I can still hear clipping when using a limiter in control room to protect my speakers while gain staging or when trying to switch between hearing the mix in stereo /mono.
What am I doing wrong?
I plan on using some room correction software there too so it would really help fixing this.
Thanks in advance.
You have your insert set for VST connect. VST connect is when you recorded somebody online in a different location. You need to put the insert on the monitors.
thx for the reply:
This is what I’ve done I still hear the clipping. Is there something else I have to enable that I might have forgotten for CR to work? It seems to not even receive audio there.
The button should be on mix, C1 is cues, cute#1. You want it to be on mix you get the full stereo mix cues are used for players I have their headphones connected and you want to adjust their volumes. Post a screenshot of the VST connect screen when you press F4. Open the control room tab and make sure that it’s enabled. When you enable the control room it will disable outputs and let the control room be the main output. You also have it turned up too loud in the control room, you want to turn it down a good amount until you adjust the balance. Also I don’t see the reason you want to limiter in the control room.? Do you want the sound to come out as natural as possible and use your limiters on your mix busses. I never really heard that before
I’m making an orchestral template and I want to stage all my sounds at around -12 db peak because I didn’t do that in my old template and had up to +6db clipping when multiple transients hit together even though all of them weren’t clipping on their own. (Also I figured I’d want to leave myself more headroom for mastering.)
I hear that clipping on my speaker and I wanted to make sure that this doesn’t happen because I heared it could damage them in the worst case.
Now I was playing on of my VST instruments and it immediately clipped and I thought “how so I put the limiter on the ControlRoom” and there we are.
It looks like this now and I think it works:
By what you said I think you recommand that once everything is staged, one should disable the limiter?
No, the limiter is going to give you a false signal. If you want a limiter, it should be on your stereo mix bus. Not in the control room, just turn down the volume in the control room
Also I find that -18 average is a better meter starting position. I record and mix live instruments and VSTs and some and the more tracks you have the more it builds up in the master bus, using a -18 average I can use usually keep the master bus around -8 to-10 before mastering.
Okay thanks for the advice, I was gonna do it like this:
I’ve seen that in a tutorial, do you do it the same way?
Also do you meter for LUFS or DB peak? Because you mentioned average.
I tried doing it with the red enircled things. Didn’t work.
I went to a tutorial but I don’t think they did this.
Also if I just turn the volume down, wouldn’t there still be clipping. I’d have to go to the Masterfader / StereoOut for that no?
Also I tried using a -10db on the “Dim” setting but that didn’t effect loudness.
I don’t believe your control room is enabled properly. To do this you must choose the device and make sure it’s routed properly.
This action you’re making is nothing more than moving the fader. What you want to move is the pre-gain. This allows the faders to stay where they are and when you adjust they’ll be more cohesive.
Oh yea I messed this up. So how do I lower overall volume then for the purpose of not clipping instead of using a limiter? Now the knob fader or “Dim” works.
Okay thank you.
Dim is for when you use a listen function on a track. Listen allows the track to be as much louder as you set the dim while still having the background play at a lower level. You must experiment with this to figure it out it’s hard to explain. Just hit one of the listen buttons on a specific track and play with the dim settings
Okay good to know I’ll probably use that later.
So what I did was lower the pre gain of the master fader and compensated that amount in the control room. My conclusion now was that this is the easiest way to prevent clipping and not use a limiter that might give false impressions which you mentioned.
Cheers
Nice. Are you RUINING your mixes by slamming everything? Let's talk Gain Staging. It's important. - YouTube
Here’s a video that I think you might enjoy that explains a lot about gains staging
I’m not sure this is the right way to achieve a consistent mixing strategy.
You really should learn how to mix and not concentrate on such academic things…
Start with low signal count mixing projects to get an idea about gain staging and signal interaction.
A good resource for learning is https://www.cambridge-mt.com/
it includes some multi-track recordings for training.
Thanks for the advice.
I’m building an orchestral template where I don’t want to have sudden clipping when multiple instruments play fff especially when multiple drums hit together while arranging. I usually fixed that later in mixing but the clipping is probably bad for my speaker that’s why I asked all of this.
Also if the Steinberg limiter is reducing more than c.-1.5 dB, there will be distortion in the peaks which might be contributing to a clipping sound.
Correctly Gain-staging individual channels/tracks before hitting busses or the Mixbuss/Master Buss essential as well.
What kind of speaker at wich level?
Normally, studio monitors are much more patient than we think…
A pair of Genelec 8050 BPM’s
Yea I wanted to ask btw, the distortion of the steinberg limiter, how bad is that really? I also have the Fabfilter Limiter but it’s introducing a delay when playing VST instruments.
I just started turning all the individual tracks down so they all have a maximum -12 to -18 DB peak and I didn’t have clipping anymore so I don’t need this limiter solution now anyway.
But yea I wasn’t aware of this distortion issue. Cheers
But the instruments itself have an output volume, that should already match the needed volume for the mix… bringing up the instrument output and then bringing down the track gain… you get the point…
What I’m trying to say is, it all depends on what signals you are using and how you put them together… I would avoid a general number for the input level.
Start using groups in an erly stage of mixing (arranging) could avoid some clipping too.
