Quote:

Therefore, I recommend aiming for an average record level around -12 dB. or even lower to reduce the chance of distortion ruining a good performance."



Here's the point that is getting missed and is also where I was wrong in my comments about riding the faders.

Since I have been corrected about my misstatement concerning you can't get a good mix simply by riding the faders, that still begs the question: If there's no problem with riding the faders then what difference does it make if your tracks are all at -2db or -12db as long as there's no distortion? There is no automatic normalizing, limiting whatever going on. The faders themselves simply act as a gain changer so just ride the faders down until you're not distorting the output bus and you're good to go. Eddie summed it up himself when he said so I can record as hot as I want as long as nothing is clipping and just mix using the faders. Right? Not exactly.

What about dynamic range as Silvertones mentioned? You can create some dynamics between tracks just using the faders but what about dynamics within any given track by itself? If the whole guitar track for example is up at -2 and that's where it is for the whole song maybe that's not what you want. A bridge, chorus, solo sections can all be at different levels during the song and most times they should be. Very few musical tracks of any song are going to be recorded at the same level throughout. If a quiet section is at -10 and a screaming solo is at -1 then how can the overall track be at -2 unless it's been compressed or limited already? When you apply Gain Change in RB almost always automatic limiting is checked so it looks like simply applying Gain Change is fine. Uncheck that Limiting box though and then apply some Gain and see what happens. Most raw recorded audio has all kinds of peaks in it whether it's you strumming a guitar or singing. You soon realize you can't apply much Gain Change at all without checking that Limit box without clipping.

In the other thread I posted my discovery about how RB generates a Real Drum track. It came in at -24 on the meter but blow it up inside the audio edit window and peaks were at 0db and RB is not going to generate (record) an audio drum track using automatic limiting or compression so it has to keep the peaks under 0db. We all know virtually every audio engineer compresses the drums but the question is when will they do that? There's many different answers to that I'm not going to go into now but my point is if you want to hear what a virgin drum track sounds like before any manipulation then it goes back to my original point, you don't do a gain change or anything else to that track, you have to instead turn up your studio monitoring system and using the faders, bring down all the other tracks so you can effectively mix your new drum track. Then you dscide what you want to do with it. This is the same principle for all your other instruments and vocals. Unless you're doing some tune that is going to be the same exact boring level all the way through, then that is the answer as to why you should record and keep your individual tracks down around -12 or less. To maintain dynamic range at least initially. You may later decide to reduce that range by using compression and limiting but you don't want to paint youself into a corner by having your initial tracks too hot. Then you're doing what ROG referred to, applying an expander after the fact to try to recreate some dynamics and then mix it in order to look like a hero to a new client who did it wrong in the first place.

I think this makes sense now or did I screw this up again?

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.