Driving Live's meters into the red

[Sage]

just because you can drive it into the red doesnt mean you should... You should get in a habit of leaving at least 4db of headroom on your master channel.

Why?

There's no sonic difference between how much headroom you leave. You only need to leave headroom if you feel like being nice to a master engineer and/or part of a project involving a number of tracks which you need to balance later, but even then, it is possible to lower the gain.

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.



If music was about following rules, engineers would still be wearing lab coats.

[Tone Deft]

just because you can drive it into the red doesnt mean you should... You should get in a habit of leaving at least 4db of headroom on your master channel.

Why?

There's no sonic difference between how much headroom you leave. You only need to leave headroom if you feel like being nice to a master engineer and/or part of a project involving a number of tracks which you need to balance later, but even then, it is possible to lower the gain.

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.



If music was about following rules, engineers would still be wearing lab coats.

disagree.

less headroom means less dynamic range, which means a more lifeless blah mix.

don't confuse pushing the Master into the red with pushing tracks into the red. some of you guys are doing this.

the "there are no rules" line is just bullshit. there are rules it's just that when you understand this stuff the rules are more like common sense.

[kb420]

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.

Clipping in the analog realm is one thing. Clipping in the digital world is something completely different.

[Sage]

just because you can drive it into the red doesnt mean you should... You should get in a habit of leaving at least 4db of headroom on your master channel.

Why?

There's no sonic difference between how much headroom you leave. You only need to leave headroom if you feel like being nice to a master engineer and/or part of a project involving a number of tracks which you need to balance later, but even then, it is possible to lower the gain.

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.



If music was about following rules, engineers would still be wearing lab coats.

disagree.

less headroom means less dynamic range, which means a more lifeless blah mix.

don't confuse pushing the Master into the red with pushing tracks into the red. some of you guys are doing this.

the "there are no rules" line is just bullshit. there are rules it's just that when you understand this stuff the rules are more like common sense.

Less headroom doesn't mean less dynamic range at all. Lowering a track by 6dB just means the track is 6dB lower, the amount of dynamic range will not suddenly change. 6dB of unused space isn't part of the dynamic range of a recording. So please don't get the two terms confused. It's only if you intend to process that recording further that the amount of unused space becomes relevant.

It's not bull shit, you've just got to understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and if you like it, go with it.

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.

Clipping in the analog realm is one thing. Clipping in the digital world is something completely different.

Oh for God's sake.

Clipping is clipping, doesn't matter whether it is digital or not.

[Tone Deft]

^ disagree on all three counts. you'll learn.

kthxbye.

[Sage]

^ disagree on all three counts. you'll learn.

kthxbye.

I've learnt that you're full of shit.


Lowering the gain of a track to give you more headroom doesn't increase the dynamic range of that track, it just has less gain. So basically, you're completely wrong and doesn't matter if you agree or not.

[Tone Deft]

since you can't grasp headroom, look at it the other way.

you're bringing the signal closer to the noise floor, less dynamic range, and a lower signal to noise ratio.

you think there's no difference between digital and analog clipping?? that's a noob level of understanding.

[Moody]

Very entertaining to watch a neophyte (Sage, clearly has no sense of what headroom means) try to hold his opinion against a well trained magus (Tone, clearly understands, as an electrical engineer who designs audio circuits). Please Sage, enlighten us to the physics of how gain does not affect headroom, analog or digital, your choice.

Please do not take this as Tone and I our lovers, best buds or whatever one's limited perception may conjure. We clearly disagree on many ideas, but his knowledge of audio fidelity is impeccable.

[Sage]

Very entertaining to watch a neophyte (Sage, clearly has no sense of what headroom means) try to hold his opinion against a well trained magus (Tone, clearly understands, as an electrical engineer who designs audio circuits). Please Sage, enlighten us to the physics of how gain does not affect headroom, analog or digital, your choice.

Please do not take this as Tone and I our lovers, best buds or whatever one's limited perception may conjure. We clearly disagree on many ideas, but his knowledge of audio fidelity is impeccable.

I think Tone is on about mastering or when you clip a signal, using analogue equipment or has absolutely no idea what he's on about and just saying stuff he thinks sounds good.

And I'm not saying gain doesn't affect headroom, might want to try reading a bit more carefully!

All I'm saying is the exact same signal, no compression or anything added, just gain, isn't going to have less dynamic range if it's peaking at say -3dB than what it would at -6dB. Obviously with quieter signals, there is the noise floor to consider, which by that logic, the same signal when the gain is lowered will have less dynamic range rather than more as if you were to play the two signals at the same level, the quieter signal will have a touch more noise.


And anyone who thinks of clipping as purely analogue and digital is a noob in all respect.

[henke]

.... to do both Tone and Sage some justice: As long as you stay inside a DAW and only do floating point math then it does not matter if you multiply a signal with 2 ( which is close to +6dB) or or divide it by 100. The fact that +1.000 is defined as 0.0dB ist just a convention. However, even within a DAW there are some things to consider:

a) for safety reasons there is some clipping on the sends. Mainly to avoid feedback loops to end up with +434324234dB or something. This clipping is around +18dB in Live if i remember correctly.
b) some devices / plugins contain internal limiters / clipping / nonlinearities and are designed to work within a normal gain range.

I personally try to keep the gains in a reasonable range, with peaks of individual tracks not exceeding + 6dB and I always work with lots of headroom on the master. However, this is my preferred style, and not a general rule.

As far as the digital versus analog clipping is concerned: yes, two worlds. But hey, if digital clipping sounds good for someone it sounds good. It does not do this for me, but I also hate Saxophone.... Digital clipping is brutal. Analog saturation is subtle, warm, mellow, moody, with a slight orange tone in the lower mids and a highly defined stereo imagining in the outer worlds.

Robert

[catsandwich]

I'm a software test engineer that has worked on a popular audio product.

Live has a floating point mix engine(my product did too). That means a ridiculous amount of headroom when "internally" mixing. Basically, you don't have to worry about levels so long as you're not clipping an input or output converter.

e.g., you can have a ton of audio tracks in the "red" and a master fader in the "green" and you should be OK. That's assuming you're mixing in software and everything in the audio path is float compatible.

In the real world, some plugs aren't 32bit float compatible so you're probably better off just following "conventional" wisdom of not pegging any individual tracks/busses. I'm also assuming Live is float across the entire mix engine and it's possible there are some places this is limited, so you're honestly better off being conservative.

If I was designing a DAW in 2011; I wouldn't even offer the user a traditional fader and meter. It simply confuses too many people. Software is nothing like hardware. The goal of the meter should simply be to monitor the amplitude envelope of the audio signal, NOT the headroom. The goal of the fader should be to simply provide UI to make the track louder or softer. Putting a limit(e.g. +12dbFS) on something that essentially doesn't have a limit(FP 32bit software output) doesn't make sense.

I always wished turning up one track 6dB actually turned down other tracks by the same relative amount. I actually filed a patent for that in a DAW. It was submitted, but I'll have to wait years to find out if it was granted.

[Moody]

Very entertaining to watch a neophyte (Sage, clearly has no sense of what headroom means) try to hold his opinion against a well trained magus (Tone, clearly understands, as an electrical engineer who designs audio circuits). Please Sage, enlighten us to the physics of how gain does not affect headroom, analog or digital, your choice.

Please do not take this as Tone and I our lovers, best buds or whatever one's limited perception may conjure. We clearly disagree on many ideas, but his knowledge of audio fidelity is impeccable.

I think Tone is on about mastering or when you clip a signal, using analogue equipment or has absolutely no idea what he's on about and just saying stuff he thinks sounds good.

And I'm not saying gain doesn't affect headroom, might want to try reading a bit more carefully!

All I'm saying is the exact same signal, no compression or anything added, just gain, isn't going to have less dynamic range if it's peaking at say -3dB than what it would at -6dB. Obviously with quieter signals, there is the noise floor to consider, which by that logic, the same signal when the gain is lowered will have less dynamic range rather than more as if you were to play the two signals at the same level, the quieter signal will have a touch more noise.


And anyone who thinks of clipping as purely analogue and digital is a noob in all respect.

I use clips in Ableton all the time.

[Moody]

...and I like chips... with beer.

Clips, Chips and Beer, sounds like my kind of mix.

[H20nly]

i could be wrong here, but the cliff's notes version of what i see in this thread is somewhat disputable...

i think what sage is saying is that it doesn't matter (without a specific purpose) what your meters are like when below zero on the master. i think we all agree about that. he's going on to say... if it's over, fuck it... if you like it, roll with it.

what tone, moody, and henke are saying is that it's a bad idea to go into the red on your master. a point that i agree on. if clipping sounds good to you in your mix... well, that's okay, but let's not pretend that it's something it's not. it's still clipping... muting a note on a bass or guitar doesn't mean it wasn't plucked, still... the resonance is altered. i think if you want this sound in your mix, achieving it would be wiser on the single track level vs. the entire track level.

if you find a way to make it work well then, good on you... the fact remains though, this sound you've embraced when going into the red is what it is. if you're trying to imply that clipping is a viable option, well that's okay i suppose, but it would be a freestyle technique vs. using a tool the way it was actually intended. therefore, approach with caution...

[swishniak]

Nothing wrong with clipping if you like what it's doing to the sound either. Which is all that matters at the end of the day.

Clipping in the analog realm is one thing. Clipping in the digital world is something completely different.

this is one thing i was trying to (half) dispute. there was a time when this was a big issue, i remember some really nasty sounding digital distortion in old versions of Live, Logic and ProTools.

things are getting better due to 32/64 bit, floating points, etc.. but of course DAWs still are a different beast from a completely analog rig.

wow this thread is getting wacky.