This is driving me nuts

[seamus james]

I've mixed and mastered about 4 songs for my band, The Soft Focus, and now on the latest one I'm having some really frustrating problems. Basically, I'm getting distortion from clipping, though none of the individual tracks are clipping and I have my master limiter set at -2 with the threshold around -5. I end up having to run the master volume at about -8 to get rid of it, and still at some of the louder points in the song the distortion rears its crackly head. It even breaks up if I mute everything but 4 tracks or so (which again, are not individually clipping, nor did they at any point during the recording process). I think any 4 tracks will do it. I've also tried using the C4 multiband on my master instead of the L2, but its the same problem. Right now, I'd estimate this song is about 10db quieter than all the other songs I've done. Its driving me crazy! AHHHHHH!!

Setup:
Protools 6.4.1, mixFarm
Master: S1, L2

Please.

Help.

Me.

[Chris Doremus]

Take the S1 off is my first guess.

[Darius van H]

Sounds to me like you don't have proper control of your gain structure. If none of the tracks / busses are clipping, and you have an L2 on your master bus, then in theory you shouldn't get any clipping, as the L2 is one of the cleanest limiters there is, distortion-wise (unless your pushing it to ridiculous amounts of limiting).

Indeed, take the S1 off the master bus, no need for that.

[F. Davis]

Take the S1 and L2 off your Master buss and see if it's clipping. If it is and you have to bring your master fader below -12 to stop it clipping then you have to bring all your muli-track faders back to stop your mix bus clipping before the fader.

[RussMaGuss]

Does the level instantly clip when you unmute all the tracks or only the loud parts? Because, if it's the latter, I'd say you should automate them. (I'm a Logic 8 guy, but ProTools is an awesome program and should have something like it)

Or did you maybe record them at too low of a volume? I've had experiences where I've recorded something at too low of a volume because it wasn't a live recording (no need to turn amps up to battle the drums), and I tried turning up the volume and it just clips like crazy.

I'm not sure if that's it, but there's a couple ideas shot your way.

Further information about loudness of the situation would help me out with your dilemma.

[seamus james]

Well, even with the S1 off it still clips. I tried taking the L2 off and unmuting everything, and yeah it clips pretty frequently. But thing is, none of the individual tracks seem to be clipping - they're all well below, and only the master seems to be clipping, which is why it's driving me crazy. I've just got it to a point where its a little quieter than my other mixes and only clips a couple times (I cringe at every one). It's not an acceptable solution, but as of right now, it's my only solution.

[KyleDiSanto]

Even if all of your individual tracks aren't clipping, your MASTER or "SUM" is clipping because your gain structure has not been created properly. Lower all your Faders -6db. Get your SUM to NOT clip.

Make sure you only lower individual faders and busses. Anything that is going into a sub buss with affect your compression settings.

[seamus james]

I see... I'll try remixing the whole track with this in mind. Thanks.

[DanH]

Can you give us your whole effects chain? (Assuming its not just S1/L1). Will be able to better imagine whats going on.

[seamus james]

It's just S1->L2 on the master. I'm not doing much in the way of mastering. Right now, these tracks are only intended for myspace, so my only real goal in the way of mastering is volume.

[mercurydime]

are you driving any plug-ins too hard as inserts on the individual tracks? there would seem some gain structure stuff that's slipping under your radar...good luck, and i'm sure you'll get it all worked out!

regards,