Old 07-04-2017, 07:42 AM   #1
cyberman45
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Default peak & rms levels

Have read countless posts here and on other forums about whether to use peak or rms metering when recording, mixing and mastering. I am probably an advanced noob Reaper user... although I have been using Audition for years. I primarily do voice over tracks so nothing fancy in terms of mixdowns or mastering although I sometimes add music beds and fx to tracks. My question is... would it make sense to use peak level metering for recording and processing tracks...(eq and lightcompression... I use 2:1 ratio) ... and then switch to rms for adding a hard limit either on the track or master? (Usually I do -3db limit to leave some headroom for whoever will be dropping my voice tracks into a finished project.
Thanks for any advice!!
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Old 07-04-2017, 09:35 AM   #2
karbomusic
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberman45 View Post
Have read countless posts here and on other forums about whether to use peak or rms metering when recording, mixing and mastering. I am probably an advanced noob Reaper user... although I have been using Audition for years. I primarily do voice over tracks so nothing fancy in terms of mixdowns or mastering although I sometimes add music beds and fx to tracks. My question is... would it make sense to use peak level metering for recording and processing tracks...(eq and lightcompression... I use 2:1 ratio) ... and then switch to rms for adding a hard limit either on the track or master? (Usually I do -3db limit to leave some headroom for whoever will be dropping my voice tracks into a finished project.
Thanks for any advice!!
Just make sure you don't clip when recording and don't spend time trying to keep the peaks as high as possible. If you are running the preamp/gain in the sound card at its nominal level, that should end up with a dbFS RMS value somewhere between -16 and -19 with peaks hitting above that but never clipping.

You can limit on the way in but for voice overs and 24 bit converters, there is really no need unless that's how you like to work because 24 bit has more than enough headroom to absorb those peaks (unless you are doing "yell overs" and you probably still have enough)
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