Routing Question

[songsj]

New to Reaper here, I'm mixing a song that is just a stereo 2 track music mix and one track lead vocal , on the master fader I have a waves C4 compressor and an L1 ultramaximizer in that order. I have the output ceiling on the L1 set at -03 yet if I change anything that would increase the volume level pre L1 the master channel meters increase and spike into the red. On my old system [Sony Vegas} L1 with same FX chain set up the L1 would keep the master channel output at -03 no matter what you did pre L1. On the master channel in Reaper is the FX chain pre or post fader/meters?

I'm bumping this because I've got no responses which usually means I've asked a dumb question [Maybe] or a really good one. Either way I would really appreciate the help. I'm new to Reaper and it looks like the master FX chain acts a little differently than Sony/Magix Edit Pro. I'm trying to figure this out because I also am getting distortion in my monitoring and mixing and I can't find anything that I'm overdriving. And I'm telling you I've looked hard.I have to be overdriving something and I cannot seem to find it. The tracks are clean because I'm using a prior project I had already finished

[Tod]

Originally Posted by songsj

New to Reaper here, I'm mixing a song that is just a stereo 2 track music mix and one track lead vocal , on the master fader I have a waves C4 compressor and an L1 ultramaximizer in that order. I have the output ceiling on the L1 set at -03 yet if I change anything that would increase the volume level pre L1 the master channel meters increase and spike into the red. On my old system [Sony Vegas} L1 with same FX chain set up the L1 would keep the master channel output at -03 no matter what you did pre L1. On the master channel in Reaper is the FX chain pre or post fader/meters?

I'm bumping this because I've got no responses which usually means I've asked a dumb question [Maybe] or a really good one. Either way I would really appreciate the help. I'm new to Reaper and it looks like the master FX chain acts a little differently than Sony/Magix Edit Pro. I'm trying to figure this out because I also am getting distortion in my monitoring and mixing and I can't find anything that I'm overdriving. And I'm telling you I've looked hard.I have to be overdriving something and I cannot seem to find it. The tracks are clean because I'm using a prior project I had already finished

Hey songsj, so you've only got the two tracks, the stereo music and the mono vocal track is that right?.

My first suggestion is to bypass all the FX and see where the levels are without the FX. That should give you an indication of where you're starting from. Is it hot? Really hot? Or not hot?

Then turn the FX back on and bypass the L1 limiter to see what the compressor is doing.

That should help give you an indication of what's happening.

If you're hearing distortion, I would think it's either the FX distorting, or after the fact, which I think is more likely.

At any rate, things can be pushed to far and maybe you've reached the limit.

[songsj]

Another question/observation about my problem, The poor audio and distortion renders and burns to a cd from reaper which leads me to believe [and please correct me if I'm wrong] that the distortion is most likely happening in Reaper or the plugins because I would think that if the distortion was being caused by something else in Windows 10, Nero player, audio card etc. I would burn a clean distortion free cd. because that data renders and comes from the DAW, pre-soundcard, monitors, and audio portions of the OS. Are my thoughts logical? And yes it is just 2 tracks, a stereo music track and a stereo lead vocal, both 24 bit 44.1k .wav files recorded on another system. This is a whole new system and I wanted a small project that was not complicated with a ton of tracks to get familiar with everything.

[nicholas]

Haven't read your second post yet, but in response to the first ...

Check the level of the fader on your track master. If set at anything other than 0.0 it will raise (if above 0) or lower (if below 0) post FX

[nicholas]

PS If you wish to adjust the Master volume pre FX, an easy way is to insert a JS volume control plug-in at the start of the Master FX chain.

You can also show the master as a track in Arrange View if you wish, and add track controls for FX parameters there.

[ashcat_lt]

Originally Posted by nicholas

PS If you wish to adjust the Master volume pre FX, an easy way is to insert a JS volume control plug-in at the start of the Master FX chain.

This is good advice, but you've got to be careful. I don't know if most people realize that JS Volume Adjust is also a hard clipper. That Max Volume slider sets a limit that no single sample can go past no matter what. At this point in the chain you might have some big peaks that could be handled more gently by the comp and limiter downstream, but if you clip them off here, that distortion will already be baked in.

Leads to the point that most limiters are not actually sample-for-sample clippers like that. They have attack and/or release times (even if you don't get knobs for them) or some other way of working based on an average of at least a few samples. Some also include oversampling filters to try to avoid aliasing if the do add distortion. Any and all of these types of things can mean that some very fast transients will sneak through the limit, and you can't really ever know exactly for sure where the loudest peak will end up.

The only real way to know your for sure about your limit is with a real sample-for-sample clipper with no filtering after. A "curvy" saturation usually sounds better than a "hard knee" clipper like is in JS Volume, but if you put this after the limiter just to catch what it misses, it shouldn't really be doing much for long enough to really be heard.