Regarding the drums or anything else being in "the red" on your meters.

In the days of tape this was actually very important. However, with digital, it's not that it's not important, it's just that it doesn't seem to matter as much.

As long as you can not hear anything bad happening. you're probably good to go. When you get some digital distortion, trust me, you'll know it. I like to have my meters out of the red as much as possible. It's kind of a sport to see if I can get some solid sounding stuff without being in the red. Yeah, it can be done.

The main thing I look at, and adjust accordingly is the final wave. I want to see good dynamic range and not a lot of digital "overs" happening. By the same token, I don't want to see anything that resembles an audio brick either.

Try to find a way to get a good sound balance without slamming the meters. If I have to turn my drums up into the red, or my vocal track into the red to have it cut through, that means I have everything else turned up too much. Rather than turning the drums or vox up and dropping a compressor and a Boost 11 into the track FX plugin box, I might go back and do one of two possible things depending on the tracks....

1. I look at the feasibility of turning the individual tracks down..... essentially zeroing all the faders and that means removing or changing the volume automation........essentially starting from scratch again....... or
2. If I'm satisfied with the mix but it's just too loud, I add a new "band" buss and direct all the instruments to that buss where I can simply use the band buss volume to bring the band down as a whole and not lose the balance I have in the mix. It in turn gets sent to the master buss. This lets me send my vocal buss to the main/master buss without having to compete in volume to be heard.

So... it's not the cardinal sin it used to be to run in the red. Feel free to be in the red if that is what it takes but keep in mind, there's a better way to do it than to default to slamming the meters just because you can.

edit: by starting your mixing with the drums and bass, it's easier to not overload and need to run in the red. The drums and bass go red because they tend to be where the most sonic energy is at. So by starting with them and setting them just below the red, you have a better chance to avoid the red zone. Even so..... give them head room so you can add guitars and still be under 0dB.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 01/19/18 05:47 AM.
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