Eddie and Rharv, the reason I'm explaining this in detail is Eddie wants to know how this works in a real studio. For us just messing around at home, letting the software automatically limit your mix sounds fine in a lot of cases. Like anything else it depends on what you're doing, the type of music it is and how critical you want to be.

Example, most strong rock oriented stuff is all mixed hot anyway but a lot of songs still might have an interlude section in the middle that is much quieter than the rest of the tune. When you just listen to your song in project mode, that is in RB's main track window, each track is still individual and if each one is below the clip threshold it sounds good. But, mix that using automatic limiting and the whole thing winds up at the same level and you've just lost those dynamics that you created for the interlude section. I believe it's this that causes people to say things like why doesn't the render sound the same as the raw project?

Without the automatic limiting you're telling the software to do it the old fashioned way. Combine the tracks and after combining that audio data together the levels will be what they actually are and then it's usually way too hot so the whole mix is clipping. That's when you realize you have to go back and lower each track and remix it so you can preserve those dynamics.

Using gain change to raise the level of one track is fine as far as listening to it inside RB is concerned but it will cause you to lose dynamic range in the final mix. If it's a hot song anyway with little dynamics in it, then no problem let the software do it, it's a lot less work on your part.

Bob

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