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In terms of headroom with in-the-box mixes it's important to realize that as long as the sum is not clipping then the final peak level is not as important as having the individual tracks actually have proper gain staging throughout - i.e. unless the mixer desires for specifically ugly clipped sound then the input channel tracks, aux returns, group busses, 2buss and all plugins should not be going into the "red" (which will vary with the DAW and plugin) at any point.
i.e. I've seen some digital mixes that peaked at say -6dBFs that actually were incredibly flat topped and distorted due to the individual tracks or group busses being heavily clipped themselves!
As long as there is no clipping whatsoever from an overloaded digital gain stage then the actual final mix's peak level setting is usually fairly irrelevant to me when mastering, as I just attenuate this level to an appropriate place so it will not overload the (usually analog) process chain that I choose to use when mastering the tracks.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
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