Any ideas on how I can make the waveform bigger on Reaper or increase input volume on interface?

Jonathanthomas83

So I've got one of two solutions for this, upping the waveform to visually look more useful than it currently does on track 1 - pretty much looks like a straight line!

OR, up the input volume on the RME Babyface Pro to make the signal from the Suhr Reactive Load louder. I don't know how to do either.

Issue is, increasing the DI volume on the Suhr seems to introduce some unwanted artefacts, to my ears.

I sold the CAB M which used to up the input level to 0db, which was very useful, but now its gone, I don't know how to do that without it.

I am using a Suhr Reactive Load to record directly to RME Babyface Pro to Reaper, but as you can see on track one, it's a very quiet recording. I am upping the gain on Two Notes Wall of Sound by 12db and a further few db on VUMT but it still is unusable from a visual perspective. Any advice would be great. Can I increase the gain before it hits the DAW or somehow show it better/more usefully visually (it just looks like a straight line on trace.

Compared to track two which looks way more useful and usable.

stratman3142

You can click on the waveform, hold your keyboard shift key and tap your keyboard up arrow. That doesn't change the volume and appears to affect all waveforms

To increase volume, shift click on the waveform, and drag the top edge upwards.

Jonathanthomas83

That's what I've done in the second screenshot, believe it or not.

stratman3142

Jonathanthomas83 said:

That's what I've done in the second screenshot, believe it or not.

I edited my post, possibly after you replied. Does the second method do what you want?

andy_k

try r-click, item processing, normalise.
It will bring it up to a point before it clips--you choose the setting.
I have my projects set with a vol knob on the clip-you can choose how you like it to be displayed.
It is an essential part of setting a mix up, and is the first part of gain staging.

PolarityMan

Sounds like something is wrong with your gain staging somewhere in your chain. Amplifying it is going to amplify the noise too.

Is it possible you are presenting a line level signal to something that expects instrument level or vice versa?

andy_k

it looks like a DI waveform to me, try rendering it with plugins, at the end of the day it is what it sounds like that matters.
Normalising a DI will obviously bring up the noise floor as well, it doesn't look like a healthy waveform for sure.
If it sounds good with your plugins, render it, and you'll probably see a better shape.

Jonathanthomas83

@andy_k normalising worked, thank you. I'll remember that for later. How do I choose the setting for that?

Although...

@polarityman I managed to figure out how I can up the input gain on that channel on the RME Babyface Pro. I'm using Balanced XLR from the Suhr Reactive Load and into an XLR input on the interface. So I'm unsure what's line level and what's mic level. I hope I'm not doing anything wrong.

Keefy

Aiming for 0dB (or higher!) is a hangover from analog recording when signal-to-noise ratio on tape was a big issue. I think it’s more usual now to aim for peaks of -18db to -12dB.

pintspiller

Is there a trim knob on your interface? Is there no knob or attenuator button on Suhr?

andy_k

It is now kind of standard to record at -12----  -18, which is supposed to be the hot spot that a lot of plugins are looking for. The plugins add to the level, depending on how you use them and what they are, 3db is meant to be the minimum noticable gain one can hear, so I tend to work with that as a step in mixing..  6 db = twice the perceived volume, so recording at minus 12 or 18 gives you a few steps to play with.
The waveform we see, is a visual representation of the sound level above and below a zero centre line, with upper and lower levels of 1, you cannot go over 1, there will be clipping at that point.
It is not like tape or tube, where going over the limit introduces a warm sounding distortion, which we call saturation, digital clipping is a harsh un musical tone to be avoided.
Our final mix, should be below 1, by an amount that will allow for conversion from WAV to MP3, which can cause a signal to clip, so aim for something like minus half a db for your final WAV mix.
When you get familiar with these levels, you will see what looks like a healthy level, say 2 thirds of the waveform, leaving space above and below. If your plugins boost the signal too much, you should bring down the level of the original to get back into a good range, most plugins have output level controls now anyway.
It isn't good to mess with the Visual representation of the waveform, as this could lead to confusion-they should all be set to the same zoom level-to allow comparison.
There are setting inside Reaper which affect how the waveform volume is displayed- I like to have it show as a knob when the track is a certain height, it is easier to see how much the original clip has been boosted or cut.
These are the initial levels before mixing, and any volume changes during a mix can be done post fader, with automation, or by using bus faders.
When you have your interface set up to be recording at a healthy level, make some notes for reference. There can be a lot of variance between guitars, or mics. so it saves time to have something written down.

PolarityMan

Jonathanthomas83 said:

@andy_k normalising worked, thank you. I'll remember that for later. How do I choose the setting for that?

Although...

@polarityman I managed to figure out how I can up the input gain on that channel on the RME Babyface Pro. I'm using Balanced XLR from the Suhr Reactive Load and into an XLR input on the interface. So I'm unsure what's line level and what's mic level. I hope I'm not doing anything wrong.

The reactive load has line level outputs and it sounds like you are plugging these into the mic pre's. I would have thought you would get better results using the line-ins on the babyface which look like they are the jack connections on the side. 

Jonathanthomas83

PolarityMan said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

@andy_k normalising worked, thank you. I'll remember that for later. How do I choose the setting for that?

Although...

@polarityman I managed to figure out how I can up the input gain on that channel on the RME Babyface Pro. I'm using Balanced XLR from the Suhr Reactive Load and into an XLR input on the interface. So I'm unsure what's line level and what's mic level. I hope I'm not doing anything wrong.

The reactive load has line level outputs and it sounds like you are plugging these into the mic pre's. I would have thought you would get better results using the line-ins on the babyface which look like they are the jack connections on the side. 

@PolarityMan I am indeed, I didn't realise it made a difference. Could you perhaps explain why it would matter? I guess that I'm running the signal through some unnecessary preamp of some kind? My reasons were so that I could utilise the jack inputs for some effects, but would much rather get things right with the guitar signal and patch the FX into some kind of ADAT interface, should I need them.

andy_k said:

It is now kind of standard to record at -12----  -18, which is supposed to be the hot spot that a lot of plugins are looking for. The plugins add to the level, depending on how you use them and what they are, 3db is meant to be the minimum noticable gain one can hear, so I tend to work with that as a step in mixing..  6 db = twice the perceived volume, so recording at minus 12 or 18 gives you a few steps to play with.
The waveform we see, is a visual representation of the sound level above and below a zero centre line, with upper and lower levels of 1, you cannot go over 1, there will be clipping at that point.
It is not like tape or tube, where going over the limit introduces a warm sounding distortion, which we call saturation, digital clipping is a harsh un musical tone to be avoided.
Our final mix, should be below 1, by an amount that will allow for conversion from WAV to MP3, which can cause a signal to clip, so aim for something like minus half a db for your final WAV mix.
When you get familiar with these levels, you will see what looks like a healthy level, say 2 thirds of the waveform, leaving space above and below. If your plugins boost the signal too much, you should bring down the level of the original to get back into a good range, most plugins have output level controls now anyway.
It isn't good to mess with the Visual representation of the waveform, as this could lead to confusion-they should all be set to the same zoom level-to allow comparison.
There are setting inside Reaper which affect how the waveform volume is displayed- I like to have it show as a knob when the track is a certain height, it is easier to see how much the original clip has been boosted or cut.
These are the initial levels before mixing, and any volume changes during a mix can be done post fader, with automation, or by using bus faders.
When you have your interface set up to be recording at a healthy level, make some notes for reference. There can be a lot of variance between guitars, or mics. so it saves time to have something written down.

@andy_k This is really very helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this for me, much appreciated.

PolarityMan

Well tbh its kinda weird because I would expect the line level signal to be much higher than the mic signal...but its also a different impedance so that might affect things and it could be that the mic-pre inputs are expecting a different impedance signal.

Its also not clear to me how you know that the DI-level on the reactive load is set correctly either.

But I would always start with making sure the connections are right and then working through each stage of the chain from guitar to DAW making sure you are gain staged correctly.

PolarityMan

The other thought I just had is dont these interfaces have some onboard DSP so you can do zero latency monitoring with FX? Maybe the gain is turned down on the internal software mixer?

Jonathanthomas83

PolarityMan said:

Well tbh its kinda weird because I would expect the line level signal to be much higher than the mic signal...but its also a different impedance so that might affect things and it could be that the mic-pre inputs are expecting a different impedance signal.

Its also not clear to me how you know that the DI-level on the reactive load is set correctly either.

But I would always start with making sure the connections are right and then working through each stage of the chain from guitar to DAW making sure you are gain staged correctly.

@PolarityMan ;

I've no idea if the Line level signal from Suhr is set correctly either. I think the manual says "+4 dBu at 7 watts input, maximum level setting. "I've set it just under halfway so as to not put it full bore!

I'll get the connections sorted today and will start fresh. I'm learning a lot here about gain staging and really don't want to be adding gain where it's not necessary. Thank you for your help!

PolarityMan

The manual says this about the DI volume control

DI LEVEL Adjusts the output level of the balanced and unbalanced DI / Line Out outputs (located on the rear panel). DI Level is used to optimize the amount of signal the Reactive Load delivers to your device.

So I wouldn't be too worried about increasing this to get a decent level in the DAW, 

WiresDreamDisasters

It's not unknown for DI signals to be very low. As someone else said, you can zoom in the waveforms in Reaper by doing SHIFT+UP and SHIFT+DOWN on the keyboard.

Don't normalize and don't change the clip gain to resolve visualisation issues. This is a recipe for disaster because some clips will be quieter than others, you'll then adjust the gain of them so you can see them, and this will feed a whole variety of different levels to your plugins, making your mix less consistent and more difficult to control.

When you hit the interface aim for between -18dB and -12dB on the meters on your interface (or in Reaper if your interface doesn't have meters)

The reason we aim for -18dB is because meters in DAWs measure in full-scale, and -18dBFS is roughly equivalent to 0dBVU, which is what an analog console meters would be calibrated for. So we're converting between the analog realm and the digital realm. It's to give you headroom and to match dynamic range in the digital realm to the analog realm.

There are VU metering plugins to help with this too.

Try to keep as close to unity gain as possible throughout the chain up until the final faders. This means get your input DI between -18dB and -12dB on the meters in your DAW before adding any plugins or anything like that. Then when you add a plugin, make sure the output of the plugin is roughly set to the same level, so that the input of the next plugin sees the same input level as the one before it. Match up the input and output levels across every plugin in your chain, basically. You can do this with the input trims and output trims inside the plugins, or you can add a volume tool into the chain if there is a plugin that doesn't have that feature.

Don't be worried by adding gain. Just record at 24bit with whatever sample-rate you want.

Jonathanthomas83

PolarityMan said:

The manual says this about the DI volume control

DI LEVEL Adjusts the output level of the balanced and unbalanced DI / Line Out outputs (located on the rear panel). DI Level is used to optimize the amount of signal the Reactive Load delivers to your device.

So I wouldn't be too worried about increasing this to get a decent level in the DAW, 

@PolarityMan ;I'm going to admit to a user error here as I had signal coming from RME mixer AND reaper and that's where I got the aforementioned "unwanted artefacts" when upping the DI level on the Suhr - seems both signals were out of phase with each other and sounded awful (as you'd expect). I've since muted the signal on the mixer, only have sound coming through Reaper and all is well with the world, the DI level on the Suhr works as it should and is nice and clean, which will ultimately help me with what @WiresDreamDisasters mentions in his post about getting the levels to -18db/-12db.

Thank you all for the information and help, I really appreciate it, I've learned an awful lot from you guys.

WiresDreamDisasters

You might want to consider monitoring through the mixer instead of Reaper so you can monitor with zero latency. It's a tricky concept to get your head around, but basically you can turn off software monitoring for the tracks in Reaper and just monitor what is coming into the card using the RME mixer. Then you're not having to deal with the extra latency coming from the ASIO driver.

Jonathanthomas83

WiresDreamDisasters said:

You might want to consider monitoring through the mixer instead of Reaper so you can monitor with zero latency. It's a tricky concept to get your head around, but basically you can turn off software monitoring for the tracks in Reaper and just monitor what is coming into the card using the RME mixer. Then you're not having to deal with the extra latency coming from the ASIO driver.

@WiresDreamDisasters ;That seems like the correct way to do it and it's always something I've felt I need to do but never understood how.

Couple of things:

• I add cabs through Wall of Sound plugin in Reaper
• I add FX (delay and reverb) and a VU meter through plugins on Reaper

Are these going to hinder that process? I guess not.

I'm having a hard time understanding the concept...do I mute the signals in Reaper and just look at the levels on RME Total Mix?

I use the whole thing as a way to practice and record. So when I turn my amp/pedals on, I also use the DAw for delay and reverb. So it all needs to work seamlessly, including if I monitor through RME Total Mix. This is why it's difficult for me to detach from Reaper and just use Total Mix.