volume question

Tom Dazing · Post by **Tom Dazing** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:46 pm

Torque wrote:here's another tip just incase your ears aren't trained yet:

Once you've mixed it down and brought it up to standard rms loudness play the track and watch the VU meter and how it acts. The VU meter should be jumping from at least -9db to 0db or even more dramaticly. If it's not jumping at least that far then you have killed the dynamics because your mixdown or eq is bad. Use this to train your ears. After a while it will start to come natural.

this seems to be quite in order, i even have peak drops to -18db , but in most cases it has around a -12db up to 0db jump.

'killed dynamics' is that just another way of saying the sound engineer won't be able to do anything good with it in the masterstudio's?

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:28 am

Tom Dazing wrote: 'killed dynamics' is that just another way of saying the sound engineer won't be able to do anything good with it in the masterstudio's?

Not exactly.
What an engineer does is alot different from what goes on at a mastering studio. An unmastered track should have dynamics if it is engineered well by whomever is mixing it down. What i gave is just a way to check if it really is engineered well assuming that it already sounds good and full to your ears. No mastering professional is a miracle worker, he can not eq a frequency if it does not exist in your track.

TAMPOPO · Post by **TAMPOPO** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:54 pm

Thanx Torque for all your very precious advices.
This is quite generous from you to explain a part of your knowledge.
Respect!

Tom Dazing · Post by **Tom Dazing** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 6:26 pm

idd, thank you for sharing

Frank Booth · Post by **Frank Booth** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:27 pm

hi there!

i have a question quite similar to Tom's except that i want to equal the volume of already mastered tracks. I need that for making a mixtape of some tunes. I'm using Ableton's volume automation which requires alot of fiddling but i'm getting OK results with it. nonetheless it's always kinda "live" sounding. How do you guys achieve that smooth, finished sound? Thought about bringing all the tunes to -10 rms (using Waves L2) before i start to mix them, but then again this would definitely bring down the soundquality of the tracks, wouldn't it?

fredrik_h · Post by **fredrik_h** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:45 pm

edit: dual post

fredrik_h · Post by **fredrik_h** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 6:46 pm

bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeee veeeeeeeeeeeeelveeeeeeeeeeet...

fl0w · Post by **fl0w** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 7:59 pm

Torque wrote:i won't give away all mastering secrets

Why?

I have a question too. Sometimes when I mix, two tracks are at the same level on the VU-meters, but one of them sounds MUCH louder. Torque (or anybody else), can you explain this? Is this related to this mysterious RMS power? What are the parameters to calculate this value?

Thank you!

(oh, and Frank's question is interesting too)