Vocal Levels ~ Peak & RMS

In my 30 years of radio if there is one thing I've learned it is that some of the biggest computer geeks I ever met were hip hop music producers. These guys can wire a rack, set up an interface, install a DAW and stack enough audio plugins to choke a server farm. Yet, what they produce will have you jammin in your car and going into debt to see their concert. But the one thing they can't do is fix a digitally distorted, square wave vocal track. Yep, the one you left in Vcreative, or inside the production folder. ARGH! But that's all about to change.

Most of today's air-personalities are using Adobe Audition, or ProTools to record. It doesn't matter, raw vocal levels are the issue here. Without all the tech talk, here's the scoop.

This is too LOUD:

This is a great level:

The good level will have your peaks at roughly -3db and your RMS (root-mean-square) Umm, the densely packed area should hover around -9 to -15db. Be sure to save your raw audio as a .wav which is the highest quality or as a 320 kbps .mp3 stereo / 160 kbps .mp3 mono. The standard sample rate for digital audio 44.100 hz with a sample depth at 16 bits. That's it! Your production folks can take it from there. Remember, if you plan to email your audio be aware of the file size so you don't crash the email server:

Sample rate 44.100 hz / Sample depth at 16 bits

60 sec stereo .wav = 10 to 11 megabytes (thats big)

60 sec 320 kbps .mp3 stereo = 2 to 3 megabytes (average)

This is just basic but important recording details. There are many higher quality recording processes computers can do but it's overkill for radio and hard on computer resources.

Happy recording and stay pro.