[ardour-users] It is not loud enough

Jason Jones poeticintensity at gmail.com
Wed Oct 26 11:48:57 PDT 2005


mArukqs wrote:

>Also I downloaded Enzign song Such_Is_Life_New.mp3 - this song is much
>louder and the quality is near pro level. The only thing which was missing
>in this song was "big bottom" again (like for music played in discos), but
>for non commercial music it is probably ok.
>  
>
I wasn't really going for a "big bottom" sound for this song.  It's 
definitely a more "in your face" type rock song.

>Jason - could you describe in detail how you recorded everything, what
>problems you experienced, what LADSPA plugins and hardware you used?
>  
>
Hmm...  This is a tough question.  First, a history:

I've been recording audio with various DAW setups for about 3 years, so 
I'm by no means a pro.  I started with ardour / muse / jamin about a 
year ago and have never looked back.  I *love* this software.  Kudos, 
developers.

Hardware:

Home-built AMD-64 2800+ system:
mobo : Asus A8N-E Deluxe
RAM : 1024 Megs
Audio : Delta 1010LT
Pre's : SM Pro Audio PR8 (not the highest quality pre in the world, but 
I'm on a budget)

And that's really it.

Recording methods:

Drums were recorded with Fusion / Shure SM58's - all live.
Acoustic Guitars were recorded with an AudioTeknica condenser mic. (I 
don't know the model, but it's about an intermediate level mic)
Electric Guitar was recorded direct-in through an amp so... Guitar -> 
amp -> premp -> Line-in.
Keyboards were recorded through MUSE and imported into ardour
Vocals were recorded with same mic as guitars
Electric Bass was direct-in.

All tracks were compressed using the SC4-mono plugin (except keyboard.  
They had no plugins at all)
Drums had hi-pass / low-pass filters applied where necessary (8 tracks 
of drums).
Guitars had DJ-EQ applied to it with the high-end at +6db (mids and lows 
were around -20db).  (Anyone have any favorite EQ they use?)
Reverb used on vocals / lead guitar was GVerb.

Those are the basics..  I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but nothing 
critical.

Most of the ardour mixing levels were WAY above clipping, but nothing 
clipped until exporting.  To solve this problem I did the following:

I plugged the main-outs of ardour into the main in's of jamin.  Then 
routed the outs of jamin to the ins of a stereo track created in ardour 
specifically to record jamin.

My jamin settings are probably what gives that recording (and all of 
EnZign's recordings) it's power and loudness.
I'm not home right now, so I'm writing all this from memory.  If I 
remember right, I had all bands compressed, but the highs were rarely 
loud enough to trigger the compressor.  The loudness was attained by 
simply increasing the master gain in jamin until the levels were 
steadily bouncing around 0.0 db.  Too much gain and the song would sound 
over-compressed.  Not enough, and the song sounded flat.
Another trick I recently learned was to increase the high-end EQ in 
jamin quite significantly from the 10K to 20K range.  This brightened 
the song considerably.

That's about it for jamin.

After getting all my jamin settings correct, I simply played the song 
and recorded the jamin track in ardour.  Then exported the one track as 
a .wav

*note* - This was attained after going through this whole process around 
20 times and messing with various settings.  I did *not* get that 
quality in the recording after one take, nor should I expect that anyone 
but a seasoned professional could.

--Jason

PS - the song I'm talking about is "Such Is Life" written by Lloyd 
Plumb, performed by EnZign.  You can find the song at 
http://www.enzign.com/?page=music

>Thanks in advance,
>
>mArukqs
>
>
>
>  
>




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