Serrato recording, sweet spot?

Hey guys and gals,

I know this has been posted a lot with serrato on how a little sounding the recordings come out. Just wanted see if there was a sweet spot on the 4000 and serrato combined to get a decent sized recording?

So far this is what I learned, I know this is mostly 99.9 to 100 % a serrato issue with the recordings coming out low because I did a dry run with recordings on NI. Personally, easier to mix with serrato just me so this what I did…

  1. Turned up the recording level in serrato to the yellow bars no red.
  2. Using default settings 16 bit, honestly don’t know what that means… Between 16 and 24.
  3. Used auto gain in serrato to even out the levels but wondering if I should just switch to manual and adjust manually bringing it up to 0 or 10 gran on each track.
  4. Read something about using audacity software but is all that really necessary?

Trying to upload some mixes and don’t want to sound low quality, so I don’t even think this may be a mixer issue but wanted to get some insight on work arounds. Thanks :pray:

  1. Good start. You want it to hit yellow only for the absolute loudest part of the track. The key is to keep an eye on those levels while recording, as DJ’s tend to to get louder as the set progresses. Avoid the red at all costs since digital clipping sounds terrible.
  2. If you’re simply making a mix to post online and not having it sent out for post-production (audio mixing/mastering), 16-bit is fine.
  3. NO. Shut off any auto gain/limiter functions. Auto-functions have a tendency to squash transients and can make your recordings sound flat, even muddy.
  4. No need to use Audacity if you’re recording in Serato. Audacity is simply another means to record a signal. While it does offer post-production tools, you can always import the recording from Serato to Audacity if wish to apply processing. That said, I would keep the recording dry unless you have a firm grasp on how to properly apply post-processing. I’m not saying that to sound mean, rather, to keep your recording sounding great.

Ultimately, recording quality boils down to the mixer–the A/D D/A converters (depending on how the signal is being recorded) and the connection type–for example, 1/4" TRS/XLR will yield a better result is recording analog style.

Also, one x-factor that it’s hard for you to control is what type of audio compression algorithm is being used by the host you’re uploading the mix to. For example, mixes uploaded to SoundCloud tend to sound like hot garbage because their aggressive file compression squashes the life out of the recording–most likely to conserve bandwidth. Mixcloud, on the other hand, tends to keep the mixes sounding quite clean.

Here’s some more info about Serato recording.

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Lost in sound, sound advice - I’ll give that a whirl and that’s greatly appreciated :metal:

Have some time off tonight and can’t wait to give a go

Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, :ok_hand: