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| crabfoot Member Since: Jan 25, 2009 ![]() |
Jan 25, 2009 11:52 am heres the scoop, i am a newbie to the whole recording music with a computer thing, so bear with me. ok, so i recently upgraded from a 4 track cassette recorder to this: iMac w/ 1.5ghz 1GB ram and a tascam FW 1884 that came with Cubase LE (probably too big of a jump, i know). so here is my story... with this set-up, some crappy mics (CAD drum mics for kick snare and toms), and some good borrowed mics (SM57s on guitar and bass and some really nice looking shiny shure pencil mics for the cymbals), i recorded a local band that has several previous recordings (3 demos and one full album). when i played the recording back on my $100 monitors, the band was extremely happy, they said it sounded better then their previous recordings and it was even better than the guy who had a studio built into his house with foam walls, seperate control room, vocal booth and a gigantic mixing board, and this was just my raw recording!!! needless to say i was pumped cuz this was my first recording so i rushed home, set up my euipment, and began mixing. i added a lil reverb, EQed a bit, and when i thought i had it sounding pretty good i exported it, and it sounded like garbage! first of all, it was really really quiet. even when i play it back on itunes through my monitors its not as loud as it when i play it in cubase without touching the monitors volume knob. the LEDs on my tascam only went up about half way when playing in itunes so i decided to go into cubase and turn the master fader all the way up so the LEDs were blowing out the roof with the top two red lights blinking and all the other lights fully lit, even when i did this when i played it back in itunes i did not get much improvement. i listened to it through several sound systems and i had to turn every one of them all the way up and it still wasnt lound enough. is there something im missing? something im doing wrong when im exporting? ive tried just about every combonation of settings when im exporting, is there some sort of software i could use to make it louder? if anyone could answer any of my questions i would be very grateful |
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| Noize2u Czar of Midi Administrator Since: Apr 04, 2002 ![]() |
Jan 25, 2009 07:30 pm I'm not a Cubase guy at all. But it sounds like it is not exporting the mix as you have it done. Are you making sure to have all the boxes checked to keep all effects and faders online as it exports. Otherwise it might set itself to a default level. Deon is a bigger user of Cubase LE and hopefully will see this and have a better idea. |
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| Dematrix www.myspace.com/2ndgraderenegade Member Since: Nov 27, 2007 ![]() |
Jan 26, 2009 11:57 pm definatley do what Noize said, and make sure you have left and right locaters set in your project bfore you export. if ya dont know about them check the manual. when you say you have the LEDs peaking do you mean on the master fader in cubase? what is that reading when you crank it up? does it sound like its peaking? like really peaking? if not, im not sure, coz it should sound like turd at that level. it should be as you said blowing out the roof. anyway, i would just export it at about -19db. on the master fader and then import in again into a new project and fix the volume and whatnot in there. make sure your import track is in stereo on and you put in your project on a stereo channel. you can do your tweaks and stuff in there and get the vol up. if you need any help doing this just let me know. |
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| Dematrix www.myspace.com/2ndgraderenegade Member Since: Nov 27, 2007 ![]() |
Jan 27, 2009 03:07 am having said that, make sure its actually reading at -19dB. and not just where you set the fader. If you cant get it anywhere near that, raise the track level by grabbing the blue square in the middle of your wave on your track. click on it and drag it upwards, that'll raise your wave vol. turn down the level fader a bit first though. |
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| John C Member Since: Apr 06, 2009 ![]() |
Apr 06, 2009 04:27 pm One cause for this problem that is common with newbies (me too) is that the main output level in Cubase is adjusted to change the monitor speaker level to an appropriate listening level. Here's what you have to do... In Cubase, bring up the mixer window (F3) and play through the entire mix, looking at the peak level on your main output bus (it is on the far right, maybe next to a bus labeled "audition"). This output level should peak as close to 0.0dB as possible. If you find that’s just too damn loud in your monitors, well then there's your problem. Reduce the gain to your monitors, or turn them off completely, during this step you are only looking at the numbers. Once you get the main output level to peak at (or very near) 0.0dB, then set your left and right markers and export your audio mixdown. This technique sets the output level at the highest point without clipping. You may still need to adjust the volume in the player, or the gain to your monitors, but you should be able to get the same volume level as you heard when playing through Cubase. (Oh, yes – do check the effects on/off and by-pass buttons on all your channels to make sure you are getting what you want, but these should not change when you export an audio mixdown.) I do not playback through iTunes, but it should be the same as WinAmp or Media Player, still you may want to try playing the exported wave file through other players to see if there is a difference. |
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