Recording Levels

[ahanslik]

I'm just starting out and am using a midi keyboard to trigger the the Xpand synth module. I'm trying to understand where my levels should be in recording. I would normally run them to the red, but run into clipping issues with the large dynamic range of the synth. The real problem is - when I bounce to disk with WAV and then convert to MP3 with Itunes to send to Tunecore for publishing my songs all sound very quite compared to other published music. Help!

thx,

[DJ Hellfire]

Record all the tracks right around the high green to low/mid of the meter. Once you have all your tracks mixed, make sure the master output is not clipping. If it is, bring down all track faders equally (except the master fader) until you have around -3db of headroom or so and aren't clipping. Then learn how to master! Look into some nice limiters to put on your master fader. Sonnox Limiter is nice (my personal fav), Massey L2007 is nice, Waves stuff is OK, to name a few. Research mastering or pay someone else to do it! Although there is more to mastering than making the track loud, the basics will get you on your feet and get your stuff louder!

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by ahanslik

I'm just starting out and am using a midi keyboard to trigger the the Xpand synth module. I'm trying to understand where my levels should be in recording. I would normally run them to the red, but run into clipping issues with the large dynamic range of the synth. The real problem is - when I bounce to disk with WAV and then convert to MP3 with Itunes to send to Tunecore for publishing my songs all sound very quite compared to other published music. Help!

thx,

Get yourself a demo of Ozone 4 and try a few presets to get an idea of what mastering compression and limiting can do. The demo is on their website.