Ableton Bus/Group Tack Gain/Volume Question

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Okay, maybe a little dumb question...

I'm wondering how ableton processes its individual track volume when multipule tracks are grouped together in a bus. Like, if I have 4 tracks grouped up and one of those tracks is going over zero DB, but the bus track the individual tracks are contained in is not goining over zero DB. Is there still a chance of distortion or clipping do to one of the contained tracks going over zero DB? The bus track and master out are still not exceeding zero DB in this instance.

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Creating a group track for a number of individual tracks ( in your case 4) is like creating a master channel for those 4 individual tracks (known as channels rather than tracks btw). In your case, it could be that the overall average of the sound of these 4 channels is not exceeding 0db, despite this particular channel exceeding 0db.

It might distort a bit, but that depends on what is the sound in question, what do the other channels play, and if you have any additional individual tracks in your project.
 
Basically I have a drum bus with a little compression and a limiter on it. Inside the bus I have a drum rack channel, and multiple breaks channels. I like to smash the one shot drums into the limiter on the bus. The one shots channel will be exceeding zero DB. But no other channel is and the bus isn't either.

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You don't need to worry. Like Wes said, make sure the master is not clipping and I recommend the video he posted.
 
you can go upto +6db if you export a 32bit WAV - but there are few good reasons for doing this, and there is no point running digital channels hot, once it starts distorting it sounds terrible, no proper comparison with running analog channels hot

rendering to 16bit or 24bit you are limited to 0db, otherwise it will clip, don't export to those bit-rates any track which has +3db peaks on the master, and if you convert a 32bit file to 24 or 16 (eg burning to CD, making mp3), it will clip when converted
 
you can go upto +6db if you export a 32bit WAV - but there are few good reasons for doing this, and there is no point running digital channels hot, once it starts distorting it sounds terrible, no proper comparison with running analog channels hot

rendering to 16bit or 24bit you are limited to 0db, otherwise it will clip, don't export to those bit-rates any track which has +3db peaks on the master, and if you convert a 32bit file to 24 or 16 (eg burning to CD, making mp3), it will clip when converted

Good to know man, thanks for the info.

Only reason I was wondering is because my one shots channel was going about 2db over, but the breaks along with it weren't and the bus wasn't. I didn't wanna put a limiter on the one shots channel and also on the bus channel.... Figured it would be to much limiting going on. But I gave it a shot and it sounded just fine. The limiter on the one shots is squishing it a bit, but the limiter on the master is just catching peaks of the breaks tracks... Not turning on at all for the one shots track. So I guess I should be fine with a limiter on the one shots, and a limiter on the drum bus was well.

I was just worried about over limiting, so I figured if the one shots channel could go over zero DB with no distortion as long as the bus and mater didn't exceed zero DB, then I could get away with only using one limiter for all the drums.


I'm kinda experimenting with other drum methods right now as well, so this might not even be the way I do it in the future.

I'm trying to get a good amount of drum busses all set up and saved into a folder in my ableton library so I can just drag them into a project when I start a new one. My sample folder and my ableton library and customers racks was always a mess before when I was making tunes. I'm trying to make everything nice, neat, and labeled so I have things right at my fingertips when I work so I can keep the creativity moving.
 
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