Hey i first off want to say i really enjoy all the great tutorials on this website im an avid ableton user so its great to see the majority of vids done in ableton. My one question is i noticed in Phils tutorials that he often puts his channels up really loud going into the red and then just takes down the master fader and even the master out goes into the red. I always thought this was harmful to the sound in the digital domain? or am i completely wrong? Do you only do this for the purpose of the tutorials? Or is this also how you mixdown your tracks? Mabey a viud tutorial from Phil on how he mixes down?
You are correct. You should stay out of the red. Read this website article and you should follow it closely in your own productions. If you need more help, holla!
Never ever over 0db rule is for stuff that comes in or out of Ableton (and any other DAW) i.e. when you do a live recording or export stuff to audio
Never ever touch the master fader is another ‘rule’, to which I’m yet to hear a convincing argument
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Hey bro. Interesting read. Im tired so i didnt read all of it
In conventional thinking, you should never go over 0db. My thinking is this. If you really shouldn’t because it could harm your sound (unless thats what you are trying to acheive), why test it? Your volume will be fixed at mastering. Besides, you should always leave headroom for the mastering tech.
I know that analog gets its sound from overdriving the inputs (or outputs, cant remember). It would turn saw wave and chop the top off, to create that warmth we all seek. However, doing this digitally will seriously fu@k your shiz up! When recording vocals, they teach you in recording school to record at anywhere from -6db to -12db. It can vary. I’ll just stick to what the pros do and not even mess around.
And yeah…Never touch the master fader. I think Phil was in a hurry and possibly didn’t care much about fiddling around with levels. It might not have been the main objective in the tutorial.
with a 32bit floating point mixer the relative levels shouldn’t matter as there is effectively infinite headroom… although if a plugin in the chain isnt 32bit floating point this could do damage.
the sends are only 24bit so you could do damage to the signal integrity there too.
