V3.0C

You are doing something wrong. It makes no difference what version of Vegas you have. You are not mixing properly and watching the master meter to see where your levels are peaking.

I set the master volume of the unrendered tracks to peak at -.1 or 0 db. after redering I can put the rendered track in the same file and they will play at about -20db.

The peaks on the rendered file should match exactly the peaks on the master bus meter during preview. You haven't inadvertently pulled down the master fader, or the resultant track's level 'thin blue line', or fader ?


geoff

No. Everything that is being described I appear to be doing right.

I found the problem. Thanks.

And the problem was?

It's nice to know in case anyone else has the same problem in the future. They can learn from your solution.

Maybe it was that fader on the left hand side of the rendered mix which was set at -20dB
? Or maybe that darn master fader set at -20dB that was left over from the previous mix? Those darn faders can get you like that sometimes if you're not careful.

Vegas version certainly does make a difference whenever this question gets posted: ver 2.0 had no master bus fader or meter, making it difficult to determine an overall output level before the project was rendered. As we all know, this changed in ver 3.0 with the addition of the master output fader.

That said, I'd like to know what the fix to this particular problem was so it gets added to the forum 'knowledge base.'

;)

mo

Could you please elaborate about the Vegas 2.0 buss fader and meters (or lack of)? I swear there is a master fader and meter on the main buss. The one problem I did notice was that multiple busses would sum and you could not know what the actual output would really be without rendering - I would have to assume this is what you are talking about. This problem made using multiple busses a no-no unless I was just routing audio out to different channels of my Frontier Dakota card.

I used V2 for quite some time and NEVER had problems with the output level not being the same when rendered. Vegas 4 is much nicer in this area, but I still do not see where people screwed up with Vegas 2 unless they were using mulitple busses. I always set the master fader to "Unity Gain" and my rendered files were just as I saw them on the meters when previewing.

fishtank,

I'll gladly eat my words, but luckily my point is still valid. I meant to state "ver 1" as opposed to "ver 2" above - my mistake. There was no master bus fader/meter in version 1, and I never used version 2 (went directly to 3, where I still live).

Here's an earlier thread where this topic was discussed, and where I'm getting my own words to eat for this particular post. :)

-mo

Exactly Fishtank!!! I don't know what momo is referring too either by saying there was no master bus in V2. There has always been a master bus.....otherwise how could you mix within Vegas to begin with?

There was a bug along time ago, where rendered files where at a reduced level compared to what was actually coming from the master bus. I believe that was fixed in one of the early releases of V2, but certainly not the latest version of V2.0, V3.0, or even V4.0.

see above...

(munch, munch)... pass the salt?

"Here's an earlier thread where this topic was discussed, and where I'm getting my own words to eat for this particular post."

That was a topic on individual track metering, I'm failing to see the correlation between individual track metering and master bus metering.

Boy do I feel stupid! I took my rendered track and brought it in to a new track in my existing project. I was under the impression that it would come in normalized to 0db at the master volume I was using and I would get a realistic sample.

After hearing from you all, I checked myself out by taking the rendered track into Sound Forge and there confirmed that it was in fact what I was expecting.

Sorry for the panic!

I think there may be some kind of bug regarding this issue. I had the same problem. My audio track (song) was created in Presonus Studio One and rendered with a Fab Filter L2 on the master bus to peak at -0.3db. I brought the audio track into Vegas along with some footage. After working for a while I noticed the audio seemed low. I check the audio track and removed all VST plugins. I also checked and made sure it was assigned to the master audio bus. I then removed all plugins on the master bus. The levels on the master were reading exactly 20db less than the audio track, which was the only audio in the project. I saved the program and it hung for about 20 seconds before finishing the save. I then exited Vegas and restarted it. This fixed the problem. After the restart the track and the master meters were tracking exactly the same. So if your levels are -20db where they should be try a restart. I worked for me.

I think there may be some kind of bug regarding this issue. I had the same problem. My audio track (song) was created in Presonus Studio One and rendered with a Fab Filter L2 on the master bus to peak at -0.3db. I brought the audio track into Vegas along with some footage. After working for a while I noticed the audio seemed low. I check the audio track and removed all VST plugins. I also checked and made sure it was assigned to the master audio bus. I then removed all plugins on the master bus. The levels on the master were reading exactly 20db less than the audio track, which was the only audio in the project. I saved the program and it hung for about 20 seconds before finishing the save. I then exited Vegas and restarted it. This fixed the problem. After the restart the track and the master meters were tracking exactly the same. So if your levels are -20db where they should be try a restart. I worked for me.

This appears to be an 18 year old thread about Vegas 2. I would suggest creating a new one. We also have loudness meters in recent versions of Vegas.

I brought the audio track into Vegas along with some footage.

@EDL Of interest what file type was this audio track?

@EDL

You sure the "Dim Output" wasn't pressed?