Hello everyone,

let me start by saying I'm really happy with this board & comminuty. I just read "Frequencies, Levels of a Mix and Mastering Tips" by The Drum King and I'm a bit confused about the Peak thing. I always used to only move the faders of the mixer in my DAW. Now I noticed the peak levels always stays at 0, no matter how much I lower the fader. Does that mean I always have to load a plugin to lower the peak?

Greetings

 

You probably have to reset the metering of your DAW.

 

Most DAW's (and plugin's) level meters reset when you click on them. For example if you click the "0dB" in Cubase it will reset.

or maybe I am misunderstanding you. If you want to lower the output of a plugin/synth, then just turn it down inside the plugin so that it doesn't go over 0dB.
Tip: Alway keep your master fader at unity gain and instead ride the faders. Even though you are working in 64 bit internal processing it's always better to leave the master at unity gain. Let the master have a few dB left of headroom before you send it off for mastering (or doing the mastering yourself).

 

Well, I'd suggest you to reveal your secret and tell us what DAW are you using, it will help us a little bit

In any case the first thing you should be looking for is meters. If they are going down when you pull fader down, then everything is okay, it's just that you should reset peak meter. If not than there's something strange with the way your DAW is set up.

 

i dont really understand your question, peak levels are there to show you how close you are from clipping and to make sure that you see your signal is not clipping (i.e no distortion)... the signal should be close to max but if it "stays" there as you say, it will sound crappy and distorted ...and the top of the wave will appear "flat"

here you'll find a free 32bit plug-in that you can use on any track to see what your signal looks like and also to check out how it is affected by the various active plug-ins you have inserted on your track. It is very useful, as you'll often see things before you can hear them ..andthat will help you to notice very slight nuances

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4


we usually measure two things:
1- the difference between the average level (RMS) and the peak, which will expresses how dynamic the music is (there are different values like -20db full scale or -12dbfs depending on the type of music you make)
2- the difference between the peaks in your track and the clipping ceiling (i.e maximum peak level), which expresses how much room you have left to make it sound louder without distorting the signal.

there you'll find an article that may interest you

http://www.digido.com/level-practices-part-1.html
http://www.digido.com/level-practices-part-2-includes-the-k-system.html

 

Hey guys,

thanks for your replies. I just show you what actually confused me:


I always thought, the signal will be lowered before it reaches insert effects.
By the way, I have another question. Why do different RMS Meters show different values? T-Racks values are about 1-2db lower than Voxengos Elephant. Which Meter do you use?

Have a nice day everyone!

 

RMS is an average so these different meters do not calculate in the same way (different algorithms) ...sometimes some might exclude material that others will take into account...hence a slight difference
I use the ones in sonarx1 chiefly but also T-racks and waves and...etc

 

Hey guys it's me again

I got a problem, maybe you could help me out :

I'm producing electronic dance music and I got a problem with cymbals I use. They really sound "noisy", which is kinda painful in my ears. The problem is when I lower their volume they are too quiet. The cymbal is a sample of the vengeance package. What am I doing wrong or what is the solution to avoid this?

Or is it maybe because the vengeance samples are already processed? Maybe they get too much of compression when I consider the compression on the Master Bus.

Greetings

 

You have to find the anoying frequency of the hihats and lower that area with an equalizer.

 

have you tried to tame the peaks a bit, with a comp/limiter or a de-esser? that should work pretty well,
or as suggested already, you can also use an EQ...a parametric EQ

choose the highest Q possible and boost the gain (about =+10) then sweep across the range of frequencies until you spot that annoying harsh sound you're after (might be more than one frequency) and then turn the gain down to get rid of it!
generally speaking dont use a low Q value when you cut....
very often the ear piercing frequency is around 2.5khz..but in the case of cymbals it might be around 5khz or higher

you may also use a bus to do all that and mix it back in to the "unprocessed" cymbal sound you have so as to keep as close as possible to the original...

plenty of ways to deal with this issue...

 

With these TT Dynamic Range Meter VST you can see peaks / rms / correlation and the dynamic range.

TT dynamic meter

 

What you describe is a result of heavy compression. Try reducing compression rate, or making threshold higher. As on option (not the best one) try increasing release time.

 

Haha, typical to too much compression as mentioned above ... ease back on it ... I am not a big fan of compression ... like my stuff more raw, haha

 

Thanks everyone, but of course I have another question :

I'm just finishing another track of mine and I have some trouble in terms of loudness. Usually I master my House tracks by myself and actually I get pretty good results, I'm mostly able to boost them to -6.5 to -6 db RMS. I know some guys say a non-pro shouldn't do that, but since I'm producing for fun and for my sets I think it's okay . Anyway, this track I'm talking about is a house track but it has some "trancy" elements, like the lead etc.. and I'm just not able to get it that loud like usually. I think something's wrong with my mix, but I dont know what. Master output is not clipping and it sounds pretty balanced. Maybe the way I mix is too "basic," because I'm not a surgeon when it comes to EQ'ing etc.. I just eq until it sounds fine in my ears . Maybe someone have a good mixing guide for club music?

Edit: Damn, I think it's the lead. It's a Virus bank for Nexus and It seems like the producer of this soundbank compressed it too hard, because I didn't put any compression on the lead. I only did some little EQing. Could it be that? And if yes, what can I do in a situation like this?

Greetings

 

Man Use "Sonalksis free G" I use to ride the fader a lot until this free plugin came along helps a helleva lot

http://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.htm

 

You can insert this simple plug in on any track set preference & it's as simple as that no clipping I keep it at 3db
The beauty is she uses no dsp