Avoid clipping...

[dark soul]

Hi guys,

right now I have a quite annoying problem...
I played around with some of the Impulse kits of ableton an there is a wonderfull one named brainfreeze kit...
So far so well.
In that kit is a really nice tom with (in my oppinion) quite a lot of amp on it which makes the LF really packed.
The volume of the tom is really high (around -3db maybe). I want that tom to be a main part of my track but because it is so loud with the other instruments im clipping like hell...
Im asking what I could do to preserve the aggressive sound of my tom and creating enough headroom for other instruments ?

Or could I ignore the clipping and afterwards lower the volume of all tracks so that my master is around -6db ? Bad idea?

[Stromkraft]

The volume of the tom is really high (around -3db maybe). I want that tom to be a main part of my track but because it is so loud with the other instruments im clipping like hell...
Im asking what I could do to preserve the aggressive sound of my tom and creating enough headroom for other instruments ?

Or could I ignore the clipping and afterwards lower the volume of all tracks so that my master is around -6db ? Bad idea?

You want it to sound like shit? Go right ahead.

Or you could get the Sonalkisis Free-G meter (for example), lower everything to -18dBFS RMS. peaking at -12 dBFS, use multistage gentle compression and put a volume increasing gentle limiter on the master or alternatively just raise the volume in your monitors.

With 24bit audio you have 144dB of headroom. Why not use it?

[dark soul]

But I also could lower everything without the plug, right?
I lower it so that it peaks around -6db or -12db and boost the volume during mastering via compressor etc.?

[Stromkraft]

But I also could lower everything without the plug, right?
I lower it so that it peaks around -6db or -12db and boost the volume during mastering via compressor etc.?

Yes, that's what I suggested, more or less. Some people can't accept that you can control the listening volume outside the DAW and say that lowering how hot you record or playback — -6dBFS peak is actually very hot — make it sound much too low. It should be obvious that this can be compensated for while doing the song with higher monitor gain and when mastering by using compression with makeup gain. As you hint that's when you (or your master person) will appreciate the ample head room.

[dark soul]

Dankeschön!

[shaggyjs]

re response: Or you could get the Sonalkisis Free-G meter (for example), lower everything to -18dBFS RMS. peaking at -12 dBFS, use multistage gentle compression and put a volume increasing gentle limiter on the master or alternatively just raise the volume in your monitors.

With 24bit audio you have 144dB of headroom. Why not use it?"

This is the most helpful bit of info I've found. Thank you for posting. The answer I usually get when asking is "use another DAW," but I think Ableton is great for audio. Being a self-educated musician / guitar player: my instinct has always been to just turn things way up. Like we used to do w tape. So thanks for the specifics. I will be adjusting my input levels accordingly.

[andresnol]

This is the most helpful bit of info I've found. Thank you for posting. The answer I usually get when asking is "use another DAW," but I think Ableton is great for audio. Being a self-educated musician / guitar player: my instinct has always been to just turn things way up. Like we used to do w tape. So thanks for the specifics. I will be adjusting my input levels accordingly.

But it is not correct. If individual channels are not clipping, but master is, you can just add an Utility as first in Master channel and just turn the gain down. Ableton is not the same rules as in analog (due to 32 bit floating point math or whatever, it just works. What you need to check more is levels between plugins themselves).

[Stromkraft]

This is the most helpful bit of info I've found. Thank you for posting.

But it is not correct. If individual channels are not clipping, but master is, you can just add an Utility as first in Master channel and just turn the gain down. Ableton is not the same rules as in analog (due to 32 bit floating point math or whatever, it just works. What you need to check more is levels between plugins themselves).

Yes, gain staging just doesn't work. Why use it when you can slap Utility on it?

The thing is that with 24 or 32 bit audio you don't have to worry about filling every bit to avoid noise. It's always easier to add volume than to take it away at the end. It also often sounds better not to overload — drum sounds especially — and opens your ears to how well musical compression really can sound when it gets headroom to breathe in.

It wasn't until I lowered my track volumes mixes started to really sound good and really kick. Now I hear instantly when a track is too loud with just a few dB, because it sounds like shit to me. It can be a good idea to turn out a few overloaded mixes for comparison when learning gain staging.

There are a number of audio processing methods that depends on input volume to sound a certain way. If you're already shooting over you will have to turn the volume down for that stage when as if you are using gain staging where every processing step has about the same level as the one before it you would have much free and on top of that not be prone to "louder-is-better" syndrome either.

Use what you want but I view gain staging as a liberating and attractive methodology. It has very little to do with how "loud" the finished track will be.

[andresnol]

This is the most helpful bit of info I've found. Thank you for posting.

But it is not correct. If individual channels are not clipping, but master is, you can just add an Utility as first in Master channel and just turn the gain down. Ableton is not the same rules as in analog (due to 32 bit floating point math or whatever, it just works. What you need to check more is levels between plugins themselves).

Yes, gain staging just doesn't work. Why use it when you can slap Utility on it?

The thing is that with 24 or 32 bit audio you don't have to worry about filling every bit to avoid noise. It's always easier to add volume than to take it away at the end. It also often sounds better not to overload — drum sounds especially — and opens your ears to how well musical compression really can sound when it gets headroom to breathe in.

It wasn't until I lowered my track volumes mixes started to really sound good and really kick. Now I hear instantly when a track is too loud with just a few dB, because it sounds like shit to me. It can be a good idea to turn out a few overloaded mixes for comparison when learning gain staging.

There are a number of audio processing methods that depends on input volume to sound a certain way. If you're already shooting over you will have to turn the volume down for that stage when as if you are using gain staging where every processing step has about the same level as the one before it you would have much free and on top of that not be prone to "louder-is-better" syndrome either.

Use what you want but I view gain staging as a liberating and attractive methodology. It has very little to do with how "loud" the finished track will be.

yes, gain staging is important, as i said. individual channels should not be clipping (although few db is not really a problem even in ableton - bad policy tho), also levels between plugins (vst) is very important. but you are missing the logic. it is most probably not overloading on the master, so it is not affecting your sound. he liked the relationship of the sounds and how aggressive it was in the relationship, but was worrying about headroom cause his master was clipping. on master channel you have easily more headroom than you even think, that's why you can turn down master with utility as first step.

from live 9 manual:
"Because of the enormous headroom of Live’s 32-bit floating point audio engine, Live’s meters
can be driven far “into the red“ without causing the signals to clip. The only time that signals over
0 dB will be problematic is when routing to or from physical inputs and outputs, like those of
your sound card, or when saving audio to a file."

[Stromkraft]

yes, gain staging is important, as i said. individual channels should not be clipping (although few db is not really a problem even in ableton - bad policy tho), also levels between plugins (vst) is very important. but you are missing the logic.

Actually I'm not missing anything. I just have another opinion on these things stemming from my own experience. "levels between plugins" are obviously a vital part of gain staging so I'm not sure why you repeat that.

I'm partly with you though. The important thing is never the actual levels but how it sounds in the end. What I've learnt from bad experience with not caring about levels though is that I instead can make it sound even more aggressive and kicking by simply lowering the volume to levels that suit my processing and use multi-stage compression and limiting to get what I want.

I find that experience a more valuable lesson to myself than to keep listening to everyone claiming 32 bits always sound the same no matter how gain is applied. I find this to be untrue depending a bit on processing. If it works it works, but I wasn't satisfied with "works" and found that concept stifling.

What gain staging gives me is the freedom and the control to not be bound by how the track sound at this moment. I can hear what is not there and tweak it to my taste. I doubt I could have gotten there without caring about gain, if for nothing else I'd still be stuck in the louder-is-better camp that some of my collaborators have suffered from.

From a mere clipping stand point you're still right of course. I should have been more nuanced and I'm the first to admit that rules are made to be broken. But the more you know the more beautifully you can break them.

[Angstrom]

The most important thing about gainstaging is that necrobumps are always hillarious, just like a drunken uncle shouting career advice at a coffin.
OP last visited this forum in January 2015

[andresnol]

Fair enough. Might be true @Stromkraft
There was a new comment @Angstrom

[Shift Gorden]

I think this has pretty much been covered, but sometimes by default the racks/VSTs are too hot, so while your faders may be in the green or red (aghhh, I'll just pretend red is bad for simplicity) the actual volume of the rack/VST will be clipping.

Turn those suckers down (remember to make sure your effects signals aren't clipping the signal too).

[AAdel]

Hi guys,

right now I have a quite annoying problem...
I played around with some of the Impulse kits of ableton an there is a wonderfull one named brainfreeze kit...
So far so well.
In that kit is a really nice tom with (in my oppinion) quite a lot of amp on it which makes the LF really packed.
The volume of the tom is really high (around -3db maybe). I want that tom to be a main part of my track but because it is so loud with the other instruments im clipping like hell...
Im asking what I could do to preserve the aggressive sound of my tom and creating enough headroom for other instruments ?

Or could I ignore the clipping and afterwards lower the volume of all tracks so that my master is around -6db ? Bad idea?

There are 2 main ways:
1- Just lower the levels around -8 and put utility and dynamic processors on the master track to level up and mix shit!
2- Learn mixing and do it fundamentally right by gain staging, EQing, Sidechaining, panning, grouping and correct orchestration.