Originally Posted By: Sundance
IF you are using plugins that emulate vintage hardware and you are recording/mixing in 24bit, then the "sweet spot" is said to be -18dbfs and it's suggested to use the trim on your DAW (or a trim plugin first in your fx chain) since the signal is prefader going into the plugins. This is from Graham at the Recording Revolution:

http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/11/25/do-you-know-how-to-read-your-meters/

And I've read long discussions about that from some other places too.

But personally, I just keep the peaks somewhere between -12 and -6. I use Realtracks and rarely record anything other than vocals. And i found the above advice (-18dbfs)to not work well for me mixing with the FX I use. YMMV


Hi Josie,

That's interesting that you mention -18 dBFS. I find that for my individual instrument tracks (wav), I usually have them set so that the meters, on average, oscillate around the -18 dB mark in Reaper. For my vocals, they're usually a little higher... I estimate somewhere around -12 dB. For the Master Volume, though, I set it so that it peaks a little under 0 dB. I arrived at these values purely by trial and error and I've stayed with them because they seem to work for me. (This is the main reason that I run Reaper with a version 3 skin... I like the extra height of the meters that v3 has.)

Since I have Ozone as an FX in the Master fader, I find that I need to adjust the Master fader when I play around with Ozone's presets.

Regards,
Noel

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