DP is lowering waveform levels on import... HELP!

[magicd]

Second - I highly recommend that you master in a dedicated mastering program like BIAS Peak. You have more horsepower, more headroom, and more options in a dedicated mastering app. I would never master anything in DP, Logic, Pro Tools, or any DAW.

Here's the other thing - the goal in mastering a CD is to make sure all the tracks are balanced level-wise, and sound like they're all part of the same album. In Peak, you can do all your masters as 24-bit, then throw them all up together and "tile" them so they all appear on your screen at the same time. Then you can just randomly click on each track's window and it will play, and you can balance levels really easily this way. When you're done with your levels, you save each one as a dithered 16-bit audio file. You can't do this in DP.

I mastered 50 songs in DP for a Sony release. All the tracks were in the same sequence chunk, so it was easy to jump between songs to check relative level and tone. This also made it easy to get in/out spacing between the tunes. Worked fine for me...

Dave

[Timeline]

It'll work Dave but I think he's talkin about the end quality and handles available in DP.
I use master fader plugs to get me close and that's fine if a machine's CPU is up to the task of processing every sample but few are when working with the entire project file. Have had fairly good results inserting mixes from clients into DP but ultimately I broke down and bought Bias in the end or used my outboard L2 box. I would say DP could still use a few more output tricks for the discerning mastering result. This would go along way.

[magicd]

I would say DP could still use a few more output tricks for the discerning mastering result.

There is always room for improvement. Especially in regards to the skill of the engineer (me).


Dave

[daniel.sneed]

Here's the other thing - the goal in mastering a CD is to make sure all the tracks are balanced level-wise, and sound like they're all part of the same album. In Peak, you can do all your masters as 24-bit, then throw them all up together and "tile" them so they all appear on your screen at the same time. Then you can just randomly click on each track's window and it will play, and you can balance levels really easily this way. When you're done with your levels, you save each one as a dithered 16-bit audio file. You can't do this in DP.

That's just what I do in DP :
- create an empty sequence
- create stereo audio tracks, one track for each song. All play enabled.
- drag each mixed song to it's place (order) in the right track, according to the album track-list.
- adjust time gap between songs.
- zoom out
- set your monitoring system to achieve a desired level related to the SPL reference. In my projects, generally RPM200SMPTE -12dB.
- play randomly anywhere in any song, and adjust bite gain (yes, that's easy) to keep levels consistent.
- set a good EQ plug on each track, to keep correct tonal balance between songs
- set a single master fader with Ozone, or any other preferred mastering suite.
- then you're ready for black-magic and voodoo dancing

IMHO, DP is very handy to handle these tasks.

[grouse]

For many years I've imported audio from professionally recorded CD's to try to match their levels when I master one of my own tracks. You know how it looks when you import a professionally mastered pop song - it's almost just one long fat chunk of waveform because the levels are so hot. You hit play and the master fader is slamming up right to the clipping indicator but it never clips. But lately when I import music, the waveform doesn't go all the way to the limit. It's like DP is putting a ceiling on the audio - it's still very compressed, but it only goes 50% of the distance it should. On the master fader, the levels are barely hitting 0, whereas they used to go right up to +6.

I hope that makes sense. Does anyone know of any setting in DP I might have changed on accident?

I posted about this exact problem almost 2 years ago (with screen-shots) and, at that time, nobody else seemed to experience the problem.
I'm sorry for your trouble, splproductions, but I'm kinda glad I'm not the only one!

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... =1&t=29758" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've just come to accept it. It's still happening to me in DP 7.
It's entirely random, sometimes it happens, sometimes not.
It's got to the stage where if I need to import a commercial track for whatever reason I use a different DAW.
I have learned to use capital letters since that post though.

[newrigel]

Trash DP's preferences.

Why?


You can drag audio from a CD onto the desktop. That's the OS importing the track. You can play that audio in DP. Now drag the same audio from the CD directly into a track in DP. Now DP is doing the importing. The two files should be identical.

Dave

That's weird... I typed something totally different there but I was on my iPhone doing it he he.
It's kinda strange because of the limited space on the screen to see the text. I could have sworn I said to just drag the file to your audio drive from the CD and import from DP! That's what I meant on this reply anyway. Sorry about that he he.
Trash preferences he he... that's it! the iPhone must have hung on to some text from a prior post or something... oh well, I'll have to be more attentive to that in the future.
But on another note, trashing the prefs could get DP to it's default state and see if it's still happening because if OSX isn't doing it, something between there is the culprit and the only thing there is DP.

[tomeaton]

I'll bet you have the audition button enabled on your import file dialog box. Disable it and your files will come in at the right level. I reported this here ages ago. If you are previewing files (audibly) from the disc before importing, just turn the preview (audition, whatever you want to call it, in dp5 it's a little speaker icon) function off before you do the actual import.

tom

[grouse]

I'll bet you have the audition button enabled on your import file dialog box. Disable it and your files will come in at the right level. I reported this here ages ago. If you are previewing files (audibly) from the disc before importing, just turn the preview (audition, whatever you want to call it, in dp5 it's a little speaker icon) function off before you do the actual import.

tom

Very interesting, I'll give that a shot although I have never turned off the audition function. I use it consistently.
I've had entirely random results importing, often in the same project seconds apart.
Definitely worth a look though.

[grouse]

Well tomeatom I think you're right! I just imported a big modern rock song from my iTunes collection 6 times. First 3 times with audition on, all the waveforms (and therefore the volume) were low.
I then turned audition off and imported the same track twice (each time DP imports and converts the audio uniquely) and the waveform was big and black and LOUD.
Then I turned on audition again and repeated the procedure and got a small waveform again.
Going back to my original post from a couple of years ago I was confused because I shift-clicked and imported 2 tracks and got the correct waveform even with audition activated.
Shift-clicking would, of course, disable audition though even if the button was activated.
Thanks, tomeatom, it looks as if this is resolved but is it a bug?

[grouse]

I should add I don't experience this type of thing with single samples or short loops. The waveform lowering seems to only happen with full length tracks. Odd.

[tomeaton]

I think it only happens coming from an audio cd. That's the only time I ever noticed it.

tom

[grouse]

I think it only happens coming from an audio cd. That's the only time I ever noticed it.

tom

It happens to me with MP3's so it must have something to do with the length of the track/ size of the file.
Anyway, glad there's a workaround.

[newrigel]

I just verified it... interesting. I have never imported audio from cd before. I always just drag all the files to my audio drive first and import from there. DP is rather slow at it but there is a big difference. FWIW, just drag the files off and import off a HD.

[HCMarkus]

Thanks Tomeatom... I guess I have to eat crow on this one - sounds like a bug to me!