before you render the song

[samsome123]

before you render the song

what are the final things you check for?

thanks

[Bristol Posse]

I don't technically render since I record the mix back into reaper through an analog mixer and hardware but the principal is the same I guess

Check any pre roll coughs, squeaks and general back ground noise is muted or cut out of the start of any tracks

Check all my routing from reaper to mixer is still correct and nothing got mis-routed or double routed from an errant key pres or anything

check any analog channels I'm not using are zeroed out and not sending anything anywhere

Check my mix notes all my fader and output levels are right, comps and eqs are in or out as necessary and everything is at the correct setting for the start of the mix

Fire a mono signal through the mixer to make sure the master faders are correctly aligned and mono shows up as dead center and everything is correctly calibrated

Make sure all hardware is fired up (and warmed up where tubes are involved)

Make sure the DAW return track is armed for recording

[Fex]

If you're mixing in the box, and if the mix sounds good, then you only really need to check that the render options are correct. If it clips, you will see that when rendering. You don't lose anything by making a bad render - if the results are not as expected, adjust accordingly and render again.

[samsome123]

thanks

what's the main reason for "clips/clipping"? could it be laptop cpu power also problem?

[Bristol Posse]

Originally Posted by samsome123

thanks

what's the main reason for "clips/clipping"? could it be laptop cpu power also problem?

the main reason for clipping is that you are going above 0.0dB on the master channel

This is OK when you re mixing as REAPER uses 64bit float math but as soon as you want to render to 24 or 16 bit fixed point file for listening then 0.0dB is a hard limit and anything above that will be clipped

[Lawrence]

I've found one thing useful before printing, to try to psychologically come out of engineer mode into normal listening mode.

What often happens (to me anyway, mmv) is that we get caught up in random critical listening minutia, as it should be, and kinda always miss something else, so if you come out of that mode and just listen to enjoy you start hearing other stuff, as opposed to the last listen focusing mostly on what you spent the last 30 minutes tweaking.

It happened (es) to me a lot. I'll print something that I've been mixing for hours and the first play in the car or whatever I'll hear something small that I should have heard already, so now what I try to do before a print is just sit back and listen to it a few times like it was just a song on the radio, not focusing on anything in particular, and see if anything sounds wrong. Usually it's a tiny vocal bit popping out too much or one vocal word that needs to go up 2db or something really small like that.

[Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Bristol Posse

the main reason for clipping is that you are going above 0.0dB on the master channel

This is OK when you re mixing as REAPER uses 64bit float math but as soon as you want to render to 24 or 16 bit fixed point file for listening then 0.0dB is a hard limit and anything above that will be clipped

Not really. Going over 0 on the master will still clip the converters you're listening to when you're mixing.

It's ok on individual channels, not the master.

[tls11823]

Originally Posted by Lawrence

I've found one thing useful before printing, to try to psychologically come out of engineer mode into normal listening mode.

I agree completely. I always try to put myself in the mindset that I've never heard the song and it just came up while I was listening to music, and then judge it on that "first listen" basis. It's not always easy to do, and sometimes it requires some time away from the song to hear it that way. As Lawrence suggests, it's helpful to put yourself in a different listening environment and frame of mind. It's amazing how often something new jumps out at me. It's also amazing how often I find myself getting excited about the song all over again, after hearing it for so long from the inside out.