Peak Levels for recording & mixing in DAW

[moz5000]

Hi All,

I had a discussion with a much respected pro I know and he pointed out some things that I do wrong during recording and mixing (still learning :-) ). I would like to share his advice and get your opinions and suggestions on this topic. This question applies to DAW everything in the box.

The question:

What should be the level your DAW shows in dB during:

a. Recording (lets say vocals) ?
b. Buss Channel ?
c. Master Buss ?

Here is what I did and what was suggested:

reg. a.

I did:

I tried to max the signal during recording so my fader would get as close to 0 dB as possible. After recording I normalized the recording to 0dB

Suggestion:

Record with peaks between -12dB and -8dB and DO NOT NORMALIZE !

reg. b.

I did:

no particular plan !!! :-)

Suggestion:

Peaks should be between -6 dB and -3 dB

reg. c.

same as b.

Now I would like to ask the community how you handle this topic and what your recommondations would be.

thanks in advance.
Moz

[Lester]

from what i understand in my home hobbyist vantage point.....

i thought that when recording a track, you'd want to get it as close to 0db as possible, without overloading your ad/da converters, in order to maximize signal to noise.

however, since when mixing together many multiple tracks....their volumes become additive, their overall individual volumes in the mix will wind up being reduced below 0db in practicality.

OTOH, since modern daws generally operate internally at 32bits, its impossible to overload internally....you just need to make sure you don't overload the final output levels that go back into the analog world.

maybe someone with better knowledge can help

[Mark III]

RMS -18dBFs max average signal, and Peak around -12dB ...not a good idea to overload anywhere in the signal chain.


Cheers.