Topic: Bought high ohm headphones, and realized my recordings are low...

[acidjack]

^^ The point being made though, is that in post you should ALWAYS amplify/normalize to 0dB regardless of where your levels were during recording. And, as noted, you should try and isolate out any weirdly loud peak sounds (I usually find it's a snare hit, or on an SBD, sometimes a particularly loud shout or something if that's part of the vocal).

Your recordings will still be quieter than commercial releases, but they'll at least be as loud as everyone else's live recordings.

[rastasean]

It's funny that this loudness war and over-compression has actually made everything seem quieter. I doubt that is the case but music recorded in the 1970s just doesn't seem as loud as todays music. maybe it is over-compression or engineers, producers, and musicians being more conscientious about their hearing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

[Belexes]

I boost to about - 3 or -2dB. At -1 or 0 I feel the signal is far too hot for my ears.

[Patrick]

^^ The point being made though, is that in post you should ALWAYS amplify/normalize to 0dB regardless of where your levels were during recording. And, as noted, you should try and isolate out any weirdly loud peak sounds (I usually find it's a snare hit, or on an SBD, sometimes a particularly loud shout or something if that's part of the vocal).

Your recordings will still be quieter than commercial releases, but they'll at least be as loud as everyone else's live recordings.

Couldn't disagree more.  Normalizing is not something that you always want to do in post production.  Plus, normalizing doesn't always work well with audience recordings, since hand claps, shouts, and PA noise can "fool" the normalizing plug in when its analyzing the signal for peaks.  I agree with getting your RMS as hot as you can, but that can be done while recording and not in post production.  I definitely have applied gain to recordings that need it, but never with a normalizing plug in.

Just how I do things    Doesn't mean it's the right way.

[Brian E.]

It's funny that this loudness war and over-compression has actually made everything seem quieter. I doubt that is the case but music recorded in the 1970s just doesn't seem as loud as todays music. maybe it is over-compression or engineers, producers, and musicians being more conscientious about their hearing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

nice link

I always leave my recordings as is - I'll boost dB but only until just before it clips, and never compress

[acidjack]

I should not have added "normalize" as I understand that can do some unusual things to the waveform.  But "amplify" is simply a straight-line gain increase such that the highest peaks will be 0dB or whatever you set it at.  What possibly can be the harm in doing that?  I've heard that sometimes you want to stay a hair under 0dB for some obscure mathematical reason having to do with old A>Ds, but....

^^ The point being made though, is that in post you should ALWAYS amplify/normalize to 0dB regardless of where your levels were during recording. And, as noted, you should try and isolate out any weirdly loud peak sounds (I usually find it's a snare hit, or on an SBD, sometimes a particularly loud shout or something if that's part of the vocal).

Your recordings will still be quieter than commercial releases, but they'll at least be as loud as everyone else's live recordings.

Couldn't disagree more.  Normalizing is not something that you always want to do in post production.  Plus, normalizing doesn't always work well with audience recordings, since hand claps, shouts, and PA noise can "fool" the normalizing plug in when its analyzing the signal for peaks.  I agree with getting your RMS as hot as you can, but that can be done while recording and not in post production.  I definitely have applied gain to recordings that need it, but never with a normalizing plug in.

Just how I do things    Doesn't mean it's the right way.

[page]

I should not have added "normalize" as I understand that can do some unusual things to the waveform.  But "amplify" is simply a straight-line gain increase such that the highest peaks will be 0dB or whatever you set it at.  What possibly can be the harm in doing that?  I've heard that sometimes you want to stay a hair under 0dB for some obscure mathematical reason having to do with old A>Ds, but....

Conversely, on the D>A part of the chain; clipping can be really apparant, or non-existant. Different DACs can resolve a clip (audibly) differently, my portable dac/amp from ibasso was rather forgiving with my westones, while my denon's with the m901 is not nearly as much.

I record at -12db (limiter at -6), amp it the rest of the way to -0.1 in post, run a soft limiter at -3db (which results in a new overall peak of about -1.4) to take care of an errant peak or so and amp that result to -0.3 or -0.1.

[Patrick]

I should not have added "normalize" as I understand that can do some unusual things to the waveform.  But "amplify" is simply a straight-line gain increase such that the highest peaks will be 0dB or whatever you set it at.  What possibly can be the harm in doing that?  I've heard that sometimes you want to stay a hair under 0dB for some obscure mathematical reason having to do with old A>Ds, but....

It all depends on how much gain the normalizing process is adding.  Normalizing can bring out the noise floor of the gear and make it quite noisy.  Adding a db or two of gain is fine, and as long as it doesn't push the signal into clipping, there's no noticeable harm done. 

Also like I said before, a close clapper that creates a sharp peak in the recording can confuse the normalizing plug in, and it won't properly analyze the sound to apply the right amount of gain.

[newplanet7]

^^ The point being made though, is that in post you should ALWAYS amplify/normalize to 0dB regardless of where your levels were during recording. And, as noted, you should try and isolate out any weirdly loud peak sounds (I usually find it's a snare hit, or on an SBD, sometimes a particularly loud shout or something if that's part of the vocal).

This is exactly what I do.
Sometimes I run hot and don't add anything.

I also find the high peaks from a clap or a sharp snare hit etc, and reduce those significantly.
When normalizing I use peak normalize which takes the guesswork out of amplifying to a certain db.
All peak normalizing does is scan the waveform for the highest peak and amplifies the whole file from that point to the limit I specify, which is usually -.25 db.
That is where reducing those sharp peaks from a clap etc. beforehand works great.
Say the average music peaks around -6db in the set. However, there were a couple huge claps that reach -1db.
Without fixing those I would only be adding .75 to to the set since my limit was -.25db.
Tone down those claps to around -6 and peak normalize will add roughly 5.75db to the set.

[Brian E.]

I do the same with the hot claps, etc