- If you want to reimport it and hear it play back at the same volume you heard when you exported it - the master fader at playback must be at 0.0 (as thinkingcap and split said).
- Even if you have 100 tracks that aren’t in the red, they all “add up” and it is easy for the master fader input to be in the red. Do you know about changing what the meter is displaying, in terms of input to the bus vs output from the bus?
- you can change the master fader display so that it shows how hot the summed signal is coming IN to it from your individual tracks. This is NOT affected by the master fader position, and doesn’t have much to do with clipping.
- alternatively, you can change the master fader display so that it shows how hot the signal is LEAVING Cubase. This is affected by how hot it is going into the master bus, PLUS THE POSITION OF THE MASTER FADER (plus anything you might have inserted into the master bus, potentially).
- So a couple of things you can do:
a) Don’t worry how hot the signal is going INTO the master bus, just pull the master fader down so that it doesn’t show red when the meter is set to “output” FROM the master bus (as mentioned by thinkingcap and split!).
b) Depending on how hot the individual tracks are, and how many of them you have, if you do it that way you might find the master fader winds up having to be pulled WAY down to keep the signal from clipping on the way out of the master bus.
If you find it more aesthetically pleasing to instead have the master fader parked at 0.0: route all of the individual tracks into a group channel (instead of the master bus), route that group bus to the master bus, and adjust the fader ON THE GROUP CHANNEL to control how hot the signal entering the master bus is. The best way to do this might be to have the meter reflect the output from the master bus, then just adjust the fader on the group channel up or down while playing the project until you find a good output level from the master bus.
It sounds really complicated when you read this, but it is really pretty easy to get this kind of thing going. In each instance, the goal is to make sure there is no “red” on the master fader when it is set to show output. It really doesn’t matter too much whether there is “red” showing on the individual tracks, or on the input to the master bus, at least in terms of final sound (though having signals displayed at a decent “non-red” level with the faders set not too far from 0.0 makes for a prettier looking mixer panel!).
HTH -