This is from a PM convo with Senator Adam, it may be a bit vague until you get used to things, but it might help...
One thing I forgot to mention Adam, is that I turn down my master only at mixdown just as a safety precaution. However I am killing that habit off now too by leaving more headroom in the mix, so nothing clips, ever.
Chime in with q's etc if you wish...
Macc Wrote:Senator Adam Wrote:To answer your question I don't have a method with the master fader besides adjusting it so the audio doesn't clip.
i.e. turning it down, right?
Quote:It seems to always work fine for me (my mixes usually sound alright) so I haven't explored much in that area. I know that I need to though, and I will read up on the right methods. Gotta read up on some Bob Katz when I get time.
Do you have any suggestions on what I should read that refers to gain structure in mixing? For some reaon reading about dBs always makes me feel like I'm studying math, and that's what I dreaded most in school...
Regarding the master fader and so on, it isn't so much a matter of sound (although there's a couple of things to mention there) as a matter of ease of mixing. Maybe when it was all noisy and analogue etc ( ) it was, but not so much now.
ANyway, the BEST advice is simply DO NOT MOVE THE MASTER FADER.
The only times I move the master fader are a) to listen to my mix at different volumes, and b) to avoid clipping at mixdown.
Now I know what you're thinking - 'that's what I do, what you on about?' Lemme explain (I'll try to make this brief, you know what I am like )
What you seem to be doing is: on the left, ie in the channels, applying lots and lots of gain, and then on the right, in the master, taking out loads of gain.
In fact that makes my point pretty well - why bother? Why not make it easy for yourself? You can't say 'it's no hassle' or else you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place, hehe
The benefits of not moving the master are plentiful You know exactly how much headroom you have, or how much you are clipping by. This makes mixing much much easier. But you do need to break the 'turn it up' habit.
The important bit: I think of it like a tree, or rather the roots. loads of fine little ones joining up and getting bigger, and then those joining up and those joining up and ending up all in one trunk.
BUT the 'sum' of the roots is NEVER greater than the size of the trunk - and you never get a branch bigger than the trunk
Stuff to bear in mind: If this trunk (hippy cru ) is formed from only two branches, each branch can be that much fatter. In this case, if they were equal, each would be peaking at -6dB. To put it another way, -6dB is half your mix. So if your drum track is peaking at -6dB, half your headroom is given over to your drums. Now if you put your bass in peaking at -6dB, the other half of your mix is going to be bass. That will give a master peak at 0dB - NO ROOM FOR ANYTHING ELSE. So if you want to add more to your mix, you have to move the master, which instantly adds another number/factor into your sums to confuse things.
But if you set both to peak (using faders or limiting or whatever) at -7dB, you have 2dB extra to play with, which when you're talking about a suspense 'eeee' string or soft pad is plenty.
So yeah, the more things in your mix, the quieter they have to be, right? Turning down the master is a false economy. Turning down the tracks is the way to conserve headroom and make things much much easier for yourself - provided you are aware of what track is your 'reference point', say the drums at -7dB in this case. If you leave that alone and mix to that track - which you KNOW is taking up the 'correct' amount of headroom - you'll find that you don't have to adjust many faders by very much at all.
If a track is still too quiet and you run out of room on the fader, then it means the source material is too quiet - ie apply some gain to the source material (the audio file). I said about a 'couple of things to mention' earlier, this is one of them. If you find you're doing this a lot then you're rendering/recording your audio files much much too quietly and losing resolution, meaning things will start to sound grainy/8-bitty in certain cases. No point working at 24-bit if you're only using 10 of them (which is fecking quiet). Not only that, but you have to keep fucking about with the faders a lot. Get it right as early as possible in the signal chain.
So I might post this in the studio walls, may as well with all the n00bs about
One thing I forgot to mention Adam, is that I turn down my master only at mixdown just as a safety precaution. However I am killing that habit off now too by leaving more headroom in the mix, so nothing clips, ever.
Chime in with q's etc if you wish...
Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.