Quote:

I think I may have stumbled on to something that has been at the root of a lot of this conversation. We have different schools of thought, but I think there has been a lot of "cross conception" going on here.

I believe we need to differentiate between RECORDING hot and MIXING hot. It seems like different responses are using those two terms interchangeably and that is not what the original question was about.

My past practice (and present practice for that matter) is to RECORD tracks with a good deal of gain on them, so they reach a top level of about -3db. So the gain stage when recording is rather hot, but not reaching 0 or clipping at all.

However, when I MIX those tracks, I pull them down until the channel slider is totally off and then bring them up to where they rarely go beyond -6db or -4db. I record them hotter so there is some meat there if I would want to go any higher when I mix.

Once again I restate this thought and maybe it hasn't been presented in proper context. When mixing down, I can always cut a hotter track, but I can't boost a weaker one. When the slider is as far up as it can go, it's done and then I have to start looking to pull down the other 9, or 12, or 16. Why pull down 9 or 12 or 16 channels because one is weak when, recording that one hotter would prevent that? Digital, analog, digilog or anatal (I made those up!!)... whatever. As long as there is no clip anywhere it is fine.

Thing is, if I mix something down and dump it into a merged stereo wav file, as soon as I get it into Audition I am going to use the gain feature anyway and make it swell up to the full size of the window and see if the VU meters clip or not. I can handle some yellow. Orange is pushing it, but I never go so far where I see any red.

Is that just restating what has been said here or has there actually be a terminology gap about recording hot vs mixing hot?


You are 100% correct in what you're saying here.

John
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