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How to find track volumes to mix stems with?

H

Hypex

Mega Producer
Hi there. I've been playing around with stems lately and found the track samples all distort when mastered together. That is leaving them all untouched. I had hoped being stems the samples would be rendered post fx with all volumes applied so when mixed together again the master sits at the right volume. I found this was not the case. I was using Reaper in 64 bit float.

The song i tested was Just A girl by No Doubt. It may have been from a game but not sure of the source. It had a midi file that had more tracks than samples included but all i got was a nice tempo map and no sign of volume envelopes. Perhaps it was the daw.

So is there any way of finding what the volumes are? I wish to use the exact levels the samples need to go back together as intended. After all if a game mixes them in real time it needs to know. ☺
 
Can you link me to where you found the stems at? If I can look at it I can tell you what you need to know.

Because the copy I have has a midi with it as well but the stems are all leveled and does not clip when playing them as a whole.

Thanks
 
Hello NewAgeRipper and thanks for your willingness to help. The stems are from this:
The Largest Multitrack Music Collection Ever! (2013)

Specifically, PACK 23. Not sure about linking to external torrents here but Goggling the above will hit it.

The following is inside.
album.png
guitar.ogg
rhythm.ogg
song.ogg
drums.ogg
notes.mid
song.ini

FYI, as an example, the drum sample takes up about half the dynamic range but there is a point that clips. As if it was there to mark a limit somehow to hold it back. Maybe just my interpretation, Audacity found it. OTOH the guitar does get pretty loud. I found my master bus was 6.4 dB over so took it down that amount and it then sounded okay. But I was unhappy with this arrangement. Since I wanted the drums to stay as they were. And mostly have the correct levels for all tracks.
 
Yeah, noticed that as well. You have to turn the wolume down by at least 7-8dB when working with Rock Band and Guitar Hero stems to make them listenable.
 
Okay thanks I'll keep that in mind. FWIW I first used an older daw that used a mixing engine which summed the output as an average so there was no distortion. IIRC in 32-bit integer. The result had to be ramped up 185% to normalize it. But it still sounded fine. That was RB3 version of "You give love a bad name".
 
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Oh, that's always tricky with Guitar Hero/Rock Band stems. What I do is import the studio version of the song with the stems into Audacity and try to compare waveforms to see if I can figure out the right amplification for each stem. Not sure if its a good method yet because song.ogg is always a mix of at least 3 stems in itself.
 
Hello somedude892. Thanks for your input. Yes I think that is a good idea and I have considered it myself. If the original song source is accurate regards to the volume it should be possible to find the right level. For example in the song above the guitar stars first aside from some extra sounds so that should be an easy fix. Just select a section and find the amplitude. Selecting the exact same section in the track stems may not be as easy but an average dB should be able to be found. For the highest dB. Which can then be used for reference. And then it's a case of the usual isolation and detective work obviously. :)
 
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