Jump to content

Stereo Out peak level fluctuates on playback


mushanga

Recommended Posts

Hi, hope you are all safe and well.

 

I am mixing a track and need to maintain 4 dB of headroom on my Stereo Out channel. I have tweaked the volume levels of the various instrument tracks and thought I had achieved this. However when playing back the session the peak level on my Stereo Out keeps fluctuating and never hits the same value each time. So I may think I have got the overall mix to not peak over -4 dB, but then the next time I play it back I might hit -3.3 dB. Then the next time might be -4.5 dB, then -2.8 dB and so on. It seems really random and it's driving me nuts. I just want the peak level to hit -4.0 dB every time.

 

I will be printing stems for this session to be sent to a mastering engineer, and they do not want me to use any compression or limiting on the output, so I only have the volume levels to play with.

 

Do you know what could be causing the peak level to fluctuate on playback? It seems I need to play the track through each time to determine the peak level; it's a very time-consuming process as I keep going back to listen through again and again after making minor changes.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the textbook definition of OCD. :mrgreen:

 

What the mastering engineer really wants is an unclipped, unprocessed mix. S/He couldn't care less whether it's -4.1, -3.8 or -3.794576, as long as it is not 0.0 and clipped, it's fine.

 

If you have random modulations (chorus, flanger, modulated reverbs) and/or round robin alternating samples going on, there will be fluctuations in the mix level. Accept it. It's normal. It can not hurt you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the textbook definition of OCD. :mrgreen:

 

What the mastering engineer really wants is an unclipped, unprocessed mix. S/He couldn't care less whether it's -4.1, -3.8 or -3.794576, as long as it is not 0.0 and clipped, it's fine.

 

If you have random modulations (chorus, flanger, modulated reverbs) and/or round robin alternating samples going on, there will be fluctuations in the mix level. Accept it. It's normal. It can not hurt you.

Thanks for your reply. Regarding your OCD comment...haha...it was more a matter of me wanting to meet their requirements. I assume when they said to leave 4 dB of headroom then the mix should not peak above it, but perhaps it's not so black and white.

 

The culprit must be the alternating round robin samples in the percussion instruments I am using - I suppose I could just bounce the regions in place to get fixed peaks on those particular tracks?

 

Thanks again!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What Christian said. The only way to get a consistent peak level is to pre-fader freeze every track AND to NOT use any modulating effects on the auxes.

It is not really worth the effort though. Christian was spot on: the engineer just wants to make sure there is some headroom and never anything over zero.

Thanks for your reply. As mentioned above I think it's the alternating round robin percussion samples I am using in this session which is causing the peak levels to fluctuate during each playback.

 

Why would you need to pre-fader freeze every track (as opposed to post-fader) to get a consistent peak level? Never used pre-fader metering before and am learning about it at the moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your reply. As mentioned above I think it's the alternating round robin percussion samples I am using in this session which is causing the peak levels to fluctuate during each playback.

 

Why would you need to pre-fader freeze every track (as opposed to post-fader) to get a consistent peak level? Never used pre-fader metering before and am learning about it at the moment.

 

You (understandably) misunderstand something: pre-fader freezing is not connected at all with pre-fader metering.

 

There are two modes of freezing: pre-fader (always the default) and source only. Pre-fader freezing means the fx plugins' processing is frozen into the track as well (so those plugins can no longer be tweaked onced the track is frozen), source only freezing means the plugins are still processing the audio "live", so you can still tweak the parameters of those plugins. Any modulation would still occur, and the levels would still vary.

 

When I answered I had to assume you had everything: so round robins AND modulating effects. The pre-fader freeze would be necessary for fixing the modulating effects in place (pre-fader includes FX plugins being "frozen into" the file). With only round robins as the source of your fluctuating levels, you would indeed just need source only freezing.

 

1836519635_Screenshot2020-09-08at17_49_23.png.9c28038c9e1b1978f499adff4283bd1d.png

 

Both freeze functions would be more succinctly named if they were called pre-FX (source only) and post-FX (pre fader)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your reply. As mentioned above I think it's the alternating round robin percussion samples I am using in this session which is causing the peak levels to fluctuate during each playback.

 

Why would you need to pre-fader freeze every track (as opposed to post-fader) to get a consistent peak level? Never used pre-fader metering before and am learning about it at the moment.

 

You (understandably) misunderstand something: pre-fader freezing is not connected at all with pre-fader metering.

 

There are two modes of freezing: pre-fader (always the default) and source only. Pre-fader freezing means the fx plugins' processing is frozen into the track as well (so those plugins can no longer be tweaked onced the track is frozen), source only freezing means the plugins are still processing the audio "live", so you can still tweak the parameters of those plugins. Any modulation would still occur, and the levels would still vary.

 

When I answered I had to assume you had everything: so round robins AND modulating effects. The pre-fader freeze would be necessary for fixing the modulating effects in place (pre-fader includes FX plugins being "frozen into" the file). With only round robins as the source of your fluctuating levels, you would indeed just need source only freezing.

 

Screenshot 2020-09-08 at 17.49.23.png

 

Both freeze functions would be more succinctly named if they were called pre-FX (source only) and post-FX (pre fader)

Thanks very much for explaining this so clearly - makes total sense.

 

In the end I froze all of the tracks in the session (source only); I could not pinpoint the track with the alternating round robin samples which was causing the peak levels to fluctuate, so freezing all tracks resolved the issue and I was able to achieve a consistent peak of -4.0 dB. I assume doing this has no effect on audio quality when bouncing stems?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks very much for explaining this so clearly - makes total sense.

Thanks. You're welcome.

 

In the end I froze all of the tracks in the session (source only); I could not pinpoint the track with the alternating round robin samples which was causing the peak levels to fluctuate, so freezing all tracks resolved the issue and I was able to achieve a consistent peak of -4.0 dB. I assume doing this has no effect on audio quality when bouncing stems?

 

No, freezing renders a very high resolution (higher than the highest possible resolution of a bounced file) 32-bit floating point audio file.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...