Master Fader is Clipping, what now?

[Peulock]

I would really like to find out what other people with the same problem do different from me in this situation.
I know I should avoid this from the beginning of the mix, but sometimes s.... happens.
My master fader is clipping.... What do you guys do?
I try to turn down the volume of all the tracks independently instead of lowering the Master fader.

Is it ok just to turn down the master fader?
I mix back to pro tools sending the whole mix to a Manley Mixer, so for me it's ok if my master is not really at a-3db because I can compensate that when I am recording the 2track mix back to Pro Tools through my Manley mixer.
Tks
Fernando

[kittonian]

Just because you turn down the master fader doesn't mean that you aren't clipping the input of the channel to begin with. In analog sometimes this can be a cool thing and you get a nice breakup where the harmonics begin to shine. In digital this is never a good thing and you should concentrate on mixing your levels quieter so that you have headroom by the time you hit the master fader. You'll notice your mixes open up quite a bit and have a lot more depth to them.

Hope that helps! Best of luck!

[Peulock]

That's what I thought!!
I guess I should set the monitoring level louder than I ve been doing lately!!
Thanks!!
Cheers!!

[crizdee]

Hi,

select all tracks and create a group for all of them, create a new VCA master and assign it to the new group and now pull down the VCA master a couple of DB and all your tracks should now bw scaled down by 2db but should retain their relative levels.

Chris

[WildHoney]

Hi,

select all tracks and create a group for all of them, create a new VCA master and assign it to the new group and now pull down the VCA master a couple of DB and all your tracks should now bw scaled down by 2db but should retain their relative levels.

Chris

Of course, this won't work as well if you're sub-mixing sections to aux tracks with plugins on them b/c you'll then be changing the input levels to the plugs on those auxes. e.g. if you've got all your BV's bussed to a stereo aux on which you have an gate, eq and compressor, you'd want to trim the level on the aux, but not on the individual audio tracks. Just one of many possible examples of why you need to be careful about the method described.

[acmost]

How about gaining down the offending tracks a few dbs and continuing from there? Is this a negative option?

[Matt_G]

Just because you turn down the master fader doesn't mean that you aren't clipping the input of the channel to begin with. In analog sometimes this can be a cool thing and you get a nice breakup where the harmonics begin to shine. In digital this is never a good thing and you should concentrate on mixing your levels quieter so that you have headroom by the time you hit the master fader. You'll notice your mixes open up quite a bit and have a lot more depth to them.

Hope that helps! Best of luck!

Not true, lowering the master fader is the same as lowering all the mix channels individually. This is because it acts like an attenuator for the 48bit mix bus. It helps you scale your 48bit mix into a 24bit output. You can try this with 'signal generator' set to a 1kHz sine wave across 24 channels the master fader can be clipping & you will here the distortion clearly, now bring down the master fader until the level is no longer clipping. Viola! the distortion magically disappears.

What you are referring to only applies to 'Aux faders' these act different to master faders & can be clipped on the input if you aren't careful & lowering the Aux fader just brings the distorted signal down to a lower level. Also beware that TDM plugs can also be easily clipped as they too are 24bit fixed on the plug-in bus interconnect I/O.

Matt

[Drew Mazurek]

Matt is correct. You're not actually clipping anything internally, just the 24bit final output.

This usually happens when people mistakenly think they need to/should record all their tracks with the levels mashed at the top. Remember 0dbVU is -18dbFS or about halfway up the PT level meter. When you take all those mashed up tracks and mix them together, you get that "Pro Tools Sound".

[jeremyroberts]

Sounds like you would benefit from reading the 48-bit mixer white paper

[pfo]

lowering the master fader is the same as lowering all the mix channels individually. This is because it acts like an attenuator for the 48bit mix bus. It helps you scale your 48bit mix into a 24bit output.

Matt-

I didn't know that! Was this true of the LE master fader too (except for the 48bit part of course)? I seem to remember the conventional wisdom of PTLE was that the master fader was basically an aux track, and that if you were clipping, you needed to lower the tracks feeding it rather than the master fader itself, and I just assumed that carried over into HD as well.