having Problems With Levels When Bouncing - HELP!

[epu]

EVERYTIME I bounce to disk and burn my tracks to CD, the levels are SO disappointingly low and I'm going insane with this problem. I'm not really sure where to begin. I have a Roland XP5080 and a Digi 001 with Pro-Tools 6.1. When I track a full stereo mix to disk, the levels seem to be hot (going into the red) when I record, and upon playback, they sound okay (although I'm guessing not because this is with my amp's volume turned all the way up).

In any case, I record as to not have my levels peak for obvious reason. When I bounce down and burn to CD, the levels, all the bass, highs/lows, seem to be gone.

Now, I have Plug Ins with all kinds of multiband compressors, etc. A friend of mine even has the Waves Diamond Set. Once upon a time, when I used to have a standalone hard disk recorder, I had no problem recoding ot levels and burning the result to CD with THE SAME volume as what I heard in the mix.

I'm trying to figure out if this is a "I need to use plug-ins" problem, or an issue that's happening at the recording stage. I really do need help because I need to start tracking my album. I'm a NYC Teacher with the summer off and time's a flying. Please help. If for some reason it's more convenient, feel free to email me at: [email protected].

Thanks,
Harold

www.evertonrecords.com

[jonah day]

Are you bussing everything to a master fader?

[countach74]

Yeah make sure you have a master fader and make it so that the level is as hot as it can be without clipping. Professional recordings these days are very, very loud. Most of them are compressed and EQ'ed to death to make them as loud as possible. Some people like this. Other people don't.

If you're going to have your project mastered, this next step probably isn't necessary, but if you just want to get a little more volume out of things without sonically degrading your mix too much, here's what you can do: Insert "Maxim" or a similar look-ahead, hard limiter on the stereo bus/master fader. Change the release time to a real fast setting (typically), change the output ceiling to -0.1 or -0.2 dB-ish and then pull the threshold down until it does a SMALL amount of gain reduction (1-2 dB) every once in a while. This will probably make your mix significantly louder; it still won't be as loud as a professionally mastered CD, but it should help some. You can lower the threshold more if you want, but be careful; you don't want artifacts in your music.

Oh yeah... and do this AFTER your mix is done. Don't mix it with Maxim engaged.

[daeron80]

Professional recordings these days are very, very loud. Most of them are compressed and EQ'ed to death to make them as loud as possible. Some people like this. Other people don't.

I'd fall into that last category. I wouldn't say "professional recordings," I'd say "ugly recordings" these days sound very, very loud. Very much too loud to have any chance of sounding as good as they othewise could.

If your peaks are above -6, and if it sounds good when you turn it up, it's fine, IMO. Maybe it could be maximized some by a careful, experienced hand and ear, but there's nothing wrong with it needing to be turned up. Louder appears to sound better at first. But once you run out of headroom, forcing it louder is the road to back down to lo-fi. When comparing your mixes to mastered records (which can be helpful if you pick good sounding records, and listen carefully), I recommend that you always match loudness first - turn the record down until it sounds like it has about the same average loudness as your mix - then compare spectral balance, punchiness, etc. If you don't you're getting a false picture, because the human ear's perception of spectral balance changes dramatically with volume.

[epu]

Thanks for the swift replies, I really appreciate it. Lol, I must be a little retarded, because although I've used the master fader many times, I didnt use it for these particular projects. Sometimes I will just bounce an invidual track (highlighting the track, and selecting bounce to disk from the FILE menu). What kind of difference would you recieve including the master fader. Isnt this just another gain stage that could lead to clipping?

I totally agree with loud doesn't necessarily equal good, but I'm just trying to get listenable levels out of my mixes, especially considering that I was able to get them with my old trust standalone hard drisk recorder.

In any case, I'm going to try some of the advice given (i.e. using Maxim) and get back to you all. Anymore advice of course will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot!

[Cavet Your Eruptor]

Oh yeah... and do this AFTER your mix is done. Don't mix it with Maxim engaged.

This is one of the biggest pieces of advice that I didn't know how to follow for the longest time. Just to let you know how I do it now - and not to say that this right - I bounce my mix down to a single, stereo, WAV file and then open that into a new session, create a master fader and, in my case, put Waves L1 on that and then bounce again.