HOW TO GET THE SOUND QUALITY SPOT ON

[james fox]

too much maths for me i'm afraid - i prefer to trust my ears....

Wahey! Inter-thread running gag/digs. Well done you

Luckily most of this has already been proved to be audible or we wouldn't be in thie thread in the first place

hahaha yeah sorry about that, i'll STFU now

[serox]

To the Reason/SF picture bloke (Serox, sorry ) - I fuckin hate Reason's mixer etc - all numbers that mean plenty in terms of midi controllers (0-127) but FUCK ALL in the real world of mixing. PITA.

Anyway, the soundforge example looks to be peaking at around -6, so that's cool ( though it *looks* fairly compressed), and so long as the Reason red 'audio out clipping' light never goes on then you're on the right road.

I'm more than happy to help with any of this if people dunno wtf is going on btw (assuming I have time to post of course ). I don't want to patronise people though

They are just screenshots I found on google. I was trying to work out where I should be aiming for really. I keep the master level as high as I can without any of it going into the red. Not sure if that's right or I should aim lower.

Also the numbers on the mixer on Soundforge mean fuck all to me tbh. I have no idea why they are all minus numbers for example, I just keep it below the red:)

I no doubt sound really retarded but I would rather find out what's what.

[macc]

They are just screenshots I found on google. I was trying to work out where I should be aiming for really. I keep the master level as high as I can without any of it going into the red. Not sure if that's right or I should aim lower.

No need to keep it as high as possible. Again (for anyone else reading) when mixing in a modern digital environment there is NO NEED to walk the tightrope of getting levels as close to 0/red/clipping as possible.

ALL you have to do is keep it reasonable and mix it down to a 24 bit file (Not 16, not 32 - 24). If it sounds quiet, turn up your monitors. Leave maximisation and all that for mastering.

Again; Keep it reasonable, make it sound as good as you possibly can, mix down to 24 bit.

God it seems so simple when you put it like that but this causes more headaches than anything else!!


For the geeks; Peaking at -6dB is still using 23 bits, which is still a relative noise floor of -138dB. Plenty!

Also the numbers on the mixer on Soundforge mean fuck all to me tbh. I have no idea why they are all minus numbers for example, I just keep it below the red:)

dB = deciBel which is a logarithmic scale that correlates to our perception of volume. 6dB equates almost exactly to a change of 50%. So, in simple terms, 6dB is double/half, depending on if you're going up or down.

0dB is, in a digital system, the top - 'full scale' to use the correct term. You can't go higher than that. If you do, it clips. Everything else is measured relative to that which is why they are all minus numbers. The correct full term for this is dBFS, meaning deciBels below Full Scale.

That's why your blue waveform in SF looks about halfway up the scale, it peaks at roughly -6dBFS. So, if you turned it up to maximum (0dB), it would be about twice as loud, cos you're turrning it up 6dB.

I no doubt sound really retarded but I would rather find out what's what.

Thank goodness for people like you mate... There's far too many giving it 'NAH GHU YYOU IS GOTT TO SAMPEL AT ALL FRIKWENZIS TO MAXIMIZE DA HEADROOM AT +32 DEEBEES' and shit like that.

If you don't know and know you don't know, you're one step ahead of those that think they know but don't

Again I don't mind helping AT ALL, if I can. Not got a lot of time here but hopefully I have made it clearer and not made any mistakes.

Got to run...

[serox]

nice one. That makes sense.