i've got a 303, and i've had problems, even without the SP, to make my volume banging like a professional CD. people have told me i have to mess with compression and spectrum to get it louder, but no matter how long i try i still end up getting a bunch of red in the volume bar. does anyone know how to record into a audio program LOUD without destroying any quality???

help is appreciated...

Well, it's more about mixing appropriately than recording into your DAW as loud as possible. Driving levels hard works well when recording to tape, but everything in Ableton Live is digital signal. Boosting a digital signal only makes it louder not clearer, since your not dealing with signal 2 noise ratios like tape. In 24bit system you have 144 DB of sound to work with, so if you recorded in a snare and it peaks at -6db you still have 138db of signal strength in that sound, which is still way above your sound floor. Now you're left with mixing your tracks to all complement each other sonically. I'd also like to add you should mix with your levels low so you have a lot of headroom left in case you add other sounds in later or if you send it to be mastered the engineer will have more space to make your track "BANG" or whatever else you'd like to achieve. Now your levels are correct and mixed at low levels you have plenty of room to add compression if you don;t plan on having the track mastered professionally. The compression will reduce you dynamic range, which is basically the difference between the highest peak and the lowest valley in your waveform. Now you can normalize the track to 0db and it should be fairly loud.
Lastly, make sure you monitor with RMS and perceived loudness meters to get the most accurate representation of what your track sounds to the average human ear. Braaaap

One word LIMITER.
A limiter makes your song never clip, but get louder than would be possible without. Ever wonder why commercial on TV are so loud. TV stations have sensors to detect how loud stuff is and if its too loud then it bumps it down. If you use a limiter you can set how loud it will look to a meter (the output). Then when you crank the threshold this will make it louder than your set level. This is how they do it. Ableton 8 has a really easy limiter to use. Just make sure you dont go everboard, it can ruin your song.

okay, so limiter not compression for the loud. Thanks Bridge, I've never actually used a limiter. That must be how vlooper gets such dense waveforms.

Word a limiter is just an extreme compressor, usually with less parameters. Compression is used more to control the dynamics. With a compressor you can get more mojo, because you can really shape the dynamics then use make up gain and you can hear all the detail and exaggeration of your settings. A compressor does not usually have a setting for the ceiling or maximum loudness that will register on a meter. I usually compress on a bus n.y style to get my shit pumping and moving and doing all that stuff. You also get extra loudness there because you have the original track and then the layer of NY comp adds a lot of volume. Then I limit the master to just bring it together and give it that loudness. I also use multiband compression on the master with some subtle settings, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Cool thanks, that makes cents. I'm hip to mixing drums like that, you retain the attack and definition of your drums and get the pumping loudness from the compression we all like right now.

download this

http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html

its free and awesome.

Limiting tip with ableton (tho it can be adapted)...

make a rack like this on your master out...

gain utilty -> limiter -> gain utility

Bind both gain knobs (pre and post limiter) to a knob in the rack, however set post limiter gain to invert the pre limiter gain. So basically as you increase the gain on the pre, it decreases the gain on the post and vice versa.

The reason for this is because it's really hard to tell how bad a limiter is messing with your mix unless you are actually listening to it as the same "perceived" volume as when you started. If you don't do it this way, as you crank the input to get the limiter to kick in, everything gets "perceived" as louder from the point at which you started and it's hard to make a fair comparison of before and after. So what this does is it lets you turn up the gain going into the limiter, but it lowers the volume after the limiter by the same amount so to your ears it should seem the same volume wise.

What you basically want to do is to turn up gain going into the limiter as much as you can without noticing a difference in the the way your mix sounds... once you notice the gain is starting to effect the sound in a bad way, dial it back a bit because this is roughly the most you can boost the input and keep everything transparent.

Now that you've dialed in the most input boost while maintaining transparency... remove the gain plugin after the limiter, and enjoy all that extra "transparent" loudness.

Thanks Modular, I'm always trying to learn more about the engineering side of music.

Where is gain utility?

Select the Audio Effects section in your browser, then scroll down until you see Utility. There is a gain knob as well as some goodies to be used.

some great posts in this thread. Just getting into Ableton after years of FL Studio. What a phenomenal DAW.

Any tips/tutorials are welcome. I notice most tutorials for beginners are for people who have zero to none experience with making music on a computer. If anyone can suggest a tutorial series for someone who has some experience making beats please do share.