Proper Recording Levels in REAPER

hi I'm Ken enjoyer welcome to another one of my tutorials in this video I'm going to show you proper recording levels in Reaper this is one of those topics has been going around for years with many different people having many different opinions on the subject I've read some very good information on recording levels but I've also read some very confusing and misinformation on the topic as well so hopefully we can create most of that up in this video I should also reiterate that what we're discussing here is recording levels not playback levels once your audio is recorded into Reaper or any DW for that matter these levels are not as important all bets are off in fact as long as you don't distort or go into the red on your recording tracks you should be fine just keep an eye on your meters and keep your faders below zero and it'd be very hard to overload your channels even if you normalize each of your audio media items beforehand which is what I tend to do because I like big waveforms now there are some console emulation plugins that prefer to see a certain level and for those I would recommend following their suggestions but in most cases if we avoid overloads or going into the red on our meters we should be fine that's just for playback recording is a completely different story now before we discuss recording let me define the type of recording we're talking about this is about analog recording taking something like a microphone and recording something with it or plugging a guitar or bass into a preamp or audio interface or even recording an analog synth but if you're recording from another application that's digital and that doesn't apply the same goes for printing plugins or virtual instruments that's also digital and as long as you stay away from the red or overs you're fine but analog recording is completely different and that's what we're talking about here the first mistake that people make and it's understandable because of the way digital captures audio is the idea that you can record as how did you want as long as you don't clip or go into the red unfortunately when it comes to recording that's not true if you're recording even close to the red you're recording way too hot the thing is most analog gear and by analog gear I mean microphone preamps outboard compressors and eq's analog mixing consoles ad converters and even the preamps built into your computer audio interface were calibrated to sound their best at minus 18 they were designed with this level in mind and to get the best possible sound from this equipment that's the average level we want to use while it's true that some higher quality preamps will still sound great at much higher levels due to their extended Headroom there's really no benefit to using it - 18 is we are a gear respect at will have a generous amount of headroom the lowest Distortion the best signal-to-noise ratio and all that other fun stuff if we just record at or around this level so with that said let's see what this level is going to look like in Reaper using a test tone Oh with the most common analog sources we're going to be recording now at first look reaper looks a bit different compared to most of my tutorials and the reason for that is am using a different layout for this video if we go to screen sets I change my layout from a session mixer which is what I usually use to the small full meter which looks like this and the purpose of this is it makes it easier to see the meter as a recording so it suggests you check out this way out when you do a recording it makes it easier to see your recording level so I'm a bunch of track set up here then I'm going to record two just so I can show you the desired level we're going to start off with a test tone so I'm going to record in the truck play a test tone into it and then bring up my mic preamp now I'm using a plug-in right here to simulate a preamp but this represents your microphone preamp an analog mix a channel that you're recording from well the front of your audio interface where your microphones or guitars or bass are plugged into so that's what this knob represents so let's play a test tone and bring up the preamp and we can see right over here is minus 18 which is the level I suggested as a perfect average level if we keep bringing it up eventually we're going to hit red which is way too hot in this case about 19 DB too hot let's bring it down to make it perfectly at 18 and again that's the perfect average level for our tracks and by average I mean that Peaks can go above this point but not too much as you'll see with some of the other tracks so let's start off with some drums we'll go to our kick track put into a chord let's set the level for a kick and I'm going to keep the test tone on so you can see our perfect average level notice it's still going above 18 but it's kind of averaging at that point let's bring it down a bit go a bit higher that looks pretty good it's about 18 but it can peak a bit higher but you don't want to go above 12 that starts to get a bit too high and like I said earlier it's unnecessary so let's add in the snare let's bring that up we can go a bit higher once again because the snare drum has a lot of transients it can go a bit above 18 but don't let it get higher than minus 12 now let's bring in the overheads and with cymbal mics because they're so bright we could be even more cautious with this notice I'm going even lower than the kick and snare there's really no benefit to printing any hotter and finally let's do the room mics that feels perfect right there it's not going to hit our preamps too hard so it's not going to overload them or create distortion unnecessarily so now to turn off the drums let's check out a bass guitar bring up the preamp notice I'm keeping the average around 18 but it can go a bit higher but never above -12 that's perfect for bass guitar now let's try an acoustic guitar notice that acoustic guitars can get very dynamic so you wanna be careful with those and still keep them around -18 that's a pretty good level to me let's do an electric guitar you you with electric guitar especially is saturated or distorted sound like this we can keep even lower because it's a little more constant and there's no real benefit to making it too hot and then finally let's check out a vocal and I believed everything everyone that just said from the start you kept me close you had me tattoo the strings now you're watching it all fall apart now this focal is a bit compressed I'm compressing it on the way in with a hardware compressor if you don't have one you might want to keep the level even lower so the peaks don't go above -12 you have me go and I believed everything everyone that just said from the start it's not gonna hurt to go to low but because this vocal is more compressed we could stay around - 18 you had me go and I believed everything everyone that just said from the start you kept me close you had MIT's a to the strings now you're watching it all fall apart now to me that's a perfect recording level for vocals and I think you get the idea we want to keep these levels a lot lower coming in to a computer and if you want to make them hotter afterwards just bring up the media item volume after they've already recorded but there's no reason to record any hotter than we did in this video in fact there's a lot of reasons not to as it will push your gear a lot harder than necessary so that's pretty much it that's proper recording levels in Reaper I hope you learned something I hope you can use it and I'll see you next time thanks you Oh you

Channel: REAPER Mania

Views: 85,197

Rating: 4.9834967 out of 5

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Id: LJHm931XQGk

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2016