Export Strength/Clarity

[Richard Clayton]

New to Tascam, old Roland user, old Cubase/Cubasis user. My exports from dp24sd are weak. They’re clear, mixed right, but not nearly as loud as my Cubase exports. They’re recorded hot, should be strong but they’re not. What’s going on?

 

[Mark Richards]

Welcome to the forums.

FYI, you've posted in the Model 24/16/12 digital mixer forum, not the DP-24/32/SD portastudio forum.

The moderators will likely move your thread to that forum.

Since you're a new member, please read the "New Members" sticky in that forum for information critical and important to successful use of your portastudio.

To your question:
If your tracks & mixes are registering about -12 dBFS on the DP-24SD meters, then you're in the ballpark for the correct level; and that's the audio level when exported. Can't speak to what might be going on in your D.A.W.

 

[-mjk-]

Over the years there have been multiple threads about the levels of mixed/mastered songs on the DP machines. It's all about the Mastering levels. This is one of those threads:

https://www.tascamforums.com/threads/finished-mastered-mixes-very-quiet.4522/page-4

 

[Phil Tipping]

My exports from dp24sd are weak. They’re clear, mixed right"

Your terminology is a bit confusing, so are you comparing like with like?
If you are exporting, this implies you are transferring individual tracks to your computer. These will be the raw recordings at whatever level you used when recording. Any other settings such as playback level, FX, EQ etc will not exist in these exported tracks.
If you mix (assuming you mean mixdown and not bouncing), you create a master file with all the above settings embedded in the recording.
You can't realistically compare the two.

 

[Richard Clayton]

This was one track of bounces sent to pCloud to show song progress to a co-writer. I had done the same thing recently with a song recorded entirely on an iPad with Cubasis. Neither were mastered versions. In pCloud, the song from Cubasis is loud, the song from the DP is about 25% lower in volume. The recording levels were high (just under clip) in both cases. Just wondering why the DP example is much weaker. Thx

 

[-mjk-]

Did you analyze the mix file and see what the stats are?

 

[Richard Clayton]

No. Good tip. But I don’t know how. I’d like to though.
Thx

 

[-mjk-]

Put it somewhere like Google Drive or Dropbox and give us the link. Make sure it's a hig-res wav file and not an mp3.

If you want to see how your mixes stack up with streaming services, you can use loudnesspenalty.com and see what will happen when you upload your file.