If you could provide me with a template of your ideal settings for recording audios, what would they be?

I used to record audios a long time ago on Cool Edit, but I never really gave a shit about sound quality and mixing down, therefore alot of my old tracks aren't all that noteworthy.

Now, I'm not asking for a walkthrough, just, if you could tell me top to bottom, the very general settings you use, I could then incorporate them into something of my own and make the necessary adjustments to my liking.

I want to do some audio battles and a random spread of tracks in the future, I use Adobe Audition, and have an adequate setup equipment-wise, at least for what I want to do. Nothing serious, I don't want to release an album or EP, or studio quality music, I just want to record some music and give myself the best chance of it having replay value.

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Originally Posted by Wuxia

I used to record audios a long time ago on Cool Edit, but I never really gave a shit about sound quality and mixing down, therefore alot of my old tracks aren't all that noteworthy.

Now, I'm not asking for a walkthrough, just, if you could tell me top to bottom, the very general settings you use, I could then incorporate them into something of my own and make the necessary adjustments to my liking.

I want to do some audio battles and a random spread of tracks in the future, I use Adobe Audition, and have an adequate setup equipment-wise, at least for what I want to do. Nothing serious, I don't want to release an album or EP, or studio quality music, I just want to record some music and give myself the best chance of it having replay value.

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Ahhh, Cool Edit Pro 2.0. I gotta shout out Peter everytime it gets brought up. That was my first program for recording.

I'm still learning this stuff myself. This might not be the answer you were looking for lol. But here we go...

If you're using Adobe Audition, you may be better off converting to Cakewalk. It was available for free last time I was using it and better than Audition imo.

A lot comes to mind when I think of "general settings" to use when recording. I used to ask similar questions. But the more I got into it, the more I realized why it's a hard question to answer lol. It depends on your setup and quality of your raw recordings.

The acoustics in the room you record in will play a big part in what you need to do. But for starters, lower your beat/music to where you can record at a comfortable level and get about -10db of gain on your vocals. Make sure you have a clean recording to start with. As little background noise as possible. No hitting the mic stand, wall or something when recording. Etc. If you start with trash, you can only turn it into nicer trash.

Once you get your vocals tracked, go through and listen to them on solo to edit and cut out/fade any unwanted breaths and shit. Then start leveling your tracks to the point things start to sound good without any plugins. After you get your levels to where you're happy, use an EQ to clean up the sound you don't like in the raw recording. The easiest way to do this is to boost and sweep the freq's then cut a few db where you hear something that sounds ugly or hurts your ears. Muddiness, boxiness, harshness. Usually start with a hi pass filter somewhere between 60-120hz. Then the most common places I cut are around 200-250hz, 500, 1k, 2-4k, 8k. I usually do a low pass filter around 10k+ on my first eq too because I like to go back in later to mess with it on a different eq. After this, throw on a separate EQ and boost some of the high end back up to add some clarity/life back to your vocal. Use the same boost and sweep technique to find the freq's that sound good now. Start around the 2k and up range. Last, throw on a hi shelf around 10-12k+.

After eqing, I move to compression. Compression is hard for me to explain because I JUST got comfortable doing it within the last year or so. Main things you'll need to get familiar with are Threshold, Ratio, Attack and Release. How you tweak those are going to be based on what you want to do. The threshold is the db point at which the compressor starts doing compressor things. Maybe start around -10db and go from there. Ratio is how hard the compressor works. A good ratio for vox 4:1. But play with the ratio to learn how it works. Attack is how soon the compressor starts working. Release is when it starts letting go. I usually go with a fast Attack and mid to slow Release. But mess with those too so that you can get a feel for what it does when you set it differently.

Reverb and Delay will do you wonders but I won't even get into trying to explain those. I probably shouldn't have tried explaining EQ or Compression lolll. I probably confused you more than helped you. The best thing that has helped me learn these past few years has been YouTube though. I like watching someone do something when I'm trying to learn it. You can even get specific like "mixing rap vocals in adobe audition".

Excellent. This is just what I needed, a rough idea of settings that would allow me to have a starting point. Hugely informative and detailed response here, very much appreciated.

Nahlidge your the man. Long time hommie