Tracking everything hot?? NEVER AGAIN!!

SleepDeez

SleepDeez

Believe The Hype
i heard alchemist say record everything hot to where its almost peaking, scott storch said he liked to do it..so i was doing it myself...and not knowing, i was squashing all my headroom. so now i track everything in, leaving about 5 db of space, and that way after i get a decent mix..i start using McDsp analog channel warmer, and then finally the L2 Ultramaximizer to squeeze the DB's out and get the track real real real real full..it works..quit recording everything so hot
 
I usually track at aroun -18 dbfs, this way there is plenty of room left for mixing. Then at the end i just throw it into a limiter and Bob's your uncle! I really don't understand why someone would track so hot.

SP
 
i'm sure storch is talking about tracking hot through analog gear which can actually sound quite nice. you can push analog limiters much more then anything digitally.

Peace
 
KomplexBeats said:
i'm sure storch is talking about tracking hot through analog gear which can actually sound quite nice. you can push analog limiters much more then anything digitally.

Peace
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makes a lot more sense...well im going into pro tools through a mackie mixer...i wish i had an ssl at home..id probably never leave
 
SleepDeez said:
makes a lot more sense...well im going into pro tools through a mackie mixer...i wish i had an ssl at home..id probably never leave
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through my school i've had the experience of comparing digital limiting to analog gear and there really is no comparison.

**** like the waves l2 plug-in starts to crap out after a few db of gain but with a quality hardware limiter you can really push the levels...

peace
 
ew i use to track hot (some at clipping) all the time...only to realize that they all sounded like **** a few weeks later when i decided to burn them on a cd haha
 
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I have been going back and forth with this issue for a pretty long time. Lately i've been going into protools hot (not peaking though) then hitting a master fader with the waves maximixer. Definately loosing headroom but i get VOLUME which i find important when someone is playing your beats back to back against another producer.

This is that majic questions to me. How do you get that nice headroom and still blast off someones speakers?
 
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I usually record with plenty of headroom and bring the level up after the mixdown with the L2 for example. But do ALWAYS keep an "unmastered" copy so I still have the option of having it professionally mastered.

Then again, everyone should export all the single tracks of the songs that are really important. You never know who is going to have interest in your work, and there are a lot people who can mix way better then most people on FP.
Just imagine a client telling you "This is hot, but I'll have to get the vocals and the mix done at a pro studio", and you answering "well that's cool, but I kinda lost the session when my pc crashed a while back..."

I know this has been said many times before, but there's always someone who might not make this mistake because of reading this, so excuse my rant...
 
Staggerlee said:
Buys some tape machines and record hot on them. Tape is something else.
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man i would love to buy one. but the cost of the machine and maintenance is just ridiculas.
tapemachine.jpg
 
i track in @ 0 most of the time...but when i do my mix...i turn the levels down about midway then mix it to the 0 point from there and i usually get a real sweet mix...i do this w/ Pro Tools HD7

i find that when u mix @ lower levels you get a more acurate mix
 
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I have some very nooby questions on this subject. I only recently found out that what i was doing wrong was tracking too hot. My **** would clip a bit, not very badly, but enough that it was noticable. The thing is that with reason it seems like it's almost impossible not to track hot. Whenever i have like more than 8 layers, with a fairly heavy bassline, some bumping bassdrums and maybe a layer i added some distortion to, things get clippy. How can i prevent this? Lowering the volume of all the layers? If so, won't a professional who then mixes all the layers have a hard time using such low volume layers? Should I maybe use a limiter on the layers?
hope someone can help me on this.
 
One of the things i have come to discover after making beats for two years is that,although we all want to get the good mixes ourselves probably an ego thing or just minimizing costs or whatever the reason.There're engineers that will mix better than you and it'll end up being cheaper coz now you can concentrate on 'producing'.Thats the advantage that these big cats out there in the industry have over us 'small timers'coz they have a dedicated mixer that does their dirty job for them.Some engineers are really cheap you'd be suprised,i got a dude that used to mix your singles for free then if you want a full album thats when he'd charge you.But ofcourse that doesnt mean you dont think about mixing but just maybe think about making music first!thats what you will get payed for.
 
Right, but we're mainly talking about tracking, which everybody should know/learn how to do.

I agree with Komplex... Most likely alchemist was talking about the analog world, where you routinely track things as close to 0 dBVU as possible, or even over 0 dB, in order to get the benefit of the warmth and natural compression of the analog hardware.
 
de_v said:
One of the things i have come to discover after making beats for two years is that,although we all want to get the good mixes ourselves probably an ego thing or just minimizing costs or whatever the reason.There're engineers that will mix better than you and it'll end up being cheaper coz now you can concentrate on 'producing'.Thats the advantage that these big cats out there in the industry have over us 'small timers'coz they have a dedicated mixer that does their dirty job for them.Some engineers are really cheap you'd be suprised,i got a dude that used to mix your singles for free then if you want a full album thats when he'd charge you.But ofcourse that doesnt mean you dont think about mixing but just maybe think about making music first!thats what you will get payed for.
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I'm talking about tracking/mixing down beats. Anyone who owns a home studio should be able to get good mixes to shop thier beats.

We are simply discussing here how to make our mixes better for that purpose.

It's obvious that we would want to hire an engineer if we were putting out a record.
 
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[Khameleon] said:
Right, but we're mainly talking about tracking, which everybody should know/learn how to do.

I agree with Komplex... Most likely alchemist was talking about the analog world, where you routinely track things as close to 0 dBVU as possible, or even over 0 dB, in order to get the benefit of the warmth and natural compression of the analog hardware.
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^ Yep, I do my tracking through a pre. Sounds so lovely
 
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