how many db's should a track be?

P

profit101

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can somebody tell me this because everytime i make a recording they songs always come out different volumes. also how many db's should the beat and the vocals be?
 
Mixing and mastering man, an art form that takes a little while to get good at.

Nobody can tell you how loud something should be in the mix unless they can hear it. For every song everything could be different.
 
I remember that massive recommended a dB meter, like this one.
That's how you can check how much your songs differ from each other.

I wonder how people did that way back in the time era when songs had a max. signal up to -6 or -8dBFS. You can say that in hiphop, pop rnb almost every song goes up to -0.1dBFS, so better equipment you have so harder you can push it, that's what the majors do.
 
You don't push anything WTF are you talking about? That meter does **** if his speakers and such aren't calibrated to unity. That meter is like having a screen door on a submarine and that would be ****ing pointless. In software -18 -24dbfs is 0 it depends on the A/D converter where that is. when mixing it's best to go no higher than -6db but for the sake of headroom I'd say -12dbfs is ideal as your peaks for your master with the volume set at +/- 0. Don't try to go 0dbfs when your mixing cause then your just gonna kill your headroom and ruin your mix. Don't be like Oh it's so low whats wrong, that's ok that's good head room the louder records have been to a professional mastering engineer with great gear and been worked with for that final production sound of that record.
 
Congratulations you completely missed the point and are on fire for nothing. When you turn up the limiter until it goes to the limit or even exceeds it. What is it then called? PUSHING the signal.

Another thing is, no one on here was talking about MIXING at all, so I don't know where you got that from. We were talking about MASTERING the whole time, about the very last step where you worry about volume. So don't get those basic things twisted and act like you know something better.
 
No ones talking about mixing? well i hate to point out the obvious, but without a mix theres nothing to master, and without a PROPER mix, mastering wont turn out so great, so thats why "Optyx" brought mixing into the picture.

Also, Optyx is right, that meter might do wonders for some people, but unless you have the room, monitors, Class-A AD/DA converters, basically the perfect setup, that meter wont do much good. Your better off trusting your meters on the screen.
 
Disasster said:
No ones talking about mixing? well i hate to point out the obvious, but without a mix theres nothing to master, and without a PROPER mix, mastering wont turn out so great, so thats why "Optyx" brought mixing into the picture.
The "obvious"? So when someone asks about a midi-controller, you always talk about sound modues? Because it's "obvious" that without a sound module a midi controller is useless? You can go further and talk about monitors because it's "obvious" that you can't hear the sound module without monitors? You also go along and talk about room treatment because it's "obvious" that without the proper room treatment monitors are useless? And all that because someone asked about a midi controller?

How can you make sense to yourself?

At the same time no one in here ever said that you can get a good mastering without a good mix. So I really don't know what you guys are reading.(?) Those are things that are logical to everyone. You don't build a house without the proper foundation, so why would you master without the proper mix? Why are you even mentioning those things, when all the guy was asking how he could get the same volume levels on all his songs, so that the listener does not need to level the volume fader on every song on the ablum? Does that even make sense to you?
 
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After reading this thread I have a few questions. I primarily make beats as a hobby, but I still want a good sounding finished piece of music. When making beats I usually dont pay much attention to the levels and just turn things up or down depending on how they sound.

I guess my question is reguarding headroom. In flstudio I just make sure the levels arent peaking for the most part. Does this mean after I make my music and get all the sounds how I like them, I should turn them all down in proportion on the master?

Also I had a question about "rolling off" sounds. Would this be just using an equalizer or filter to remove unwanted frequencies on things?

Can someone also explain the relation between dB and volume? For example if I turn down the volume does that automatically mean theres less dBs?

Thanks in advance, Brandon.
 
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From what I've been reading (and I've been reading a lot in regards to headroom) You need to leave about -3db of headroom (or more if you can) to the mastering engineer....he'll then probably make it louder (I heard as loud as +12db) in the mastering process.
 
rocsta said:
The "obvious"? So when someone asks about a midi-controller, you always talk about sound modues? Because it's "obvious" that without a sound module a midi controller is useless? You can go further and talk about monitors because it's "obvious" that you can't hear the sound module without monitors? You also go along and talk about room treatment because it's "obvious" that without the proper room treatment monitors are useless? And all that because someone asked about a midi controller?

Depends what the question was. I might talk about sound modules, maybe how it controls VST's in a DAW, or maybe how you can set it up to control the DAW it self. Maybe even explain how it all works, it all depends on what he asks. One thing i probably wouldn't talk about is the room and monitors unless he talks about haveing a sound problem. The only reason the monitoring chain got brought up is because we're talking about mastering. And every one knows the environment, monitoring chain, and the engineers ears are the three most important things to a ME, next to headroom.


rocsta said:
How can you make sense to yourself?

Are you kidding me?


rocsta said:
At the same time no one in here ever said that you can get a good mastering without a good mix. So I really don't know what you guys are reading.(?) Those are things that are logical to everyone. You don't build a house without the proper foundation, so why would you master without the proper mix? Why are you even mentioning those things, when all the guy was asking how he could get the same volume levels on all his songs, so that the listener does not need to level the volume fader on every song on the ablum? Does that even make sense to you?

Once again, Are you kidding me?

Logical to everyone? Half the people on this site dont even know what mastering is, let alone know what mixing is. So the answer to "why would you master without a proper mix?", because they simply dont know how to, or dont have the equipment to accurately mix a track down. Just like, "Why dont people record at the proper levels", cause there simply not educated and dont know better, and once they hear how to do it from one person they stick to that method without seeing if its the proper way of doing it. Does that make sense to you?

GruKid said:
After reading this thread I have a few questions. I primarily make beats as a hobby, but I still want a good sounding finished piece of music. When making beats I usually dont pay much attention to the levels and just turn things up or down depending on how they sound.

I guess my question is reguarding headroom. In flstudio I just make sure the levels arent peaking for the most part. Does this mean after I make my music and get all the sounds how I like them, I should turn them all down in proportion on the master?

Also I had a question about "rolling off" sounds. Would this be just using an equalizer or filter to remove unwanted frequencies on things?

Can someone also explain the relation between dB and volume? For example if I turn down the volume does that automatically mean theres less dBs?

Thanks in advance, Brandon.

*dB(The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit of measurement that expresses the magnitude of a physical quantity (usually power or intensity) relative to a specified or implied reference level.) can be used for alot of things; dBFS(Full Scale), dBVU(Volume Unit), dBSPL(Sound Pressure Level), dBv, dBu, dBV ....the list goes on and on. If you want, you can say something was -10dB less then something, but the person wont know what your talking about unless you tell them what your measuring in. If you were talking about your DAW, you would probably be referring to dbFS.

*When your mixing, just make sure you have headroom leftover, i would say around -6dBFS peaking on the master fader.

*"Roll Off (or Rolloff) - Specifically rolloff refers to the action of a specific type of filter; one designed to roll off frequencies above or below a certain point. It is called roll off because the process is gradual. Hi pass and low pass filters both roll off frequencies outside of their range, but they don't immediately eliminate all frequencies outside their range. The sound is gently (or not so gently) "rolled off" with frequencies further above or below the cutoff frequency becoming more and more attenuated. Rolloff steepness is generally stated in dB per Octave, with higher numbers indicating a steeper filter. 24 dB/Octave is steeper than 12 dB/Octave"
 
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Dissaster, thanks for the extensive reply.

So to make sure I understand correctly I will use the meter to make sure the levels are below the -6dbFS. In the event that I couldn't hear my tracks and mix, I would simply turn up the knob PHYSICALLY on my monitors with out effecting the db metering level (or just have them preset to the correct volume).
 
GruKid said:
Dissaster, thanks for the extensive reply.

So to make sure I understand correctly I will use the meter to make sure the levels are below the -6dbFS. In the event that I couldn't hear my tracks and mix, I would simply turn up the knob PHYSICALLY on my monitors with out effecting the db metering level (or just have them preset to the correct volume).

Correct, you can use your FS meters in your DAW to make sure your not going over your desired level. And yes, if you want things louder, turn your monitors up, not your levels, thats where alot of people go wrong.

** Peaking at -6dBFS should only occur on the master fader, not on a individual track, unless theres only one track in the mix. Also keep in mind, -6dBFS is not a set number, some mixes might go below, some higher(I personally would never go above -3dBFS, and would aim for -6dBFS or below)
 
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@ Disasster

So copy & paste from Wiki is what you call "knowing better"?
 
Optyx_Productions said:
and your an expert how?

I'm just playing with you guys, and it's kinda fun to give you guys a hard time lol, I should do that more often. :D
 
i would only avoid clipping on the master-bus when exporting to wav (not needed in rewire mode for example). -6dB, -2dB or even -0.01dB doesn't matter - just don't overdrive the output (avoid clipping).

people talking about headroom in the digital domain obviously don't understand how digital audio works. any modern audio app works internally in a floating point format - which simply means that there's a practically UNLIMITED headroom (so basically, THERE IS NO REASON FOR MENTIONING HEADROOM IN DIGITAL AUDIO).

all other channels levels can be a high as you want, nothing will go wrong here.
 
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^^^^ that's an expert, and that with the master channel is true, I've said that once on a other forum and people didn't want to believe me, they said I'm not knowing what I'm talking about haha
 
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