Ears or Numbers (db)

[SpinningDisk]

I was sitting down the other day to work on one of my projects, love PT 8, and started to day dream about the best way to keep the transparency, sound, volume, etc... The reason I say this is because when I look down at the db numbers on the faders an other things such as, plugins, keyboards, external gear I get confused. What I am trying to say is that I do everything by ear. To me, As long as it's not in the red and sounds good It doesn't bother me. Should it? I have know idea how to mix with numbers. I read so many post about how you add that db, subtract that db, divide by the db and then you take the square root and so on. My question is whether I am doing this right? Is there a basic foundation that everyone in the industry that we should all go by? Does it really sound better when you do all the additions and subtractions? What say you.
Hope all is well.

John

[Dorian Green]

Meters on your software are just a way to prevent from clipping.
Your ears are your BEST meters!
Software meters are also there to tell you if your takes are too low (meaning you have a poor Signal to Noise ratio, which can introduce a poor sound quality!)
Meters are just tools.When an artist talks to his sound engineer he must tell him how much he should raise or take the level of a track down, instead of just saying: "Raise the guitar part", the S.E will wait for a value to know "how much?".
But basically your judgment which made you want to raise the level was done BY EAR.
Am I making sense?
So dB is just a value, just a language.You don't listen music watching some bargraphs dancing, the most important is the result and if it sounds good on every sound system.

Of course, dBs are important, but just as a tool, a scale.But meters will never replace ears, apart concerning digital clipping detection!
The best Sound Engineer have listened thousand of songs and mixes as ear training (and because they are music lovers!).
It would be really tough if we had to make every mix by calculations it would mean that all the mix in the world would sound the same.A computer could do it automatically.Sound engineering is an artistical work based on sensibilty.
A mix doesn't LOOK good (meters) , it SOUNDS good....

Hope it helps

[mindnoise]

Hi,

just want to support what Dorian says. As long as it SOUNDS good, there is no need for numbers.
They only get interesting when you run into serious mixing problems.
But until then the only numbers that might be of interest here is the ´6´. For a rising a signal for 6dB makes it twice as loud.
But that´s it.

best :)

[SpinningDisk]

Thank you for the reply. I thought that was all to it. Good to know.

John