Overdub monitoring level conundrum?

[kirkbross]

Any tips for boosting the volume of a record track when overdubbing on a fully-produced, mixed song without having to crank the record track's fader to "crackly" levels or bringing down ALL the other tracks?

I am always having this issue: I track and overdub a song and then do a nice mix with automation and have everything sounding great. Then I decide to overdub another part and I can never get my record track loud enough in the cans without either cranking the fader to +12 and/or bringing ALL the other tracks down 10dbs or so. Cranking the record track's fader way up usually results in a crackly sound and bringing all the other tracks down is just a pain to revert and destroys the insert levels anyway (resulting in a more verby sound usually).

[jbasil]

How about bouncing down a mix, putting it on a new track and muting the originals and make the master fader receive from anything but 1 & 2, which is this track (and everything else. It's easier than bypassing 4 plugins). Set up overdub and lower ref mix volume.

[The Dougfather]

I've found it really good practice to set up an Aux track at the start of a session and call it Mix Bus or the like. I then route all of my tracks to the mix bus and then route the mix bus to Analogue 1-2.

In this scenario you could pull down the mix bus aux and if you route the over dub track directly to Analogue 1-2 you can easily find the balance without cranking everything up. Having a mix bus also helps down the line with printing because it means you don't have to hunt through your session changing the i/o, create a single send to a new audio track and your done.

[Ben Jenssen]

Like dougfather, I also make a aux as my master fader first thing. One more reason: aux plugins is not post-fader like the analogue-out-master plugins are. As for the OP's issue, yes, route everything that's now going to analog outs to an aux. (Select all these tracks hold down option-shift and the change you do on one will affect all the selected tracks.