Premier Rock Forum

Hi PRF Members,

I record in Ableton and it really only shows average peaks on the meters. With more consistent sources, averaging peaks at around -12 dbfs works well, in terms of headroom. However, now I am working with a piece with a wider dynamic range (just slightly compressed going in). Does anyone have any advice or a good "rule of thumb" on how loud tracks should be recorded? I also have a Waves VU meter plugin that I can use, but I am not really sure what I am looking for.

Thanks in advance to anyone who feels like sharing their knowledge.

The short answer is to make sure nothing is in the red while trying to get it as loud as possible.

Depends on a few things. Sometimes dialed into the red is nice, but generally staying below red is preferred so that you don't get unwanted distortion. However, if the instrument being recorded has a wide dynamic range, you could potentially hit the red if you ride the line, though you could use a compressor before the interface to manage that better (if it's available). Just make sure to test your levels beforehand with playing hard (or at least, at the level intended).

Another factor would be the sample rate. 44.1k is standard, but if you bump to 48k you would get more headroom to play with.

I wouldn't worry about VU meters. Just check the input meter and make sure you're not clipping, unless you want to.

cakes wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2024 1:59 pm
Another factor would be the sample rate. 44.1k is standard, but if you bump to 48k you would get more headroom to play with.

[well actually]Sample rate does not affect dynamic range, bit depth does, switching from 16 to 24 bit will give you better resolution of dynamic changes but sample rate will only give you broader frequency bandwidth resolution.[/well actually]

In digital land where there is near zero noise within the system itself, there is no real reason to get close to zero on the meter. As long as your peaks are between -12dB and, say something like... -6dB you are gold. As a weird reference to what that means in analog land, -18dBFS in 24 bit is 0dBVU is 1.23vac in analog land, or about there, so if you extrapolate, a -3dBFS 24 bit digital signal is hella hot in analog land. The push as hot as you can going in is a leftover from recording to Tape where you were optimizing signal to the self noise of the tape/machine noise, and on the other side, needing a nice hot signal coming off tape to hit a console line amp with another layer of self noise, and then again to a 2 track machine with all its noise for mixdown. We don't have to think about that in the box, for the most part. My comfort zone is -12db average, -6dB peaks and I feel safe there.

cakes wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2024 1:59 pm
I wouldn't worry about VU meters.

100%
A VU meter is mostly useless going into a digital recorder, the average isn't very important, that's why most DAW default to Peak metering.

Thanks for the initial replies, everyone. Are you referring to individual tracks when it comes to measuring peaks, a group of tracks, or the master bus?

Jonathan_doe wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2024 2:33 pm Thanks for the initial replies, everyone. Are you referring to individual tracks when it comes to measuring peaks, a group of tracks, or the master bus?

When tracking I'm referring to individual tracks for those values. When mixing or bussing to groups, that is when/where having an average (rms) from a vu meter can actually be of some use, but for the most part once you have your tracks in clean, and if you aren't clipping any buss or the Master, you are gold. one thing I kinda do think about because of decades for gain staging through faders is, I like my faders up in the unity range when I mix, so I'm usually trying to stage things so I'm sort of in that range give or take maybe 6-9dB pushing into the master or whatever group I am hitting. It's just a in my head thing, but I hate mixing on faders all pulled down to -30 because the input sig is too hot, or pushing to the max cause they are too low. I find if your Average Level is between -18 to -12 FS on each channel, your faders will stay close to that neutral range for the most part. As long as my groups aren't in clip, I don't care what they meter. I'll trim them to wherever they sound right. For me they are Sub Masters and for summing/trimming. LUFS or a simple VU meter would be fine as long as I could see a peak hold. Really I almost never pay attention to metering on a group if it isn't clipping. Groups can be hot for all I care, some plugins love a lot of signal, like the UA Fairchild or other VariMu types, for instance.

For my master fader, I 90% of the time am looking at a LUFS meter and ignoring FS measurement completely. Reapers Meter displays both FS and LUFS so I have it set that way.

Clipping analog sounds good. Clipping digital sounds awful.

Boosting volume analog (potentially) adds noise, in digital it just adds.... volume.

Peaking at -12 or less is good. Some cautious folks go for -20 but I'm not that anal usually.

losthighway wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2024 6:00 pm Clipping analog sounds good. Clipping digital sounds awful.

Boosting volume analog (potentially) adds noise, in digital it just adds.... volume.

Peaking at -12 or less is good. Some cautious folks go for -20 but I'm not that anal usually.

-20 for peaks would be pretty low for my liking. You would have to either normalize after, or totally dump thresholds on any dynamic processing. That imo is being far too cautious. Also a lot of DAW and digital mixers clip indicator is actually like a dB or 2 below 0FS. On Allen Heath DLive clip light is like 4dB headroom to go. It's just a rude warning. It SAYS 0dB... But it isn't.

Fun aside, I'm in the middle of installing 14X A&H DLive consoles at work right now. Just a mountain of consoles. It will take the rest of the year.