Guitar mixes and RMS levels.

[Javi Perera]

Hello everybody.

I write this post to comment the following doubt to you.

All right, listening to my recordings of guitar and comparing them with other recordings of other groups, I have taken notice of a curious detail that happened as from comparing levels RMS when it sounds in stereo and when it sounds in mono, than they differ a little bit..

In the recordings of the other groups, when I listened to segments only guitars sounded in than in stereo, I saw the guitars were arriving to - 14 dB RMS, with his small fluctuations ( as it happens with the palm mute, but just that, minimal fluctuations. Well then, when listening to them in mono, the RMS level kept on hanging round the -14 or -14,5 dB RMS..

However, when listening to my guitars, in stereo RMS sound for the -14 dB ... but when I put it in mono they take a turn for the worse, getting more or less at -16.5 dB RMS...



At first blamed on the guitars were quadtracked and with it grant them more presence in the mono domain.. But later, hearing a band with doubletracked guitars, it happened the same than the quadtracked! ... And of course, I got mad, because it doesn't happen to me....

Understandably when I listen to my mixes in mono it seems the guitars like if they disappeared ( thereof the drop of the RMS in mono ) ...

Why does it happen? How can I fix it?

P.S.: Sorry about my crappy english...

 

[John_C]

this is to do with phase. When the guitars are in stereo they do not interfere with each other, when they are put into mono they will cause phase problems.

How do you have your guitars panned? Are they all seperate takes or are they in some way copies of each other (for example 2 DIs recorded through 2 amps giving you 4 tracks in total)?

 

[BrettT]

Could possibly be because of your DAW's pan law setting...

 

[John_C]

Could possibly be because of your DAW's pan law setting...

good point, that could well be it.

Although that would likely affect professional mixes in the same way as his own.

 

[Javi Perera]

this is to do with phase. When the guitars are in stereo they do not interfere with each other, when they are put into mono they will cause phase problems.

How do you have your guitars panned? Are they all seperate takes or are they in some way copies of each other (for example 2 DIs recorded through 2 amps giving you 4 tracks in total)?

I pan them at 100%, and they are only 2 separated tracks. Could it be that I use the same amp config for both of them?

Could possibly be because of your DAW's pan law setting...

I dunno what "pan law setting" is

 

[Benny H]

Real guitars?

 

[Javi Perera]

Real guitars?

Erhmmmm, nope. Prominy ones, but with the doubletracked samples.