Good Signal low audio

[Bill Simmons]

hello all. i am really new to recording and have been doing well but had an issue yesterday. Recorded our bass player and had good input signal (0db.) when playing back there is no audio but fader shows good signal there. If I turn up the fader it clips the Master fader but can barely hear audio. I had the bass out from pedal to DI box--through Macki mixer--out using DBI and into the instrument input on the Octi-Pre MK2. Any thoughts as to why the audio level is SOOOO low yet it looks like its thereon the fader? Hope that makes sence???

[daeron80]

That's likely to be a tough one to diagnose long distance. But a couple of things first. 0 dB might seem like a good level, but it's actually way too hot. You'll get better sound and make the mixing process easier on yourself if you shoot for peaks between -12 and -6 at most. Just into the yellow a little. That's for tracks that are likely to be high in the mix. For things like shaker or pad, much lower can be fine. Ideally, you want to end up with levels such that most faders live somewhere around zero, give or take a few dB, during the mix. That gives you the greatest fader resolution. If your tracks are all really hot, you may end up having to pull your faders way down into a range where a small movement makes a relatively big change, which makes it more difficult to mix well. That problem can sometimes be mitigated by setting plug-in output levels lower. But you make it easier on yourself to start off with more reasonable levels. Imagine PT is an analog machine, and 0 dB is the absolute max peak it can handle. You wouldn't be ramming a tape machine or console that hard. Your analog gear will function more in its normal zone if it's not trying to feed PT so hot, too. 0VU = -18 is a good rule of thumb.

Second, not sure what the Mackie is doing in that signal path. You'll get a cleaner, more solid signal by taking the output of the DI straight into the Octo-pre.

So now to why the signal is inaudible. Maybe somehow all the higher frequencies are being rolled off, and the signal you're seeing is composed of frequencies too low for the speakers to reproduce. Tried looking at it with an FFT or a spectrogram? Or maybe its getting phase-canceled somehow. A copy of the signal is getting routed through 180 degrees out of phase? But then the master wouldn't register, I guess. Maybe the wiring on your interface output is out of phase and the signal is getting summed to mono after that somewhere?

Can you hear other things that are panned center? What happens if you pan the bass hard to one side?

[Bill Simmons]

I should have added. Im recording live sound at our church. Thats why the Macki board is there. Thanks for the reply. I will check into your suggestions.

[Bill Simmons]

Also....everything else in the mix is fine. Didn't try panning the bass. This was a different set-up than I normaly use. Had been recording bass direct out from bass amp but there is a noise issue there that I'm trying to figure out as well. Thought using direct out from pedal would help. Got rid of the amp noise but ended up with this issue.

[daeron80]

That makes sense of the Mackie. If you can't figure it out, maybe you could use a public Dropbox link or similar to post about 30 seconds of the bass track for analysis. The most likely culprit at this point seems to be the pedal output. It might not be working right, or it might need a different impedance load. A pedal output should be able to go straight to the Mackie without a DI, although the house wiring might make it awkward to accomplish that.

[albee1952]

I would check output settings in the session. If you can see signal but not hear it, it may be routed wrong.

[Bill Simmons]

Checked the routing. Thats right. If the fader is all the way up i can get a little audio from the track. I'm going to check the other ideas posted when I can get back to it. Busy at regular day job now.