PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Mixing,Mastering,Post Production.....what's a guy to do???

Mrgeeze wrote >> I'm concerned about saturating (clipping) the tracks with high volume.
It appears I have that problem with my existing tracks.

What "loudness" should I shoot for on each track?
How far into Yellow/Red should I let each meter get on the individual tracks
What about Master out? Should master out be where I manage "target" wav volume?

Should I normalize my wav files inside biab?
Should I include ACID info ?
Should I take dry tracks or put a little reverb inside biab.

I will do any track panning in Logic.<<

What I do is set all to the same volume, center and flat in BIAB. Right click on the Master button in BIAB the option is there.

I then leave the Normalize option in saving the wav in BIAB export area on as all tracks then come into the DAW even. I then export as individual tracks. Do not use the Acid info unless you need it. Reverb is gone with the Master option above. Add it in the DAW if I want it. I create a new folder for each song.

I select the tracks I want and pull them into my DAW and “Normalise” the tracks to -12 dB (I would think Logic Pro would have that option. You could just pull down the volume to achieve similar.) Note, there is a composite track of the whole song that I do not add to the DAW.

I also colour code my tracks to make things easier to follow. (I use the same colour code on every song. Say blue for drums, orange for bass, green for guitars, yellow for pedal steel, pink piano ...) this makes recognition much easier.

Then I play through the song and set markers for the areas. This makes the task of adjusting areas simpler. For example turning down an instrument during a verse, hitting harder in the instrumental etc.

Whilst this all looks a lot of work it takes less than 10 mins once you have the song in BIAB ready.

Then I go through the mix process. Set the track levels, panning, Compression, eq. Set the automation for things such as the volumes discussed above. After the mix process is complete the overall level will still be low. Maybe -8 or so dB.

It is then I go to the “mastering” process. This involves setting the overall tone (using an analyser such as SPAN but using ears also) maybe reverb but lastly using a limiter to lift the overall level of the track. I lift it to under -1.3 dB and I set the overall level to about -14 LUFS using the LUFS meter as a guide. The reason for -14 LUFS is that is what Spotify wants and it is the middle of the LUFS ranges for various streaming services (not that I stream anything). Also once converted to MP3, MP3gain will not have to do much change on your track. (I use Reaper, in Reaper I set the 0 dB on the volume meter point to actually be -14 dB once again to make the process simpler. If I go over -14 dB the volume goes into the Red. 0 dB really -14 dB in my implementation of Reaper.)

Then I render. Listen to the track in a couple of environments.

When happy I set it up on my “performance laptop”.

All sounds a lot of work, sometimes it only takes minutes, sometimes days. But you soon get what you want.

I have done a track from start i.e. finding the style in BIAB, entering the chords, exporting the song, putting it through the procedures above in under 4 hours easy. I did know what I wanted with the song. I find often the most time consuming part is to come up with the style I want. Then maybe changing the odd instrument within the style.

That is the entire process for me.

Tony