Tracking beats

When I track my beats my snare or kick is usually the loudest track... I usually just record it into Reaper as hot as possible only giving like .03db headroom... Is this the way you guys do it or do you usually leave a little more headroom??

dmarz45 wrote:When I track my beats my snare or kick is usually the loudest track... I usually just record it into Reaper as hot as possible only giving like .03db headroom... Is this the way you guys do it or do you usually leave a little more headroom??

It doesn't really matter because you're going to have to turn down the levels of each channel anyway so your song in it's entirety doesn't clip on the master bus.
On my analogue mixer I get each channel as loud as possible to avoid noise on the group buses, but DAW's don't have that problem.

16 or 24 bit?

When you track your beats they shouldn't be mixed yet, so record (track out) each individual track at a predetermined level.

You might have done a rough mix to get a feel for the balance, but don't use this when tracking out. You can always save it to use as a baseline mix later on.

For example, I might record (track out) all individual tracks at anywhere between -6 db to -3 db on a 16 bit system. There should be no clipping with little or no compression at this stage. Keep an eye on those drums.

I can't tell you exactly what level you should record at without knowing your system specifics, but the levels I suggested are ball park figures.

The dynamic range of 24 bit systems is higher than that of 16 bit systems, but I won't get into that..

jimmie wrote:

dmarz45 wrote:When I track my beats my snare or kick is usually the loudest track... I usually just record it into Reaper as hot as possible only giving like .03db headroom... Is this the way you guys do it or do you usually leave a little more headroom??

It doesn't really matter because you're going to have to turn down the levels of each channel anyway so your song in it's entirety doesn't clip on the master bus.
On my analogue mixer I get each channel as loud as possible to avoid noise on the group buses, but DAW's don't have that problem.

This is completely FALSE and do not go by this info if you plan to EQ/Compression etc. You'll need to leave yourself headroom for the plugins to work and not cause the audio to clip after it's run through the plugin. Not all plugins have an input gain knob to reduce hot input volume, so the output can clip if there is not enough headroom for the processing to take place. Just keep your shit coming in at the mid yellow at most to be safe.

Yeah. Ignore me. Had a brain fart.
Your itb inserts are usually pre-fader (last two in Cubase are post). >.<

jimmie wrote:Yeah. Ignore me. Had a brain fart.
Your itb inserts are usually pre-fader (last two in Cubase are post). >.<

Exactly! This is what I tell a lot of guys to watch out for in Pro Tools because there is a pre and post fader mode that affects ALL faders. Just gotta make sure you're aware of which mode you're in. I keep mine in post fader mode though. I know that when I'm coming in, if it's not clipping with my fader at 0dB then I know I'm good. Then after I add eq/compression and other potentially signal boosting processors, I just switch back and forth to double check every now and then. So the main trick here is to make sure you aren't clipping anywhere during tracking, nor in the final mix.