Dynamic range issues

Chris@KatsuKuriMedia said:
I think it's the visual range causing the issue here, not the audio.
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I said the same thing back on page one... if it sounds fine, the most likely thing is that the daw view settings are to "zoomed out" and your only seeing what looks like 2bB of movement. The thing is the fade scale in PT can be set to linear or logarithmic which will change how you see the dynamic range visually.

But yes, it sounds like you guys might want to get an engineer helping you with :)
 
toolfanem said:
I said the same thing back on page one... if it sounds fine, the most likely thing is that the daw view settings are to "zoomed out" and your only seeing what looks like 2bB of movement. The thing is the fade scale in PT can be set to linear or logarithmic which will change how you see the dynamic range visually.

But yes, it sounds like you guys might want to get an engineer helping you with :)
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Yea we plan on going to a big boy studio/producer next year for a full length record but we are just self-producing an EP as a stopgap for now. And its not just visual, I would expect at least a slight audible difference between light and hard playing. The "Top Boost" patch does sound a bit distorted in that clip (I happened to have my guitar with the hottest pickups plugged in at the time) but I wouldn't expect that much squisherifficness unless I had an ENGL or some other over the top high gain amp selected.

My first reaction to this was "where is this compression coming from???" But after reading these suggestions regarding getting all the levels set correctly its something I am definitely going to try. Maybe I am just dumb but I still am not quite grasping how levels that aren't clipping anywhere can cause dynamics to suffer. I most definitely understand how if you are clipping on one or multiple points of the input chain your signal would be squashed, but if the level is too low I would think that you would still have expected dynamics with just a lower overall level... it may not be the ideal recording levels but it wouldn't be "compressed." That's the primary reason I hopped onto the Fractal forums versus googling proper recording methods. Maybe it was premature, but I am gaining quite a bit of insight reading these posts and appreciate the feedback.
 
orbantracs said:
Yea we plan on going to a big boy studio/producer next year for a full length record but we are just self-producing an EP as a stopgap for now. And its not just visual, I would expect at least a slight audible difference between light and hard playing. The "Top Boost" patch does sound a bit distorted in that clip (I happened to have my guitar with the hottest pickups plugged in at the time) but I wouldn't expect that much squisherifficness unless I had an ENGL or some other over the top high gain amp selected.

My first reaction to this was "where is this compression coming from???" But after reading these suggestions regarding getting all the levels set correctly its something I am definitely going to try. Maybe I am just dumb but I still am not quite grasping how levels that aren't clipping anywhere can cause dynamics to suffer. I most definitely understand how if you are clipping on one or multiple points of the input chain your signal would be squashed, but if the level is too low I would think that you would still have expected dynamics with just a lower overall level... it may not be the ideal recording levels but it wouldn't be "compressed." That's the primary reason I hopped onto the Fractal forums versus googling proper recording methods. Maybe it was premature, but I am gaining quite a bit of insight reading these posts and appreciate the feedback.
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Do some tests dude... Like I said, another axe fx input or maybe a reamp via USB...
 
This got way out of hand. I think when you said less than 2db of dynamic whatever, people took you literally rather than saying the fader never moved more than 2db while playing. Check to see if your faders are measuring the out or in signal. I wish i was more help, but that could possibly be the issue. Or maybe you are hearing the dirty signal, but the fader is actually listening to the clean di?
 
orbantracs said:
...I still am not quite grasping how levels that aren't clipping anywhere can cause dynamics to suffer.
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You could be overdriving the analog side somewhere. That likely wouldn't show up on a clipping indicator.

Your fader is all the way up, but your signal is still very low. That means your DAW is getting a very weak signal. But the output knob on your Axe is turned up to 5, so the Axe is probably putting out plenty of signal. That means that somewhere after the Axe, you've got something turned way down—probably because it was distorting—and it may still be overdriven a bit. That will compress your signal.

I'm wondering if maybe you've got a mic preamp enabled. In your clip, it sounds like there's something besides the Axe that's contributing to the distortion.
 
Rex said:
You could be overdriving the analog side somewhere. That likely wouldn't show up on a clipping indicator.

Your fader is all the way up, but your signal is still very low. That means your DAW is getting a very weak signal. But the output knob on your Axe is turned up to 5, so the Axe is probably putting out plenty of signal. That means that somewhere after the Axe, you've got something turned way down—probably because it was distorting—and it may still be overdriven a bit. That will compress your signal.

I'm wondering if maybe you've got a mic preamp enabled. In your clip, it sounds like there's something besides the Axe that's contributing to the distortion.
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This ^

What's your signal chain exactly. How are you going from guitar to axe to DAW exactly? What are your settings on your interface? Did you try using the Axe as the USB interface into PT?
 
The bottom line is, a maxed out fader is almost always a sign there is a gain staging / level matching problem.

Eliminating gear in the signal chain can help you pinpoint it.

I like the idea of testing the AxeFx USB -> Pro Tools.

If that works fine, start debugging your audio interface next.
 
It occurs to me that it would be one helluva public service if somebody would take the time to explain "dBs". There's a lot about them that's counter-intuitive. I know myself, I've never been comfortable with the whole measurement. To me, "0" is nothing, and "10" is full-tilt boogie. But, I'm simple and old-school. For those of us who are moving into modellers and/or recording, I'm sure there are some who are more than a little confused when somebody recommends negative numbers, line levels, etc.
 
Cagey said:
It occurs to me that it would be one helluva public service if somebody would take the time to explain "dBs". There's a lot about them that's counter-intuitive. I know myself, I've never been comfortable with the whole measurement. To me, "0" is nothing, and "10" is full-tilt boogie. But, I'm simple and old-school. For those of us who are moving into modellers and/or recording, I'm sure there are some who are more than a little confused when somebody recommends negative numbers, line levels, etc.
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There's a million webpages that "explain it". The bottom line is there's no shortcut to real understanding of the subject. It takes understanding logarithm and the attendant scales and defining the words really well. There's also MANY types of Decibels (dB). Loudness dB goes from 0 upwards. dBFs is a digital scale that goes from 0dBFs DOWNWARD (0db is 11111111111.....1 can't go higher than that!. Then there's dBs and dBv and dBV and dBU and so forth where 0dB is a set standard and there are values above and below.

It does not take very long to understand but it takes really clearing the WORDS and doing sketches and finding real life examples. And mainly not mixing up the various dB scales.
 
A nice confusing fact is that the decibel measures the relationship between two levels. The different types of dB scales are used to define what reference the signal is compared to.
 
Cagey said:
It occurs to me that it would be one helluva public service if somebody would take the time to explain "dBs". There's a lot about them that's counter-intuitive. I know myself, I've never been comfortable with the whole measurement. To me, "0" is nothing, and "10" is full-tilt boogie. But, I'm simple and old-school. For those of us who are moving into modellers and/or recording, I'm sure there are some who are more than a little confused when somebody recommends negative numbers, line levels, etc.
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See my post in the "Cliff's Notes" section.
 
Perhaps it's the "relative" thing that's confusing. Dunno. I'll go read what Cliff has to say, and see where I'm at from there.

Seems like this might make a good separate thread. I can't be the only one who's curious about this stuff, and I hate to hijack this one or make the contributions/knowledge hard to find in a search.
 
This is maybe a silly question, but have you tried recording into different DAW software to rule out an issue with Pro Tools? Or tried a different output on the Axe? And have you verified there aren't any plugins running on the Axe's channel strip?
 
Chris@KatsuKuriMedia said:
and the rabbit holes start forming... :)
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Such is life when troubleshooting issues along a signal chain. I do IT work for my day job, and diagnosing a complex workflow between disparate software systems is fairly similar. You have to test every component and isolate the issue based on the historical probabilities and the way different components interact. Experience only helps make the process go quicker, and even then you sometimes run into something crazy you've never seen before :)
 
Variable said:
Such is life when troubleshooting issues along a signal chain. I do IT work for my day job, and diagnosing a complex workflow between disparate software systems is fairly similar. You have to test every component and isolate the issue based on the historical probabilities and the way different components interact. Experience only helps make the process go quicker, and even then you sometimes run into something crazy you've never seen before :)
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sure. it's just difficult for new users when there are tons of suggestions, many of which most likely aren't the solution. :)
 
orbantracs said:
The main volume is about 5 o'clock on the front
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mr_fender said:
Turn the output on the Axe up
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5 o'clock is already maxed though...
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Cagey said:
It occurs to me that it would be one helluva public service if somebody would take the time to explain "dBs". There's a lot about them that's counter-intuitive. I know myself, I've never been comfortable with the whole measurement. To me, "0" is nothing, and "10" is full-tilt boogie. But, I'm simple and old-school. For those of us who are moving into modellers and/or recording, I'm sure there are some who are more than a little confused when somebody recommends negative numbers, line levels, etc.
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Old school is equipment with analog VU meters to measure levels. These were calibrated by sending a test signal through all the gear and making "0VU" be the same on all the meters.

This ensured that if you were looking at any one set of meters, you were comparing apples to apples, the same level would show the same on the VU meters of your various studio gear.

On an analog VU meter, 0 is the nominal level.

DAW meters are digital and typically default to dbFS. They are not the same scale as the analog VU meter. So the two meters cannot be compared apples to apples.
 
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