a great 3-ring binder going right now.  Yep your thread here has helped me gain a better understanding of the separate functions of the Mix from the Mastering steps.  I don't know when a musician knows he's ready for that Mastering step, but I do know I'm not only NOT there, but most likely never will be - it all comes down to what the end-goals are of the musician.  
I'm sure that there are many of us who are creative composer types, and NOT engineer types.  Heck I don't even want to be a Mixer - but I see it as a necessary evil because that step is too hard to farm out to someone, when it can result in various stages of re-creation of portions or entire tracks needing to be redone that weren't so obvious at the outset. 
I'm aware now at this point, that the composing/writing is one step; being a "tracker", learning the techniques of recording the basic tracks into the sequencer is a 2nd step.  Learning the Mixing task is quite another huge 3rd step all by itself.  If I can get that far at all, I know I won't be wanting to make the kind of investment in gear AND in more time, to try to do my own mastering.   I am in between recording songs right now, and halted further recording when I began to finally get some understanding of the critical concepts of EQ, Reverb, and Compression.  I've found some great video tutorials on YouTube, such as this 7-part series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCi6cLmgiNQ    and others.  
Like everything else in audio, the more you learn, the more questions come up.  On and on it goes.  But literally overnight, when I learned the basics of frequencies and how various instruments & voices step on each other without adjusting EQ, I was able to make some initial adjustments and hear an immediate improvement.  Knowing that's the right direction only makes me want to learn more.  Still, my goal isn't to obtain the best and most golden ears in the world - I'm looking for a sound recording that I can be as happy listening to (and friends & family can listen to) that does the song's creation justice.  Then I want to move on to recording more songs and do likewise to bringing them into a good mix.  I doubt I'll ever be a good "Mixing Engineer" and for sure won't become a Mastering Engineer, but hopefully I can learn and apply some basic principles from the whole range of skills to improve my recordings - I think one has to keep in mind that as long as we're in the category called "home recording musicians", that enviroment and budget limitation alone, is going to cause SOME degree of built-in difficulty.  Or to put it in Clint Eastwood terms,  "A man's got to know his limitations..."          Many thanks again for such wonderful, in-depth and thoughtful posts on such complicated topics!!!   

good stuff. definitely worthy of a bump up.

don't worry....