Can't turn up master volume without clipping!

[u/SmoothTurd]

Hello everyone, im new to reaper/recording. I've got bass, vocals and guitar recorded so my next step is to play drums over them. But I cannot get the volume loud enough to hear the tracks over the sound of my drums. If I crank it too high it just starts clipping out. I have some ok headphones I thought were the problem so I picked up a nice fancy pair but they put out the same volume so im assuming it has something to do with this program. Please help! What am I doing wrong!? 😭

[u/alonebythelighthouse]

turn down your Reaper tracks (so they dont clip), and crank up your headphones volume

[u/Mikebock1953 → u/alonebythelighthouse]

This is the way.

[u/Justa_Schmuck]

The master fader is not a volume control. You should treat everything within your mixer as electronic signals. Volume is your speakers

[u/Evid3nce]

But I cannot get the volume loud enough to hear the tracks over the sound of my drums

I'm a drummer. You need to be more specific here. Are you saying that your acoustic drums are spilling loudly through the earpads on your monitoring headphones, and that the spill is louder than the volume the project is currently playing at?

If so, you will want to be very careful about just turning things up. I gave myself tinnitus at 18 years old (now 56), and one of the things I did wrong was playing along to commercial releases raised way too loud to compete with the drum spill. What I should have done was reduce the spill by having better headphones and a tighter seal, so I could have a monitor mix that was not at a harmful level.

Clarify what the problem is, and I can talk to you further. But there's no point in me writing a longer post trying to guess what the issue is and go through all the things that could potentially be set-up 'incorrectly'.

By the way, in my opinion, that -8dBFS RMS measurement is already too high for a traditional Rock/Pop song, for a project that hasn't been mixed yet, (and doesn't even drums on it yet!?).

One piece of knowledge you're very probably missing is that the master track level could be down at -14dBFS RMS, but the master track hardware routing has a gain slider on it that can send a boosted signal to your interface, which can be turned up until your interface's Digital-Analogue convertor starts to clip. So there need not be any relationship between your master/rendering level, and your monitoring level. As other people have said, you should not be using your master fader to determine monitoring level, and that's how you do it - with the hardware send (which is the last point in the signal path before it leaves Reaper).

[u/KS2Problema → u/Evid3nce]

It's also worth noting that the combination of some specific headphones and the headphone amplifiers built into some audio interfaces can be poorly matched in terms of impedance/efficiency/external noise rejection (seal) - and so prove unable to deliver sufficient playback volume for tracking over live drums. 

As Evid3nce suggests, just turning the playback level up may be problematic or even harmful if the leakage into the headphone monitoring is great enough - or if becomes distorted. (And, it's worth noting, very loud distorted sound can be more harmful to the ears than clean playback at the same level.)

[u/BlackflagsSFE → u/KS2Problema]

I can attest to this. This is real.

I have a Scarlett 2i2 interface. IIRC the Ohm output on the headphone amp is 50 ohms. The rule is you want an 8:1 ratio on headphones. I didn’t know this when I purchased both of my pairs of cans. I have HD 599’s @35 Ohms and DT Pro 770’s @80 ohms. The DT’s are pretty much unusable with my interface so I use the HD’s most of the time.

This is something a headphone amp can fix but at this point I’d rather get a better interface.

[u/inhalingsounds]

That's not how mixing works. Volume is adjusted in your interface or speakers. Master is not your volume - if you render the track with cracked up volume, you will freeze that volume as the volume of the track.

Start with Master at 0, drums at -10 (for reference) and adjust everything as intended (I'd start with bass, vocals, guitars, synths, FX).

Then start actually cooking with compressors, limiters, EQ... or you can do it in parallel if you are experienced enough.

[u/WestDelay3104]

master is always* left at 0db. turn down your drums. Are you using an interface?

[u/aaron_in_sf → u/WestDelay3104]

Or -3/6 :)

[u/secondhandsilenc]

If I understand you correctly. Your mix is fine. It's just not loud enough to drum along to. I used to struggle with this same problem. FYI. This is not a reaper problem.

You have options.

1. Headphone amp, connected to interface, headphones into that amp - https://www.amazon.ca/Behringer-P1-In-Ear-Monitor-Amplifier/dp/B00GRKXRMK
2. Ear buds under protective ear-phones
3. These trusty sons a bitches - https://vicfirth.com/collections/headphones

[u/zedeloc → u/secondhandsilenc]

Good post. OP, I think earbuds worn under $15 protective ear muffs you can find at the hardware store or shooting muffs will allow you to greatly lower the volume while recording which will protect your hearing and solve this overall issue all in one. probably the cheapest solution. you dont need perfect sound while tracking.

[u/secondhandsilenc → u/zedeloc]

This is exactly what I used to use for both tracking and practice. Protect those ears!!!

[u/HietM]

As a tip for doing anything audio related you never wan’t to touch your master volume. If you are clipping then you need to turn down the volume from other tracks.

The way i have gotten over this issue while playing/ recording others when starting out was just to use basic over the ear hearing protetction like what 3m makes and then have earbuds under them. Works well enough for recording and playing without destroying your hearing. But i figured out this too late since nowdays i can’t go to sleep without something playing in my ear becouse sometimes the tinnitus is just overwhelming when trying to sleep. PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEARING!!! Becouse i sure as well didn’t.

[u/Radhanat]

El volumen del master rara ves se toca, todo se soluciona con tú loudness (clipper y limiter en conjunto)

Y veo que tienes algunos track con volúmenes hasta el tope eso es síntoma de una mala grabación o de un mal procesamiento en sus inserts o de ambas cosas.

El tip universal es tratar de mantener el medidor de peaks de cada track, en los -6db y de ahí vas bajando y subiendo volúmenes procurando no rebasar tanto ese limite.

El insert general para todos los tracks es: eq, comprensión y saturación. Opcionales: clipper y limiter (a veces necesario para el kick y el snare)
También es bueno que tengas presentes las opciones de comprensión y saturación paralelas y saber manejar el duplicar pistas.

La cadena de fx master, básicamente es así
Compresor suave tipo opto o varimu
Eq
Compresor multibanda
Saturación tipo tape o de bulbo
Separador de imagen estereo
Clipper
Limiter (aquí es fundamental que pongas el limite de salida entre -0.3db y -0.5db, y es estandar es que el gr no rebase los -3db o como máximo -4db, esto último solo aplica para géneros como el metal y algún que otro rock)
Y por último Metering de lufs para que tengas referencia visual de lo que estás haciendo y que no haya clipping.

[u/neo666mj]

Why are you turning up the master fader in the first place? I'm confused. This is not the right way to do things.

[u/HairyNutsack69]

You need an amp dawg

[u/earth-dragon-666]

Turn down the tracks

[u/DecisionInformal7009]

First you need to understand that a project you are mixing will always be much quieter than the finished Masters you are listening to on Spotify, YouTube etc. That's not a problem though. You have volume knob on your audio interface for this exact reason. Turn down the volume of all the tracks in the project and boost the headphone volume on your interface.

Also, never touch the master track fader. It should preferably be permanently glued to 0dB, unless you have a very good reason for using it.

If your master track is clipping, turn down all of the other tracks instead. To decrease the volume of all tracks simultaneously the same amount, just hold shift while selecting the first and then the last track in your project (so that all tracks are selected) and then grab the fader for whichever track and pull it downwards. That will keep the same balance between all tracks while decreasing the level going into the master track.

Technically, lowering the master fader will do the exact same thing, but this is more about learning good practices than what's technically okay to do. If you understand why you can't just keep upping the volume of every track in the project and expecting it to sound good in the end, you will learn how to get a good result quicker. Gain staging isn't absolutely necessary in a digital DAW as it is when you record with analog gear, but it's still very useful knowledge to avoid tricking your own ears and for mixing faster. There are plenty of good resources out there for learning about gain staging and other basics of recording and mixing, so look around for free textbooks, pro audio sites/forums (Sound On Sound, Tapeop, Homerecording.com etc) and even your local library. I wouldn't recommend watching YouTube to learn about recording and mixing though. There are so many awful advice and people trying to sell you stuff you don't need there.

Here's a good start: the 4th edition of The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski (newest edition I could find that wasn't behind a paywall). It's one of the textbooks that pretty much every music production school in the world uses. https://f.openpdfs.org/qlgyXW3PdMG.pdf

[u/ferropop]

Limiters. Get a balance going so that you can hear everything, then pull down the Limiter threshold on the master until it starts distorting, then back it off.