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In Audition is there a way to lower all mixer faders at the same time and still keeping the individual levels the same? thanks
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Only by lowering the Master fader, which, of course, won't actually move the faders only lower the overall mixing level.
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thanks a lot for your reply @ryclark. are you sure it's not possible? For example on pro tools this feature is -essential- for mixing. I can't work in music production with audition if this feature is not avaiable. Lowering the master fader is -absolutely forbidden- in music schools for technical reasons.
I hope Adobe will fix this big issue please.
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Dan Quiet wrote:
thanks a lot for your reply @ryclark. are you sure it's not possible? For example on pro tools this feature is -essential- for mixing. I can't work in music production with audition if this feature is not avaiable. Lowering the master fader is -absolutely forbidden- in music schools for technical reasons.
I hope Adobe will fix this big issue please.
There's nothing to fix. If you want to lower the level of a group of faders, then send all those channels you require to drop the level of to a group, and lower the group fader; this has exactly the effect you require without touching the master fader at all.
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I should perhaps add that I can understand why this practice would have been frowned upon with ProTools, as it took them until version 10 before they'd let you create a Floating Point mix, and if you lowered the master fader, you'd lose resolution. This has never been an issue with Audition, as it's always produced Floating Point mixes, and whatever levels you leave on the output can always be restored without loss - which certainly isn't the case with earlier PT mixes. Audition has always been notably superior to PT in this regard, which is why we never make such a fuss about it.
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oh very good news! if possible anyway I wish to ask you to consider the way to introduce the chance for who mix to edit in pro tools style (I can't resist I can't touch the master fader). that would be very nice. for example pressing "ctrl" and selecting the mixer tracks all togheter then touching the fader of one of them could be cool in my opinion. just to give a little idea.
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Well, if you really want it to do that (although I can't see any reason for needing it), then put it in as a feature request. IIRC, somebody asked about this before, a while ago, so you won't be entirely alone in wanting it...
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I'm another one who'd probably use a VCA/DCA feature in Audition if it was there but that's just because I've got used to that way of working doing live theatre mixes. It's certainly not because of an quality loss caused by lowering the master.
I've had numerous debates with people who had "don't lower the Master and never use Normalise" drilled into them and invariably it was because their DAW either still used an integer system or at least had done so when they were taught to use it. Having started my digital mixing on Cooledit (well, actually a DAR Soundstation) I never had to consider these things and it took me a while to work out how far behind some DAWs were.
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Yeah, the fact that it's still being rote-taught like that, rather than the reasons for it being explained properly is slightly disturbing but, in the world of Education, not that surprising. I don't think I'll ever cease to be amazed at how long some of these 'rules' go unchallenged, or how surprised people are when they realise that in this instance, that what amounts to a 'virtual' signal can be rather better, and way more flexible than a 'real' one!
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Interesting point.
But what if the relative levels o my tracks are right, and there's one of them clipping?
The only thing I can do is lower all the faders, because the distortion is in the track, not the mix.
Am I wrong?
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Actually, you are... If your track is okay and appears to not clip on its own in isolation, and be at the level you want it in Multitrack, then simply don't worry about it - the only clipping you would detect would be replay clipping in your sound device. Audition's mix is 32 bit Floating Point and that has a massively wide dynamic range that's almost impossible to overload. All you have to do is get your mix into multitrack and normalize it to just under 0dB, and all the apparent clipping will disappear as if by magic. (spoiler alert - it's not magic, just scaling bits at work).
What appears to be clipping in Multitrack is no more than a visual illusion. You can test this simply by cranking the master fader right up so that the mix you produce looks like a solid block of green. Open this in Waveform and normalize it, and it will return to where it should be. The reason it sounds clipped is that you've overloaded your sound device during replay; this isn't caused directly by the file at all.
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That's amazing! It's incredible how technology evolves in 20 years.
But my concern was when the track was clipping by its own. Just arrived to a point where I ended having to raise that track to keep relative levels, and that level was above clipping point.
I know that comes from a not so perfect workflow, but it happens from time to time.
Does the bit-magic also solve this problem?
Thanks for your answer.
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If a track, opened in Waveform view, doesn't clip then you will always be able to correct any apparent clipping that you introduce by having it louder in a Multitrack session. But if it clips on its own, then it will still be clipped whatever you do with the level of it - so if you have a badly clipped track running at -6dB in Multitrack, then it's still going to be a quiet clipped-sounding track (at a lower level). The magic only works if none of the tracks are clipped to start with.
The rules about this haven't changed for several decades now. For a decent mix, all the tracks have to be clean on their own before you start assembling them. It's a point I made back in the 00's in a crib sheet about 'string line mixes' - this was in relation to how Paul Simon managed to get really good separation between the instruments on a track; so they sounded like they'd been hung out on a washing line, each having their own aural space to exist in. That was on the original Syntrillium Cool Edit forum, even before AudioMasters... and before Adobe got their hands on it!