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  • Best way to achieve a broader dynamic range

    I was wondering what is the best way to achieve a very large dynamic range in a same piece. Let's say you have a solo flute playing ppp, and later in the piece you have a full tutti with fff brass, percussion, etc.

    Gigastudio will tend to clip as soon as you play a little loud. Does any of you use the Master Attenuation parameter to adjust this? Aren't you worried about losing some sound quality by doing this?

    Any other suggestion on the best way to work with this kind of piece to obtain the best sound quality and eliminate clipping?

    Thanks,
    Martin

  • We export all instruments as single tracks and mix in a dedicated Audio Workstation.

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • Yes... I know that, and that's what I do too... [8-)]

    But what I meant is that when working in the MIDI world (before rendering tracks to audio), what do you do? Or do you render each track one by one? I usually render when everything is done...

    Sometimes, even for a single MIDI track, you'll have clipping when playing ff.

    So do you use the Master Attenuation parameter or do you have any other trick?

    What I usually do is to attenuate the master volume until I have no clipping at all. And then, when rendering to audio, I increase each track to its possible maxximum without clipping. And then I adjust the volumes again in the audio mixer... But that is a lot of work when you have a composition with 20-30 tracks...

    Any better way to work would be welcome...

    Martin

  • Hello Martin

    I simply split my instrument in two, some time more, mixing outputs. Mostly brass and percussion (the louder instruments)
    and strings and woodwinds

    I have a cubase template which is set to medium mainvolume settings.
    So I have a enough headroom in both directions.

    The louder instruments I'm simply pushing on my analog mixer.
    Normally between 9 and 18 dB.

    When I do my bounces of the different instruments for mixing,
    the lower instruments do not have so much headroom, and you reduce there Volume at last when you make the final mix.

    Maybe it's a good idea to prepare different setups before.
    One for really loud pieces with more headroom, and one for lower pieces.
    I know sometime it is difficult to say in the beginning how a composition develops.

    In earlier days I used a macro in Cubase to adjust the Mainvolume settings all in once.

    best wishes
    Herb