Record level debacle

[bjornson]

As I walked by our studio B this morning I heard the ugliest digital distortion I've ever heard in my life, so i went in to check it out...
A guy had been recording a demo at home with a boss br1180 and wanted to mix at our place. Problem is all the tracks were crankin Full Scale 0 and all ****ed up. He had burned wavs of each track and we imported them into tools. The resulting signal was unlistenable. Heres the interesting part. Played back within his box with all faders at unity and no eq or dynamics, the stereo output (or individual tracks) were much less distorted than the PT version. Not pleasing by any means but listenable. With all faders on mix plus at unity with no plugs etc, the distortion was candle melting. The only solution (besides sending him home) was to Audiosuite reduce gain by 8 db per track and then PT had enough headroom. Just sumpin' that made me go

[Mike Tholen]

AARRGGHHH!!!!!! ****! I hate that shit.
How the **** do these people get by?
I am seeing it all over now, these kids have NO idea what the **** the value of proper gain structure is...it's imperative.
observe 0dBVU.fuuck

[Jay Kahrs]

Did this chucklehead bump any of the gains before he burned his CD? Maybe everything has an average level of -10 in his Boss thingy but it got changed on the way out and he added 8-10dB of gain.

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by bjornson
The only solution (besides sending him home) was to Audiosuite reduce gain by 8 db per track and then PT had enough headroom. Just sumpin' that made me go

Obviously it's boneheaded to think you have to scratch zero recording digitally. I knew Tholen would be here when I saw the title.

But if I can go to techno-nerd mode for a moment- The Protools mixer does not have a "headroom" problem that gaining down the individual tracks would fix. If he fried each track on input while recording..gaining the track down won't help, the clipping is still there.

But it sounds like these were just really hot tracks that were clipping Protools output, and so turning down individual faders would have been better than gaining them down with audiosuite. The faders attenuate at a 48 bit depth while audiosuite truncates to 24. In this case turning down the master fader would accomplish the same thing. I know it sounds wierd- but the master fader/channel fader interplay does not work the same as the analog world. It is mathematically impossible to clip the mix bus in protools...what you are actually doing is clipping the output (d/a)- not the same as the analog world where if you crap out the mix bus you hear it no matter where the master fader is and you have to pulled down the channel faders.

That being clear as mud I hope it helps....

[Jules]

They ought to change the word Normalizing to "Dont mess with this you moron"

[David Herbert]

Jules,
Somehow, in my cynicism and outright contempt for human beings, I doubt calling the Normalizing function "Don't Mess With This You Stupid Moron" would do much good.
1. I think it would make them MORE likely to mess with it, because it is verboten.
2. The warning, obviously, applies only to morons, obviously, and no individual, obviously, considers themself a moron, right?
Hey if it works, let me know. Maybe we could apply the technique to nuclear weapons!

Just my sense of humor, hope I don't sound cranky, David

[bjornson]

I guess i didn't explain this part well.... The raw files had no gain change or eq from him. I even reburned some to make sure. When these files were imported into PT they were blazing hot. Like never moving from full scale 0 . The PT fader levels didn't matter. Something inside PT was giving up the ghost prefader, where his boss box was (kind of) able to take the heat. After taking 8 db off each file, the files from pt sounded the same as when played back from his boss, ie. a very well done steak. Internal moron limiter maybe? It's not a knock on pt internal arch, just an odd observation.

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by bjornson
Internal moron limiter maybe?

Exactly....I had someone in with a Roland recorder that had a dummy limiter on the 24 bit dig out. You could slam the 2 mix while it rounded of peaks in a nice soft flaming distortion.

[joeq]

are you sure it isn't a bit depth issue? I remember something like this happening to me once on importing and it turned out Pro Tools was thinking 24bits were 16 or something.

I wish I could be less vague, but it was just one of those things and I changed something somewhere and it went away.

[Ckevperry]

Originally posted by joeq
are you sure it isn't a bit depth issue? I remember something like this happening to me once on importing and it turned out Pro Tools was thinking 24bits were 16 or something.

It is possible to use a 16 bit mixer in PT ....an option you never want to use.

[CV7]

Sometimes their looking for that slammed limiter Dist., can't say in this case though. These are just kids with no experience, I would be patient with them and try to explain the concepts so they can out and do something better.

[bjornson]

Believe me, we had a quick tutorial! I'm expecting a whole new batch of tracks next time he comes in.

[Henchman]

If he panned his tracks hard left and right when exporting/bouncing the wave files, then they would be 3DB louder. If he recorded right to the top. then all his tracks would be 3db over.

maybe that's the problem.