Ableton Forum

Curious question for those among us who use Live for DJ'ing.

I've been reworking the years-old project file I use for DJ stuff, and have been reconsidering my approach to clip gain settings. Historically I've used the auto-gain settings from Traktor, which have worked well enough, but I want to tighten them up and work towards a more consistent strategy.

Given that I'm dealing with around 1100 clips of full-length tracks, I have efficiency first and foremost. I've been contemplating taking LUFS values for each track and using those values as at least a starting point. I figure however that my previous method likely employed a similar technique (without knowing details of Traktors auto-gain algorithms), I'm unsure of how effective this will be. I'll do a batch test regardless, taking values from iZotope's RX analyser as a basis.

The other thing I've contemplated is using some sort of test tone as a basis around which to balance individual tracks, however I'm unsure of what sort of tone might be a useful anchor. Also, I suspect that with the time-consuming nature of this method, there might be a more than desirable level of human error involved.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Curious as to other peoples approaches to this.

~ OM

Best way is to use your ear and match the level with output faders.

Just using the LUFS values would be the easiest way to make sure they are all the same perceived volume, but with 1100 tracks that could take a pretty long time to figure out. The easiest way I can think of would be to put all the songs in Aurchitect's Myriad app and normalize them all to the same LUFS value (say -13 or -16LUFS). Myriad is a batch processor, so all of this would be automated once you make the settings. Downside would be that this is a destructive process to the wav files, so the ASDs for your clips might get messed up and you have to rewarp.

Tarekith wrote:Just using the LUFS values would be the easiest way to make sure they are all the same perceived volume, but with 1100 tracks that could take a pretty long time to figure out. The easiest way I can think of would be to put all the songs in Aurchitect's Myriad app and normalize them all to the same LUFS value (say -13 or -16LUFS). Myriad is a batch processor, so all of this would be automated once you make the settings. Downside would be that this is a destructive process to the wav files, so the ASDs for your clips might get messed up and you have to rewarp.

This is what I figured would be wisest. I haven't heard of Myriad before, so I'm looking at that now.

I still think what I'll likely do is a do a batch test of x number of tracks, see how that batch goes, and then work on the rest.

Can't say I'm looking forward to another mass warping, however I suspect if I prepare the files well, there may not be much of an issue.

One query I have, and this speaks to my lack of knowledge of the LUFS scale, I think. It's what correlation is there between an LUFS value, and a conventional gain stages dB scale? One thought I had was to take the LUFS value of a given track, and use Lives clip gain to factor in whatever offset the normalisation process would otherwise have. Is this a viable approach?

LUFS was created to scale with dB, so one LUFS value equals one dB. IE, if you had a track that was -12 LUFS and wanted to make it -8 LUFS, you could raise the clip gain 4dB. Just remember that to get an accurate LUFS reading you need to analyze the entire song, not just the loudest part.

That part I'm aware of. Good to know they scale accordingly.

Thanks for you input, much appreciated.