Maybe a stupid question. I really often have sounds that are way too loud compared to the rest of my sounds. Yes, I can turn down the volume, but then I will have sounds with only a volume of like 30% and they still sound as loud to the ones that have 100% for example. Is this not weird and is this bad?

The reason why I would like to ask this is because I have issues in getting the balance right of my mixes. Wondering if this can cause it. I kinda have a feeling that you have less space in making these volume changes and that's maybe whereby I experience this? I have this mostly with samples. Are they way too much compressed or something?

Any ideas what the main reasons could be for this and how you can approach it the best?

Any help and clarity on this would be really nice and much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

Yeah, some sounds are incredibly loud. Often from a soft synth, they just overwhelm samples or loops. There's no choice but to pull them back to a very low level. I have no idea of the sonic mechanisms that could create a high output which would be considered an advantage by a plugin manufacturer. But I agree, it's odd to see your mix all lined up near zero db, then there's that one track near silent but oddly still cutting through.

 

I'm totally clueless to what you mean. Just turn things down until they sit well in the mix. If you add more things that are too loud, turn those down as well.

Get a decent listening level up. Try reading up on Bob Katz K-metering system (K12, K14, etc) for your mixing dBSPL. Then you are not "mixing towards a meter".
There is 144dB of dynamics in 24bit audio. No need to stay super-close to 0dBFS, if that's your worry/problem.

Edit: Yes, gain-staging (as also Clayton below points out) is the first things you should learn. Read up on it.
https://ask.audio/articles/5-gain-staging-mistakes-to-avoid

 

Last edited: Aug 5, 2017

Turn things down. I am just guessing but the sounds that are too loud are probably samples? ... Normalized samples? A lot of samples are edited compressed etc and than normalized. They are really loud. Turn them down.

 

@Nick12 you can reduce the clip gain in clip (sample) view and no from track volume. i do this to balance my tracks and then i adjust the volume on each track before the mix. All your tracks need to be audio files to do that (no midi) and there is DAW that allows that to midi tracks too!

 

If volume doesnt work, try EQ.

 

Simple: bounce your VI MIDI track to disk as audio, making sure your fader is down far enough that the track is not peaking higher than, say, -6 dB or even lower. Or edit the audio track after recording and normalize it to around -6 dB or lower. I usually make it a practice to bounce all my VIs to audio tracks before mixing with consistent peaks across all tracks no higher than that. If the resulting audio still sounds too loud, either your sample library is somehow faulty or your VI itself is.

 

can't you use the synth/sampler volume knob and keep intact the mixer ones?

 

Try this.

Starting with drums. Split them into different channels if you can. Add effects and get the sound what you think is right between the whole kit. Then group them. When sitting in the mix I aim them to peak (Collectively) about -12 (give or take 1 or 2 db) EQ the bass to fit in with the kick drum, so if you boost one freq a bit, lower the other to match.
I aim to have the bass peaking about -2db below the volume of drum kit. Synths I suppose a further 6 to 8 db below the bass volume. brass about the same as synth or lower still, strings I can have as much as 15 db below bass volume. That's at mix down stage. Oh and I never touch the master volume. I remember reading why there is a reason for it to sit at 0db. Something about the way DAW are set up bearing in mind it is Digital and not analogue we are dealing with!


Your master channel should be peaking between -3 and -6 db at this stage, but any lower doesn't matter. Any higher and drag the volume down for ALL channels a fraction until it peaks the master channel below -3db.

Save mixdown, then you are ready for mastering!


Oh one other thing I thought of. never use compression just for the sake of it. it's a tool to be used when certain instruments aren't cutting through the mix and EQ just isn't doing it, and over compression adds too much mud and thickness to the mix.

 

Last edited: Aug 5, 2017

Sounds to me like ... GAIN STAGING. Google it watch some tutorials there's tons of them. As I'm sure your aware there's many many volume knobs on your chain. Thers 1 or 2 on your synth and more on many of your plugins. Learn about gain staging, how to keep volume proper from each one. Idk could be wrong but this is what it sounds like to me. I used to have this problem early on and it turned out to be I was totally ignorant to gain staging. Makes your sounds sound stronger and also less overbearing.

 

Thank you very much for all these amazing and interesting answers! I am really grateful for that!

Indeed. It's pretty strange to see that a lot of sounds are near zero dB and the others way higher. I already understood that they are compressed and normalised pretty hard. But why? I would like to know that either.

This actually won't always work for me. Some sounds will be really close to 0% or near silent. So at one point I can't turn them down much further anymore, while still being loud and not fitting nicely in the mix. Is using a limiter maybe a option?

Yep. It's indeed especially with samples. Actually wondering why some samples are compressed so hard. What's exactly the benefit for this, because you won't likely use it in your mix on such a high volume anyway. I have samples that can peak around 5dB. That's pretty loud.

You likely work with ProTools or Logic, isn't it? I did some research on this. It seems really handy and really nice. Not sure if this is available in FL Studio aswell?

To be honest I did not think for using an equalizer for this. I will look into this if it can help me. Thanks for your suggestion!

Could you explain please what you mean with bouncing to disk as audio? Also is normalising not especially intended for making sounds louder by increasing the loudest peaks? Will normalising help that much in my case if they already too loud?

Yeah, that's what I do. It does not help that much, unfortunately.

I will try this!

Do you do this to everything or especially with the kick and the bass? I quess it also helps with mixing when sounds are clashing in the same frequency spectrum.

This is interesting, because I was going to think if a compressor could help for this. But now I quess it's maybe not the best thing to do.

Yeah, could be. Gain Staging is when you reduce the gain of every track by a few dB before mixing, right? And reducing the gain at the same time when adding any effects to compensate for any volume increases?

 

there was a tutorial posted here not long ago about using pink noise to balance instruments/sounds in a mix. these guys are usually on point with information: Sound on Sound (Mixing with pink noise).

...but really, proper gain staging should eliminate the problem altogether.

 

I think the issue here is still GAIN-STAGING, along with proper listening volume/loudness (dBSPL) .
Get to know how that works first. Then everything will follow easily.

Edit: Oh, Coolbeanz just said the same thing above. "Great minds..."

 

Set the meters in your daw to pre-fader metering (some have, some don't, not quite essential anyway). Place an utility/gain plug-in on every track, first in the chain, and adjust so you don't have overloads. Sometimes, having hot signal is no problem (peaking under zero), sometimes you must go down to -18 dB FS to properly use some vintage emuation plug-ins. Process the sound with eq & stuff and place a new utility plug-in the last in the chain. With this last one, adjust the gain (+/-) until your sound sits in the mix with volume fader still untouched (so at 0 dB). Hypothetically, if you are at -24 dB and still too loud, add a new gain utility and reduce even more. The purpose is to have a rough mix with all the faders still untouched.

After you finish the arrangement and you decide it's time to mix, use the faders (and only re-adjust the gain plug-ins if you decide the fader adjustment is too extended - like if you need to boost over 0 with the fader or you need to cut and the fader is going way down). In this way, you do a rough mix with the utility plug-ins and you can do very precise adjustments with the volume faders and additionally, the volume faders will be all at +/- 3 dB around zero.

 

Bouncing a midi file-for ex.- is when you export this track and then import it in your same project as an audio file.So you can now adjust the gain.
Gain staging can be also done with Klanghelm VUMT plugin for example.It's just a VU meter and gain knob.

Anyway I've often had your problem with some nasty over compressed/limited samples.Now when I have this problem and when I love this sample,I decompress the sample with the Flux PureDcomp V3 plugin,in order to recover the sample to a correct dynamic range.

 

I'm probably not familiar with whatever DAW you're using, but I'll assume it has a "Bounce to Disk" function, which is, essentially, selecting a VI/MIDI track and rendering it out as audio. It can be done to a single track, several tracks or an entire mix, including processing. You can then integrate the resulting audio track back into your DAW, eliminating the need to have your VI and its corresponding MIDI track active. Because it's now an audio track, as opposed to a MIDI track being played through a VI, you can also manipulate the track like any other audio track.

"Normalizing" is the process of setting an audio track's peak to a certain level. Most people use it to boost the audio to 0 dB, but the level can be set anywhere, and once processed, the resulting audio will either be amplified or turned down so that the peak is only as loud as whatever you set the normalization for. Instead of having the normalization set to 0 dB, simply set it for -6 dB, which will shrink your entire audio track's level down so that its peak is -6 dB. Hope that helps!

 

I start off by doing that to kick and bass, but then I EQ every other channel to taste as well, to make sure the mix doesn't get too cluttered (Panning sounds left / right can help too)

 

I cannot tell you just how much I forget to use that 'utility' plug in in Ableton!

 

Yeah, could be. Gain Staging is when you reduce the gain of every track by a few dB before mixing, right? And reducing the gain at the same time when adding any effects to compensate for any volume increases?[/QUOTE]

Yeah gain staging is making sure your volume levels are as high as they can be without clipping all the way from your synths, through your effects rack, and then making sure all your mixer channels are low enough so when they combine at the master bus they don't clip there. As obviously of you put 2 sounds on top of each other both peaking at 0 db then they'll be higher then 0 when combined. That's where the -6db thing comes from because -6 is usually sufficiently low enough that when you combine all your mixer channels at the master, they won't peak. Gain staging to my understanding is basically making sure your gain levels are as high as they can be throughout your project without clipping. I usually do it by using Pro L limiter or some plugin that lets me view volume level and moving it after each plugin and making sure each one is coming out where I want it. Sometimes I'l use Abletons native Utility plugin to bring the gain up or down if there's no dedicated knob on the plugin.

 

I thought gain staging was some obscure lost art of using mixer, faders, stuff here and stuff there
Turns out I've been doing it since I started making music? I mean of course you want to make sure nothing clips and everything is balanced...