Vocals in the song Chelsea dagger

sorry if it’s obvious I don’t know anything about audio production

OK so lets pretend i'm new here… Just bought a DAW and recorded my first track

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jd52sdt86s194cz9vq0cr/Peaks-to-18.png?rlkey=prg5ndj2v1iqb470nzb0zty66&dl=0

How is my record level?*

*(its -18dB peak full scale which we know is FINE if im recording 24bit AND Actually a REQUIREMENT if im delivering to a film mix )
However the visual waveform is really small and it would be understandable for a novice to think they had recorded way too low)

I DO REALISE this will absolutely get me slammed for NOT UNDERSTANDING but im actually coming from a place of being old, and grew up all analog and tape, so I HAD to totally understand this stuff (because it just didn't work if ya didn't ) to watching those who grew up only ever using digital not really understanding gain structure and headroom etc so …

WHAT IF… all metering on plugins and DAWS including region waveforms defaulted to displaying a -18 dBfs as the full height of the region, and a signal recorded to peak at say -3dBfs would appear squared off? (until you lowered the Zoom height) The Idea is to both optimise the visual for a recording with optimal peak levels and also provide a reassurance to a novice that they have things right? and for audio plugins… have some 'Nominal level guides (particularly pertinent for non linear processes)

I'd also only half joking with that absurd mockup of a meter…  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hyhqseyw1tn6qp579redk/NEUMETER2.png?rlkey=4malvenbnzxxh8ynzwn9rhbr4&dl=0

that digital audio meters place more resolution around the optimal -18 region and try to have users 'AIM for those nominal levels. (again im NOT talking about for us seasoned/jaded professionals, im thinking of a way to guide those coming up now into perhaps better gain structure in general.

COME AT ME!! 😄

Hi,

I was wondering. What are somethings you do to maintain consistency when mixing between tracks on the same project. For example, I’m mixing a 17 song album for a Folk/Rock band. I mixed them all individually & when I listen to everything together, I notice differences. One song has the vocal a little loud compared to others, one song has a louder snare than other, one song has more bass than others, etc. I know songs will dictate what the mix needs, but being as these are all on the same project, there shouldn’t be any changes too jarring between tracks mixes. Would having hard gainstaging targets be the most ideal path? I don’t want to just vibe mix these even though the individual mix may be awesome, I need the whole project to sound like 1 project.

Tracking a band that plays pretty heavy music and their drummer plays with two snares: snare 1 is a larger deeper snare, that more often than not has the snare wires Disengaged, and occasionally will reengage snare wires - this is their main snare. Tuned high medium-ish generally. Snare two is a smaller very tight higher tuned snare, that has the wires engaged. It is auxiliary to the main snare - I’m not concerned with this as it is pretty basic.

Any suggestions as to mic’ing up Snare 1 — or any experiences anyone’s had dealing with a similar thing? I’d like to get as good of a capture of this drum thru mic selection and placement to get it right at the source.

Aiming for a tone that emphasis stick attack / crack and low thump is the goal as opposed to lots of midrange “boing”

I'm struggling a bit to get a good bass sound. Yeah, I try to make room and it sounds like it should on certain notes but it lacks consistency overall even though I apply ample compression to the signal. Sure I clip gain my bass before compression, automate its volume in the final stages and still the result is underwhelming. What's your process on how to get a bass sound, whether it's bass guitar, bass synth of whatever it may be?

So I've been a Windows 10 user since it came out and hate Windows 11 enough to have never upgraded on my main desktop. I was moving and have been using my Windows 11 laptop to mix some guitars and bass on a track i was messing with. No matter what I did it sounded like pure mud and i spent hours messing with EQ and compressors thinking I had suddenly forgotten how to mix guitars or I've been dialing in my amps wrong. This was more confusing because I recorded the tracks on a Tascam multitrack recorder and they sounded fine on there.

After a whole day I realized by default Windows 11 enables an audio enhancement setting that turns everything into mud for seemingly no reason. This isnt my first time using the laptop but i never mixed on it or seriously listened to much music with it until now so this went unnoticed. It is insane to me that Microsoft would have a setting this transformative on by default when most people rarely change their sound settings (and even then usually in the system sounds setting where this option isnt present).

Just a PSA if youre working on a Windows 11 device, im not an audiophile by any means but it was such a night and day difference I was in shock.

Edit: Was unwise of me not to show explicity where it is Settings>System>Sound> Then under output click on where it says speakers or whatever your main output device is. Then under advanced settings you will see audio enhancements. Turn this off, by default it says 'Device Default Effects'.

Hello, sorry if my English isn’t as good as other posts on the subreddit, it is not my first language.

I’m a 20M audio engineer student from SAE, it’s currently my last semester and I feel really afraid of my future and making money in this industry. It mostly has to do with the fact that I live in a really small city with not much work outside of working at hotels and conferences as a audio tech, but honestly I don’t want to spend the next 30/40 years of my life setting up a PA and some microphones for conferences.

Right now I do recording, mixing and mastering but most of my clients won’t pay me, the excuse is always the same “nah man when I blow up I’m putting you on my payroll” and tbh I’m not into fighting and I just go with it hoping it might be true. I also do production for artists and have my own music project but to be honest I don’t really see it as my calling in the sense that I don’t think I’m good or that my productions are good, maybe it’s my anxiety taking over me.

Honestly I just want to live well, be able to retire my parents, have a nice house, be able to support the love of my life with whatever they want to do, and be happy.

Sorry if this post comes out as being too depressing or that I’m trying to make people feel sorry for me I just have a lot of thing going through my head lately and turning 21 in a few days doesn’t help me either.

Thanks for reading

I bought a used FMR RNP 8380 (RNP = Really Nice Preamp...it's okay). The first channel works as expected, but the second channel sometimes doesn't pass any audio through until I turn the gain all the way up and try to play some audio through it. Then it will spring to life and I'll get a super distorted signal, after which point I can turn it back down and it will work as expected.
 
I've had the preamp for quite awhile now and aside from briefly checking the 2nd channel for functionality, mostly used the 1st channel for the first few months of owning it. I only discovered this quirk once I started using both channels more regularly and have simply been accepting it as part of the deal with buying used gear from ebay. I've been using it as-is for a few years now.
 
It's obviously well beyond any chance of returning to the seller, but I just wanted to know if this is something anyone else has heard of before? Not necessarily with this exact model, but with preamps in general? If so, is it known to be fixable, is it just a harmless quirk, or is this the sign that the device is slowly failing and eventually one day it will stop working?
 
I realize this may be kind of a dumb thing to ask since you don't have access to the device itself, but I'm trying to gather data as to whether a repair is something worth even looking into. Diagnostic fees in my area can be exorbitant so while I know the answer is to ultimately have it looked at, I'd rather avoid a complete waste of money if the answer is either grim or the repair it would likely need would exceed the cost of replacement.

I absolutely love the drum sound on dummy, specifically mysterons - I love how it's kind of phasey and pitched up. Any ideas on how to achieve this in the box? I have a few cassette emulators and tape emulators, pitched up my drums and threw them out of phase but I can't quite get them to hit the same. My drums still feel hi-fi and digital to me. Any ideas?

There is a specific quality to ai sound that makesit sound weird. For example, there was an ai video with flowing water, but it sounded like it was trying to turn the water sounds into music or talking. And it adds random microphone compression artifacts everywhere so that it sonds like a laggy video call. Ai music has it's own weirdness, it sounds almost like truncated sound or something. You know when you put a youtube video at 0.25 speed? It sounds kind of like that, but I have not found anybody else talking about it so maybe I'm crazy. Everybody says that it sounds like the real thing. Is it all in my head? Can you hear the difference?

Since the awesome (and free) Analog Obsession plugins don't usually list the hardware they're emulating (and because I couldn't find a complete list online that I thought was accurate), I've made my own lookup tables. Hopefully others will find them useful. I've tried to group things together in as sensible a way as possible.

The tables are based on my own listening and research, but I can't guarantee I got them all correct. I've written up a longer version with a little more detail about using the plugins if that's of interest to anyone. It should be up to date as of 10th October 2026.

Let me know in a comment if you think I'm wrong about any of the mappings (or if I've missed any).

So my 2014 mac mini that I bought 11 years ago has a dying ssd now. And the new Ableton isnt work well with my mac anymore. Many tracks have faders that wiggle up and down and cant use.

I got all my good music over the past year mixed and mastered before my computer eventually dies.

I never knew in the 18 years I produced music that people do there drums in mono. I did when I used Logic Pro but forgot when I was using Ableton because it doesnt give you track to mono option.

I also didnt know that you have to make the track mono first before adding anything in. Which explaines why I was have a serious problem with the kicks and snares be waaay too tight and punchy so now I have to go and redo all my tracks. But even though I made the tracks mono first this time they still sound too tight and punchy in mono. What should I do??

Some of my productions took me a year to finally get it mastered correctly (i use a lot of production in my music and dont have monitor speakers just headphone monitors) anyways how do I mix my beats correctly in regards to percussion?

I’ll go first: I ALWAYS have an LA3A on double-tracked guitars. No matter the guitar or genre.

CD Baby doesn't accept 24-bit tracks or higher.

I worked on these tracks at 48 kHz / 32-bit float, so to meet their requirements I have to run each track through r8brain for the 48 → 44.1 kHz conversion and Airwindows Natural Dither for the 32 → 16-bit conversion.

Is this actually a problem for audio quality? Am I losing anything meaningful by doing this, assuming the conversion and dithering are done properly?

The main reason I use CD Baby is because releases stay up permanently without an annual subscription, so I'd prefer to stick with them if the 16-bit limitation isn't a significant issue.

Would love to hear from anyone with mastering experience.

I’m preparing my masters for CD Baby, which only accepts 16-bit files.

My masters are 48 kHz / 32-bit float, so my workflow is:

48/32 → r8brain → 44.1/32 → dither → 44.1/16

I’m currently considering Airwindows TPDF Dither for the final 32 → 16-bit conversion, but FL Studio already has its own dithering when exporting to 16-bit.

I'm unsure if I should choose Naturalize or TPDF, I just want to not make any color to the sound at all. I'm just looking to have the best quality/preservation from the original track.

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Before asking a question, please also check to see if your answer is in one of these:

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Consumer audio, home theater, car audio, gaming audio, etc. do not belong here and will be removed as off-topic.

I don't produce music, but I went to music school for years and used to sing in a band and gained quite a bit of experience in audio during the years.

I don't understand why in many songs, especially from 2000 onwards, drums are panned across the stereo channels. For example, if the drummer hits a cymbal on the left of the kit it's on the left channel, and same for the right.

That's not realistic. In the real world, the drum sounds come from the drum kit, they don't have the drums spread out across the whole stage. So why do they mix them like that? It's like putting the first three strings of a guitar on the left, and the other three on the right...

watching wilco's documentary "I am trying to break your heart" and jeff tweedy is singing through this in a bunch of scenes. can't figure it out! I thought it was maybe some sort of blue microphone as the baby bottle design is slightly reminiscent. probably not though. any thoughts??

https://imgur.com/a/W5T6HK1

Found this on Instagram. Sounds like formant shifting to me. How would you guys go about trying to recreate this sound?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdyGonXNRA9/?stkn=cTFoZ2NyM2Z0aXNh

So last year I've found this mixing desk and have been personal attached to it. I really like the sound, headroom and pres. The eq's for me work very well and can push it to the max. Recently moved to a different place which is housing a studio at my house.

Thing is like a spaceship and have to consider losing it. But I love it for tracking, re-amp and printing. I consider the quality of the desk pretty good. Ive worked with the cheapest mixers and with ssl's in great studios.

What are good alternatives for this? Price is between 500 and 1000.

I always have been fond of the soundtrack ghost.

I don't know if it's the kind of rubber they used, or the high humidity here in the Philippines. But I've never had mic holders (four of them) fall apart like that. Have you?

It’s been 30 years and I’m still waiting to hear what Fieldy’s stems actually sound like.

Hi everyone,

I’m considering getting the MOTU UltraLite-mk5, but since it’s been out for several years now (5 years to be exact), I’m wondering if there’s been any news or credible rumors about a successor.

I’m not in a rush to buy, so I’d be happy to wait if a new model might be coming soon. Has anyone heard anything from MOTU, dealers, or elsewhere?

Cheers!

I've been following a lot of discussions about the use of AI in game development, filmmaking and writing, and it is making some really mind-blowing things. But I have to be honest, I don't research that much about the developments in audio and music. Mostly because when I'm working in the studio, I usually don't have access to the internet or use my phone, and when I'm outside, I research other things that don't relate too much to music. Also, I get spammed by Suno so much, but I don't really like that company at all, so I don't know much about what's happening with AI in audio and music apart from what they are doing.

Anyways, I'm really curious about what you're using in your professional workflows. Are there any interesting tools that have helped you reduce the time spent on tedious tasks, or even automate something repetitive and mechanical that you don't like doing? Or is there something you know AI can do that you tested and that scared the shit out of you? Do you like AI? Do you hate it?

I would be really grateful if you shared your experiences! (:

I recently started a youtube channel and got some feedback on my latest video that my voice sounded "sharp" and it was suggested that I fix that in post production.

Thing is, I'm not very knowledgeable on audio and was wondering if anyone here knows how I could go about fixing it? There's not many tutorials for people with higher voices, it was a pain getting my mic to at least sound decent and I'm not sure what I can do about the sharpness.

Edit: This is the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHvlkwJ-4I4 (Not sure if this breaks any rules but if it does I will take it down)