For The Beat Heads...Mixing Tip! 24bit recording

From The Mouth Of Mau...

"MUST READ!

You do not need to track hot or loud when recording 24bit (all DAWs can record 24bit), as 24bit captures details at the lowest level. You don't need to get the level of the vocals going in close to 0 at all! Don't believe me, read Bob Katz "Mastering Audio", chapter 5 page 72 - it reads "A 24bit recording would have to be lowered in level by 48db in order to reduce it to the signal to noise ratio of a 16bit recording" Therefore, you should never, ever, ever, ever, distort or clip, and your recordings will be cleaner with more dynamics, with lower levels.

People say, damn, "when I record, my waveforms look little, and it looks low", well, you can adjust the waveform zoom, not just the track zoom. As illustrated in the attachments (Regular vs Track Zoom). This is a low level track I mixed (and it sounds clean using -20RMS=0VU) <- if you didn't understand that, then you have a lot to learn, call me and I'll explain it to you :-) Regular Zoom is what you all usually have, you can adjust this using the top right hand corner slider in cubase/nuendo, or the waveform slider in Logic grey at the bottom, it is also in ProTools. DO NOT USE YOUR DIGITAL METERS TO TELL YOU HOW LOUD YOU ARE RECORDING IT ONLY TELLS YOU ABOUT PEAKS, NOT HOW LOUD IT REALLY IS. So use a plugin on your "input channel" like PSP vintage warmer and use these levels (USE THE RMS not PEAK) to tell you how loud your vocals/beats/instruments are. Calibrate your input using this instead, and if you want to check for peaks - make sure that your max peak level is between -10 and -6 Peak. And you will be recording like the pros, and never have to check if you have overs/peaks.

If it sounds low to you - then turn up the output of your mixing desk or audio interface. Your print to CD will be lower, but clearer, more separated, and any mastering engineer you work with will take you more seriously.

In a nutshell, - record, mix at lower levels, all the time, there should be no variation in this, just make it a practice. "