WaveLab Montage Level Changes

[Djembe]

When compiling a master to burn from a WaveLab Montage, any changes to a track's overall level, result in it being converted back to 32bit.
Does this mean that dithering has to be done AFTER compiling the montage, or is there a way of changeing relative levels without changing the bit depth?

[nine99nine]

Yes, any processing whether you change volume, create a fade, or eq/compress/limit will increase the wordlength of the file. Dithering should always be the last step in your process as your montage is burned into a CD or Rendered into an image.

If you don't believe me, then beleive Bob Katz! Straight from his website www.Digido.com:
"To be very exact, all digital gain reductions (and most other non-trivial DSP operations) require a certain amount of dither if the signal is to be truncated to a shorter wordlength (there is only one correct minimum amount of dither). If the signal is going to be transmitted or broadcast at its original wordlength, then redithering will not be necessary. For example, I start with a 20 bit recording, and I drop the gain by 4.5 dB. This becomes a long word (48 bits or more) within the DSP (for more information on this, see the dither article). Internally, in the processor, this long word should be dithered up to 24 bits. Then you receive it at 24 bits. If you can use or transmit these 24 bits, then so much the better. Otherwise, when you reduce the word to 16 for storage or transmission, you will have to dither."

[Djembe]

Thank you for your reply.

I normally do my limiting and dithering in one step with an L2 plug-in.
If I am compiling a whole album though, I should do the processing and limiting of the individual tracks first, save them, then compile them into a montage, apply level changes, THEN dither the whole montage before burning.
Is this correct?

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Djembe

Thank you for your reply.

I normally do my limiting and dithering in one step with an L2 plug-in.
If I am compiling a whole album though, I should do the processing and limiting of the individual tracks first, save them, then compile them into a montage, apply level changes, THEN dither the whole montage before burning.
Is this correct?

Why make it so complicated? Just assemble your montage with the unlimited audio (pre L2), then apply limiter + dithering via the master section, on load out.

The only reason to apply limiting before level adjustment would be if you _wanted_ to intentionally limit more than necessary for level, essentially having different out ceilings for different tracks... i.e. if heavier brickwall limiting than necessary is part of the sound aesthetic of a song. That happens, but it's surprisingly rare here. And even that you can facilitate (as well as using different limiter plugins) by loading different instances of your limiting plugin into different montage tracks.

Anyway, having the unlimited audio in the assembly montage gives you another advantage: If the client calls and says they want the master a touch louder (or a touch lower in level), your session recall takes roughly 1 minute.

[Djembe]

Excuse my ignorance here, but is that the way it's normally done?
That is, setting the limiter levels for the whole album in one go.
I have always done it track by track.
For example a track that has only occasional peaks may need more limiting than one that is constant.
Also if a soft acoustic track's level needs to be lowered quite a bit and then you are applying your global limiting value, it may not have any limiting at all.

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Djembe

Excuse my ignorance here, but is that the way it's normally done?
That is, setting the limiter levels for the whole album in one go.
I have always done it track by track.

Well, I run the limiting while making sound decisions track by track, but take it off before committing each track (i.e. running through analog or rendering), so that I can have the actual destructive process rendered separately (in the assembly EDL via master section, track FX or even clip FX). For one thing, that means that I never introduce more damage than is actually needed on a given song, for another thing, it means that revisions are significantly faster, as many changes then don't require recalling / rerunning the original track from scratch.

Some do it like this, some do it differently. There isn't really only one way of doing it.

For example a track that has only occasional peaks may need more limiting than one that is constant.

I think you're misunderstanding.

All that you're doing, when levelling post the limiting is essentially changing your ceiling / max output of the limiter. If you level a track down after having limited it (any track, whether it only has occasional peaks or not), it just means that you *could have* used less limiting.
If that unnecessary amount of limiting is part of the intentional sound, then great. If not, you have unintentionally wasted headroom, negatively affecting sound quality because you made a wrong guess about the target track level.

I.e. if you're limiting before levelling (that is assuming you're going to do some levelling), you're NOT making decisions based on how much limiting each track needs, but on how much you're thinking it's going to need.

Also if a soft acoustic track's level needs to be lowered quite a bit and then you are applying your global limiting value, it may not have any limiting at all.

Indeed. Isn't it great?

And again, you can, of course, have separate limting values (or even different methods of generating loudness not global, but set per track, if you do want different processing for different tracks.