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Clipping / Why You Can Be In The Green But Still Go Red
I am posting this to open discussion about something I wish I understood long ago. @Telefunky helped me understand why every track I recorded might not peak, but collectively several tracks will cause distortion. Hence my recordings till recently were too hot. Now I understand the principle a bit better....
Please, will the more competent amongst us please give the details about this so that many of us will benefit.
Comments
When you sum multiple tracks together the result is louder. Just keep an eye on you Master Channel Levels/Meter, if it clips then you need to lower the channels feeding into it. Or put a limiter on the Master Channel (or both!).
Recording levels are not correlated to mix levels in any way BTW. In the digital realm (especially if you're working at 24bit) you can record very quiet signals and add gain later - it's not like in the old days of analog tape where you had to try and record as loud as possible without clipping. Generally with digital you want to aim for around -18db on the meter to be safe (because digital clipping is a lot less forgiving than tape). This helps to keep the gain staging low and avoid noise and hiss in the electronics etc... Then you can add gain digitally once it's recorded.
This is alpha and omega of understanding of this topic. Must-see for everybody, basically there is explained everything.
Short answer by @richardyot looks good to me.
Short and incomplete fix is to always use a master limiter AKA brickwall limiter on the master buss.
Better answer is, as Richard notes, gain staging to get your mix to a good volume overall without unwanted distortion. I personally tend to fight against the loudness war where I can and try not to have constant bombardment of my brickwall with compression, eq, and limits upstream.
For further reading, forgive the title, I have heard your recordings @LinearLineman and they do not sound bad. See page 66+ re gain staging. But I actually recommend the whole thing. Humorous title and the fact this was really just started as a thread by a genius guy, it is one of the best guides on the internet about mixing and mastering. I have read and re-read and it has helped me even despite having experience in pro and home studios for decades. It was written in reference to Reaper, but it is really not tied to that.
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/attachments/so-much-gear-so-little-time/693506d1505887264-how-take-home-recording-next-level-pro-quality-yep_betterrecordings_09.pdf
@richardyot ... well, I guess you explained why I always went for the loudest volume possible on a track I am an ancient, reclining, audio guy and that was how we used the ondo it. @tlefunky explained to me the mathematical reasoning underlying this subject. Perhaps he will chime in, or someone like @McDtracy will offer up one of his juicy and informative soliloquies.
Remember too @LinearLineman - some of us (myself included) come from the days of recording on tape or digital tape, and since there was inherent noise with those mediums, getting the hottest level without distortion was the goal to help minimize noise (higher signal to noise ratio).
With digital recordings this is less important. It's still key to not have things clipping, and @richardyot is absolutely correct that summing multiple tracks increases the perception of loudness and will push up your signal level at the master. Just don't worry SO much about your initial incoming signal being "as hot as possible". There's considerably more margin here than there was back in the day.
Hope that helps and doesn't muddy the waters further!
Gain staging in digital can still matter... but most of all if you're using any vintage-modelling plugins that require a certain level coming in.
The level of your mix should NOT be super-hot unless you really know what you're doing when it comes to mixing and mastering at the same time. Generally, it's best to leave those as two separate tasks - and you want to leave plenty of headroom for mastering. Also generally, the goal of mixing is to get it to sound good. Mastering is more about getting it to sound great at a certain level that meets the needs of the media type(s) it will be published on.
^^ pure layman explanation. no mixing or mastering engineers were harmed in the making of this statement (though perhaps if they read it they'll be harmed!)
Panning can help separate parts so they don’t compete. You’ve got two ears distribute the load so that using a lower volume still lets the part stand out. Shoving everything into one part of the stereo field.
See also mixing with reverb and delay
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/30781/reverb-delay-everywhere-how-do-you-manage-it
Most sample based pianos have the output of left/right keys panned according to the position a player would experience when sitting at the instrument.
For a piano part in a song/band context that's often not the best placement, so either use the mono sample set (often preferred) or at least narrow the piano stereo field.
Something else to consider in the digital domain:
DAWs usually work with 32bit or even 64bit internal word length (usually represented as floating-point values) and enough headroom, so any irreversible distortion only happens at the output stage where the signal has to be converted back to linear 16 or 24bit.
Another thing to consider is recording and audio file bit depth.
If your levels are close to 0dB (the maximum possible) and you don't have silent music passages, 16bit are usually more than enough.
But when recording via microphones for example, you always want enough headroom that even if there's only one loud attack from the recorded instrument, you don't want that one to clip - hence if the average recorded audio level is more like -12dB for example, your effective recording bit depth has already dropped down to only 14 bits. Add a few quietly played sections and you might start noticing the limitations of recording in 16bit in the form of quantisation noise.
Long story short: Try to record from analog sources with 24 bits whenever possible, and make sure you use more than 16bit in audio files if they're relatively quiet and/or they are going to be processed further.