A Little Bluesy Rock in Eb

PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
PapaRaptor said:
Hey JP. That track is really low, like the loudest peaks are at -21db. Is there any way you can squeeze a little more volume into the file. Bringing the file up tends to make it a tad on the muddy side.
Click to expand...

I don't know what's going on.
When I have the backing track going and my part going it's plenty loud. When I export the track it's plenty loud and when I play it back it's plenty loud, so I have no idea what's going on.
I WILL say however that after I exported the tracks and made them one, it looked like two straight lines and I knew that couldn't be right. But when I played it back it sounded fine.
What the hell am I doing wrong?
 
PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
JPsuff said:
I don't know what's going on.
When I have the backing track going and my part going it's plenty loud. When I export the track it's plenty loud and when I play it back it's plenty loud, so I have no idea what's going on.
I WILL say however that after I exported the tracks and made them one, it looked like two straight lines and I knew that couldn't be right. But when I played it back it sounded fine.
What the hell am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
What DAW software are you using?
I regularly have to turn down my MAIN output from Studio One so the volume isn't overpowering, and I've exported some low level renderings because of it.

There are other things that can affect it as well. Heavy use of compression (depending on the specific compressor plug-in) can even out dynamic peaks and valleys, but most default settings will actually reduce your overall loudness. Most compuressor plug-ins have a "make up" gain adjustment to bring the levels back up.
 
JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
PapaRaptor said:
What DAW software are you using?
I regularly have to turn down my MAIN output from Studio One so the volume isn't overpowering, and I've exported some low level renderings because of it.

There are other things that can affect it as well. Heavy use of compression (depending on the specific compressor plug-in) can even out dynamic peaks and valleys, but most default settings will actually reduce your overall loudness. Most compuressor plug-ins have a "make up" gain adjustment to bring the levels back up.
Click to expand...

I have Studio One 4 Pro and the interface is a Focusrite.
Yes, I have the same overly loud main and I turn it down as well, but I try to keep the slider about half way.
I did use the plug in compressor and an EQ for the guitar track and maybe I neglected the gain settings, but I have used it before with no trouble and as I said, everything sounded fine when I sent it to Dropbox.

Obviously something's wrong but what?
I think I still have the original file. To increase the guitar volume, should I use the gain settings in the Compressor or is there a way to do it from the mixing console?
 
TexBill

TexBill

Blues in Texas
@JPsuff there is a noticeable increase in guitar vol. I played both with the same audio level in my system and the second one is louder overall. Hope that helps...
 
JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
TexBill said:
@JPsuff there is a noticeable increase in guitar vol. I played both with the same audio level in my system and the second one is louder overall. Hope that helps...
Click to expand...
I don't know if that's good or bad but that's the best I can figure out with my limited Studio One knowledge.

Thanks, Bill.
 
JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
Dr. Ron said:
The 2nd recording sounds great JP. Nice work!
Click to expand...
Thanks Ron.

When I first recorded everything, I thought the backing track was too spikey, so I added a compressor to it and after some knob fiddling, I got it to calm down.
Then I added my guitar but when I played down the neck, the lower tones seemed to get lost in the backing track. So I then added a compressor to the guitar to try to even things out but still no joy. Then I added some EQ to the guitar and that seemed to help but somewhere along the way I messed up the input volumes. So after Lloyd said it was muddy at higher volume, I went back and pulled all of the plugins from the guitar track and just left the compressor on the backing track and worked with trying to balance things as much as I could and that's where it is now.

I think it was mostly a case of adding too much seasoning.
Keep it simple/Less is more!

Oh and BTW, the link in the OP is the improved track as well as the one in post #6, so if anyone's interested in joining in, either link will work.
 
Dr. Ron

Dr. Ron

Nuthin’ But The Blues!
This is also a teaching experience for me as I am on the front end of the learning curve with Presonus Studio.
 
PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
JPsuff said:
So after Lloyd said it was muddy at higher volume, I went back and pulled all of the plugins from the guitar track and just left the compressor on the backing track and worked with trying to balance things as much as I could and that's where it is now.
Click to expand...
That's backwards from what you should normally do. The goal in the VJR is to keep the backing track as close to original levels as possible, which would preclude using a compressor in the backing track channel strip. Using compression on your guitar is fine.

With Studio One, the general rule (and on most DAWs, I believe) is to have your MAIN OUT as close to the 0 or Unity Gain setting as possible when you export your mixdown.
Having said that, the Main Out is also the best way to control your playback levels while recording and mixing.

The most recent mix is much better, with the peaks during your solo getting up to around -6db and the basic backing track after your solo hanging around -12 on peaks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dvs
dvs

dvs

Green Mountain Blues
PapaRaptor said:
[. . .]
Having said that, the Main Out is also the best way to control your playback levels while recording and mixing.
[. . .]
Click to expand...
No reason to ignore the volume knob on your mixer or interface if you need to hear yourself, though. I guess everybody figures out their own process that works, but for myself I try to avoid using the Main Out fader in Studio One for anything other than leveling the entire mix to where I'm going to want it in the mixdown. I'd like to have the fader set to around zero db for that purpose (as Lloyd said above), which works well if I've done the gain staging and leveling on everything else reasonably well. Then I'll have peaks around -5db and "averages" around -12db.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top