Louder is not always better!

We live in a digital world. One of the biggest advantages of that in recording is that we no longer need to push the gain on your inputs. We can record at a moderate volume, and boost in post with little to no noise elevation.

I'm not saying that some Mics and some preamps don't have bad noise floors, but if you have a pretty good mic, and a recording interface with a fairly quite preamp, you can record without coming close to peaking, and still boost in post to make sure the levels of each track do not peak.

Analog recording had a character to it when you pushed the input to almost peaking, or peaking. However now we don't get that character in the digital world. Instead we just get a distorted wave form that causes some strange sounding crunching, which in some cases may be what you are looking for. But guess what, there are also plugins like the Bit Crusher that can do the same thing, and give you a lot more control over how much of the wave form is distorted.

Needless to say our brains tell us loud is good. However when we have loud that is bad...it is very noticeable. When recording and mixing, keep everything at a moderate level, and worry about CRANKING IT UP after the mix is where it should be.

God Bless!