Ableton Forum

I have been looking & looking in the manual & can't figure this out.
I am mixing down my album & the place I am mastering it at asked
me to take off the limiter on the master & adjust all the volumes equally
down so as there is no clipping?

how can you select all volume faders & bring down simultaneously?

four threads down...

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=88685

i read the other thread, but still no good answer. i dont want to turn the master down, i want to turn down all the volumes simultaneously to avoid clipping on some before taking to get mastered. if i turn down master volume, then my level is not near 0db...

does Live not allow this?

to do that, I make a make a new utility preset, for expl -3db (depending), and then drag n drop it on every single track..
a bit boring but pretty fast and working

guess that LIVE does not allow the ability to lower volume faders
of multiple tracks at the same time. you'd think you could just
option-click to select multiple faders...nope.
???

so...the Utility option i can see would function to that task, but not
so good in this case. i will lower the volume of a track that is
clipping, taking account of the level # before and after & note the total
dB lowered & do that to all the other volumes. just as tedious
as doing the utility in a way, but perhaps a few steps easier.

rrrrrgh...

bionicLOVEsoundsystem wrote:i want to turn down all the volumes simultaneously to avoid clipping on some before taking to get mastered. if i turn down master volume, then my level is not near 0db...

Double check with your Mastering Engineer if he/she wants your songs to be at 0dB.

I'm going to guess the answer is no.
If you send them 24bit files, with NO LIMITING, and the peaks only reach -6dB, this should make them happy. happier than 0dB peaks.

In which case, just turn down the master fader. Its using 32bit floating point anyway, so you aren't sacrificing anything by using it to lower the volume of all your tracks.

No, Live does not (at this point) have a multi-click-n-drag fader control the way some other programs do. If you don't like using the master fader, then use yogz's trick.

Oh, you've been clipping individual tracks and had been controlling that with limiters.

if you are using only Live's plugins, then you don't't have to worry about it... just turn down the master.

In the future, record 24bit audio and leave yourself headroom rather than recording at max volume and using a limiter as a safety net... it'll save just this type of hassle.

well, my master (no, i'm not a slave) guy said that i should give him the tracks at 0db master level. i just called him & confirmed that he does NOT want me to turn down the master as it "it's best to turn down all the tracks the same amount instead. If it isn't possible to do them all at the same time turn each track down the same number of dB's. Turning down the master fader won't deal with mix bus issues and it will decrease the resolution (bit depth) of the mix." (which made sense when he explained it)

how does working at 32bit on LIVE effect that? he is not familiar with LIVE so maybe i can just turn down the master afterall which would be alot less tedious.
i'm losing creative energy from all this uncertainty. so many different opinions & techniques out there & i'm just wanting to work on new tracks now! trying to be patient but weeks are going by & i need to finish this album soon.

wondering if i should just go in and adjust the compression on the bass on my tracks as that might be causing most of the clipping...

what to do?

Yes, on a hardware mixer, its best to turn down the individual tracks.
yes, on a hardware mixer, you can even go well above 0dBvu and not worry about clipping.

Live is different. Just turn down the master (IF the master track is the only one going into the red)

I did not say work at 32 bit. I said Live 6's mixer _is_ a32bit floating point processor. Bottom line, if you are recording 16 or 24bit files to begin with, you can turn the master volume WAYYYYYY down (using the master channel) and not lose any detail or increase your signal-to-noise ratio the way a hardware mixer would.


if you send your engineer a 24bit .wav file that only reaches -6dBfs, this is still more information than you can squeeze on a 16bit CD. Which means its just as good as hitting 0dBfs (actually, even better!! ... according to every engineer I've ever talked to, for reasons i wont go into)

If you are clipping individual tracks inside Live, then YES you should turn down every single track fader or use the utility trick (putting it first in every FX chain). If you were only using Live's built-in effects (or high quality VST/au plugins that can behave similarly) you wouldn't _need_ to do this to avoid clipping, you could just use the master fader (thanks to some magical flaoting point business).

bionicLOVEsoundsystem wrote:Turning down the master fader won't deal with mix bus issues and it will decrease the resolution (bit depth) of the mix." (which made sense when he explained it)

Let me address this in particular.
yes you should fix stuff in the mix!!
Yes, if you clip something, you can't unclip it later!

Turning down Live's master fader will decrease the final resolution, in theory.... but since Live6's master fader is using 32bits, you'd have to turn the fader down something like -200dB before you started getting something below 16bit resolution. That math is just a wild guess, but i know the amount is ridiculous.

So I'm not sure why your engineer brought up that argument, it hasn't been relevent with any DAW for years and years.

However, let me reiterate:

if you are clipping an individual track, you better turn down the volume on that track.

With some further reading, you will find that just because a fader inside Live goes into the red doesn't mean you will get clipping (way to go DAW!)


but the safest practice is to avoid red everywhere, so sou you better do a little work now and adjust your faders.

Yeah, it'd be nice to be able to select all... especially if you have any volume automation on those tracks! Live and learn.

Did you try mapping one CC from your controller to all of the track faders? You might have to play with the takeover mode to get it to work correctly, but that would be the first thing I would try.

Did you try mapping one CC from your controller to all of the track faders? You might have to play with the takeover mode to get it to work correctly

nice one if it works

laird wrote:.........................................or use the utility trick (putting it first in every FX chain).

laird - I've always put the utility at the end of the chain. What's the thinking behind putting it first??
thanks
ali

dootdoot wrote:Did you try mapping one CC from your controller to all of the track faders? You might have to play with the takeover mode to get it to work correctly, but that would be the first thing I would try.

Is that possible? A CC message has only 3 bytes (status, data1, data2). The first data byte would identify the parameter to be changed, and I'm pretty positive that, on the binary level of MIDI, it can only identify one single parameter.

I could be wrong in that a control could send out a pulse of CC messages, but it seems counterintuitive to the fundamentals.

But I'm a relative n00b in the area of basic MIDI theory. Correct me if I'm wrong.