I am very confused with this whole process, here are my problems. I have finished a song in Logic and everything sounds good as possible. However now I want to get it mastered and I need to send of my final bounce to the online mastering place, they require a final aiff or wave file that never peaks above -3 db. So what I do is put a gain on every track so that my helper meter I have on my output 1-2 never peaks above -3 db the whole song. This required me to put a -12 db gain on EVERY track to achieve this. Once I did this my song sounded very different from when I had my levels up. So what I did was mix it again when I had my -12 db gain on every track to make the song sound like how it was before (before i put the -12 db gain on all tracks ). So now I bounced the entire song to my desktop as an aiff and is ready to be sent to online mastering.

Am I doing all this right? I am very confused. Also when I put the -12 db gain on every track a lot of my busses werent even effected by it so I had to manually adjust them to fit the rest of the (quieter now) song.

Please I need some expert advice, I think I finished a great song in my opinion however I am stuck at this final part.



p.s Before I put my gains on every track my master output meter read my peak was 5.6 at its highest however I never heard any pops or distortion so I assum it was good.

When I produce a song am I supposed to always leave headroom on every track or get it as loud as possible without disorting (this is what I usually do) , Isnt this considered a "hot" signal. What do you pro's do?

Thanks.

when I meant I mixed it again after inserting -12 db gain on every track was that my highs sounded louder thand the lows so I had to bring down some highs a bit and also the vocals seemed way to quiet. i had to bring up the vocals and strings some more. This was very strange since EVERY track had the same -12 db reduction however it did not sound even.

so confusing

Your ears respond to different frequencies differently at different volumes. One of those quirks of human physiology.

What you described sounds normal, unless I am missing something.

Sounds like you're making some very big mistakes here. I'm not familiar with Logic's mixer, but you really want to keep every track below clipping. If you're having to reduce each track by 12.0 dB, it might be the same case as Live, where the internal process isn't halved (i.e. reduced by 6.02 dB) as some other sequencers do.

What you want to do is start out with your kick reading around -8.52 dB on a PPM (peak program meter). This can be either before or after processing, and it can vary anywhere between -7.0 dB and -10.0 dB depending on your taste and the style you're mixing, but the point is that starting out with your kick low enough will give you the required headroom to build the rest of the mix on, and have it peak no higher than -3.0 dB.

Contact me via IM if you'd like a bit more specific help, and I can help you find the best way of mixing in Logic.

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quote:

Originally posted by dj_palm isnt it enough to lower your master volume -3dB instead of each track if it isnt clipping at your original volum?

Well the master volume was clipping by 5.6 dB, and if he had to reduce the channels by as much as 12.0 dB, there's no telling how much clipping occured in the signal chain. My knowledge of floating point is still limited, but a lot of plugins will still output fixed point, and it's better to be safe than sorry, especially if you happen to be rendering in fixed point. But, floating point or not, it's still good mixing practice to keep things below clipping, and too many people just don't use their software right.

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Your goes all the way back to your mixing. When I mix, I follow several general guidelines:

The first is that my kickdrum peaks at aroun6 -8 to -6 dB. If it goes higher, I always reduce the gain. This gives you 6 to 8 dB of headroom, which should be more than enough.

The second, and probably most important rule is that the kick is always the loudest sound. This is because the kick is the most important part of any dance track, and its low end especially needs always to be audible. If you make sure none (or maybe one or two) of the other tracks hit points above the -8 to -6 dB mark, chances are you won't have to deal with clipping later on.

The third one is to keep the majority of your tracks at a steady peak level. If you've got a really twitchy track that peaks loud and quickly for short periods of time, use a limiter. If the peaks are slower and longer lasting, a compressor is generally better. Pretty much every one of your tracks should be compressed unless you're looking for a lot of dynamic contrast.

The fourth is that if I can hear a track in busiest part of the final mix, it's at the right level. This means that I turn down all the tracks to the point that they are still audible while being as unobtrusive as possible. With some elements, this guideline is not correct, for instance leads, which should be more prominent. A great example of where this applies is with pads, which are strictly atmospheric and almost always audible as long as you've empty spaces in a mixes frequency range. Pads can actually get very quiet and still be audible. They're also great candidates for heavy compression. The most important thing is that nothing stick out that shouldn't stick out, and this guideline is good for those parts.

The general rule of thumb is right there in the word for what you're doing: mixdown. If all else fails, slide the fader down. The most common misconception is that you want a hot signal from the getgo, and this is absolutely not true. You want to start out with a quiet mix. This does two things: prevents clipping early on, and it also protects your ears from loud noises.

You may also want to throw a limiter on your master bus, and attenuate it a bit so that you can ensure that your mix stays below -3 dB, and you should e alright.

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quote:

Originally posted by dj_palm isnt it enough to lower your master volume -3dB instead of each track if it isnt clipping at your original volum?

NO!

if i were you i would remove your -12db gains. turn all your channels to zero. and work from scratch. get the track sounding how you want while keeping below -3db on your output meter.

the reason you didnt hear peaks at +5db was due to the floating point of logic i belive..

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also alot of fx are dependant on the input volume, an eq will colour the sound more the higher the input i think.

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quote:

Originally posted by mysticalninja also alot of fx are dependant on the input volume, an eq will colour the sound more the higher the input i think.

This is for the most part untrue (it applies for distortion and compression plugins that trigger only at certain volumes), and it's not the point. The gain changes are on the final output of each bus (right?), so the output of the effects is not affected.

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You have to pay attention to your levels during mixing. It's okay to let individual channels go above 0 dB (not too far above) but the master can't go in the red. There have been dozens of threads about this already too. Keep your master channel below WHILE you are mixing, which means leaving headroom WHILE you are mixing and making appropriate use of channel groups WHILE you are mixing. Fitting everything you want into the space you have available is the primary challenge of mixing and you simply can't leave it as an afterthought.

You don't need to keep your mix below -3 dB - as long as you keep it below 0 dB, it will bounce without clipping and you can just normalize to -3 dB afterwards.

Leave proper headroom, and if you find it sounds too thin or empty at low volume then you can, y'know, just add some analog.

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I recently realized that a lot of my sounds were too loud at the source and actually clipping when the channels were set to pre-fader metering. This caused a lot of the tracks' volume faders to be very low (-20dB region) and difficult to adjust accurately. What made this obvious was me switching to Waves plug-ins. Logic plug-ins don't have input/output meters, so there's no way of telling if the signal is too hot, but a Waves compressor or EQ will show you if the signal is clipping even if your channel fader is all the way down.

It probably makes no difference when using Logic plug-ins due to floating point calculations, but I do believe that my mixes sound clearer now that I pay attention to pre-fader signal levels.

And of course I make sure the channels and master output don't clip when set to after-fader. Although, Logic manual does say that it's OK if individual channels clip occasionally, as long as there's no clipping on the master. I just play it safe

To original poster:

There's a quick way to adjust the volume of all tracks simultaneously in Logic 5.5 - just go to your Environment's AUDIO page and select all channels you want to adjust the volume of, then just bring down the volume of any of the selected channels and the rest will be adjusted accordingly. You can even enter a numeric value if you double-click on a fader.
You can do the same thing in Logic 7, but you don't have to go the environment, you can do this in the Track Mixer window.

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