[1]

I'm having the same problem that this guy is having (or was having), and hopefully one of you lads can help me out.

Panning issues in Reaper.... - Home Recording

Here's my routing matrix:

No matter what I do pan-wise, I always get some guitar out of the monitor that's supposed to be "off" panning wise. Right now, with that master setup, I'm still getting drums and bass through the left side, even though the Master is panned hard right.

What am I missing?

 

[105]

Are the outputs of your drumbs and bass being sent to the master bus, or straight to the outputs?

 

[1]

With this panning, I still get the AFX guitar in both channels:

Which is all well and good, but for doubletracking, I want that L/R separation between the two tracks. Reaper is basically taking my left-panned signal and copying it over to the right channel when it hits the master.

 

[1]

Are the outputs of your drumbs and bass being sent to the master bus, or straight to the outputs?

Everything goes to the master. (I think..)

 

[105]

I don't know Reaper at all.

However, in PT you can choose to send to the Master Bus or direct to the outputs, and I seem to remember Sonar being the same way. Where do you see the output of each channel?

 

[1]

Take a look at my master. That's at zero, and I'm shooting for between 6-10db of headroom. My guitars are around -10db, but my master is as high as +12db sometimes, and as you can imagine, clips like a champ.

I don't know Reaper at all.

However, in PT you can choose to send to the Master Bus or direct to the outputs, and I seem to remember Sonar being the same way. Where do you see the output of each channel?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. :lol: As I understand it, the tracks go to the master, the master goes to my monitors, my monitors go to my earholes. :spock:

 

[105]

So turn your tracks down!

The master is the SUM off all the tracks, so even if all the tracks are at -10, you could easily clip the master.

 

[Drew]

Got it.

See that purple box on your master bus, with the two white arrows facing each other? That's the stereo/mono switch. Click that again. You have it set so the master bus sums to mono. It's a great way to quickly sum a miox to mono to check for phase issues, but it gives you zero stereo spread.

Matt - Reaper is definitely the same way, you can send any track to the master or to any available hardware output. However, Chris's problem is probably a bit simpler than that. :lol:

Oh, btw, the numbers on the left edge of the master bus aren't the monitoring levels, they're a gain slider. In that picture, you have the master bus set at +0db, so that the master bus is neither boosting nor attenuating the signal. That orange bar doesn't mean it's peaking - it's monitored on the scale between the two monitor meters, so in that picture you're at about -6db. Also, the two numbers at the very top in white are the historical peak high point, so this particular mix hasn't peaked higher than -0.5db, which admittedly is still awfully high.

 

[1]

Got it.

See that purple box on your master bus, with the two white arrows facing each other? That's the stereo/mono switch. Click that again. You have it set so the master bus sums to mono. It's a great way to quickly sum a miox to mono to check for phase issues, but it gives you zero stereo spread.

Matt - Reaper is definitely the same way, you can send any track to the master or to any available hardware output. However, Chris's problem is probably a bit simpler than that. :lol:

Oh, btw, the numbers on the left edge of the master bus aren't the monitoring levels, they're a gain slider. In that picture, you have the master bus set at +0db, so that the master bus is neither boosting nor attenuating the signal. That orange bar doesn't mean it's peaking - it's monitored on the scale between the two monitor meters, so in that picture you're at about -6db. Also, the two numbers at the very top in white are the historical peak high point, so this particular mix hasn't peaked higher than -0.5db, which admittedly is still awfully high.

I'll give that a shot, thanks. It's still breaking up all over the place if I turn the tracks up/master up any higher than that. :scratch:

Good to see it's not peaking, but my output levels are still super low compared to every other MP3 on my machine. The way I'm checking volume is to just toss it into iTunes with the volume all the way up, and click a few band MP3s, then click mine. Mine's about half as loud. :scratch:

 

[105]

Chris - that's a good thing... your mix has not been mastered (read: smashed all to hell).

All of my mixes are substantially quieter than a commercial mix before I send them to mastering.

 

[Drew]

I'll give that a shot, thanks. It's still breaking up all over the place if I turn the tracks up/master up any higher than that. :scratch:

Good to see it's not peaking, but my output levels are still super low compared to every other MP3 on my machine. The way I'm checking volume is to just toss it into iTunes with the volume all the way up, and click a few band MP3s, then click mine. Mine's about half as loud. :scratch:

Yeah, that sounds about right - your shit isn't mastered yet, and the metal industry is currently in a race to see who can master their shit louder than the other guy. I usually find when I'm A/Bing against my iTunes library, I need to set iTunes about 1/3-1/2 or so to match levels with a Reaper project.

Getting up to that kind of level is something you do after you export a project - this isn't NEARLY the same thing as mastering, but a quick and dirty "make my MP3 as loud as a pro recording" process for me is to normalize the finished .wav to 0db, run it through a multiband compressor plugin's mastering preset, normalize again, then use some sort of volume maximizing plugin (Waves L2 or Sonic Foundry Wave Hammer are two well known ones) to boost it by another 5db or so and then save to a hi-fi mp3 for itunes. Pro mastering engineers do a fuck of a lot more to a mix to make it both sound better and be louder, but this will get your mp3s to a volume where they're comparable to a pro release.

EDIT - sniped by Crooks. :lol:

 

[Professor Squidbeard]

Yeah, that sounds about right - your shit isn't mastered yet, and the metal industry is currently in a race to see who can master their shit louder than the other guy. I usually find when I'm A/Bing against my iTunes library, I need to set iTunes about 1/3-1/2 or so to match levels with a Reaper project.

Getting up to that kind of level is something you do after you export a project - this isn't NEARLY the same thing as mastering, but a quick and dirty "make my MP3 as loud as a pro recording" process for me is to normalize the finished .wav to 0db, run it through a multiband compressor plugin's mastering preset, normalize again, then use some sort of volume maximizing plugin (Waves L2 or Sonic Foundry Wave Hammer are two well known ones) to boost it by another 5db or so and then save to a hi-fi mp3 for itunes. Pro mastering engineers do a fuck of a lot more to a mix to make it both sound better and be louder, but this will get your mp3s to a volume where they're comparable to a pro release.

EDIT - sniped by Crooks. :lol:

or you could just throw an eq and a waves L3 on it i you're not going to release it and just want it louder. your way is a little... convoluted in comparison.

 

[1]

Thanks for the help guys. My mix sounds better, but my initial problem, alas, remains. :lol:

I still have oodles of guitar in the left channel with the master on center. It's better though, because at least now if I pan the master hard to one side, the guitar goes away. I just don't know why it's taking my left-panned track and stereo-izing it.

 

[Drew]

or you could just throw an eq and a waves L3 on it i you're not going to release it and just want it louder. your way is a little... convoluted in comparison.

It's basically the same approach - I normalize first just so the raw .wav is already peaking at -0db so I know where the threshold falls in relation to the actual peaks. You don't NEED to throw a multiband compressor on it, but I generally do - it doesn't do exactly the same thing as an EQ, but it gets you to the same basic idea in a different way. And then, you use a volume maximization plug (of which L3 is an example) to boost it up. :shrug: I really only add one additional step.

...unless you mean in the master bus, in which case, yeah, you can... but you're still running into the same problem with the threshold not being in relation to the peaks, because the peaks are falling below -0db.

 

[Shikaru]

Not sure if you've solved the problem yet Chris, but I'm inclined to suspect those sends you have set up on the guitar channels(The ones sending to track 17). If they're set up as pre-fader sends (which also makes them pre-pan) that may explain the panning issues.

If not you could always upload the project file without any audio files and someone might be able to tell you what's going wrong :yesway:

 

[robanomoly]

If you recorded a stereo .wav file for each track, right click on the .wav file, select "Item settings", then select "Item channel mode: Mono (Downmix)". I don't know if that will work, but it's worth a shot.