Novice question.. when bouncing, wouldn't I want to have both master and output faders all the way up to make my bounce as loud as possible? Isn't there some sort if industry standard "red book" or something that says how I should do it so that my volume is the same as all of the purchased/professional songs in my iTunes?
Thanks for any advice.
Logic Pro X, OS X Mavericks (10.9)
Output and master should be set to 0db. Use a limiter-Adaptive Limiter-to make your mix sound loud.
You can start with some of the presets.
The Limiter will take care that your mix isn't clipping, exceeding 0db. Actually I think 'industry standard* is to set max output level to -0.3db.
rcook349 wrote:
when bouncing, wouldn't I want to have both master and output faders all the way up to make my bounce as loud as possible?
80+ Years of audio development and understanding shot to h#ll in one sentence.
Actually, "Loud as Possible" is a common theme these days, so don't feel I'm singling you out
Redbook has nothing to to with level or precieved loudness. It is a specification for describing parameters and properties of an Audio CD.
The best practice is to do nothing for volume on your multi-track mixes. I'm not saying some light compression or eq or whatever on the master bus is wrong, it's not. This should be for sound, not volume. Leaving yourself plenty of headroom, say 4 to 6bd on your bounce will allow you to handle volume concerns in the next stage.
So, bounce your song out with plenty of headroom and put it back into a fresh Logic project to deal only with the volume or percieved loudness.
There is no industry standard for final output but a lot of mastering engineers will not hit 0dbfs on their peaks as different D/A converters handle peaks differently and whilst your own may say 0dbfs, another may see it as an over.
For the same reason you can alter your master outs to give you this 4-6dbfs headroom. After a lot of experience and a good grasp of gain staging an engineer can leave their master outs at 0dbfs when bouncing out from their multi track session.
This is a very simplistic explanation of a working process and I hope it points you in the right direction.
Master and Output all the way up when bouncing?
