Quote:
Originally Posted by DesertDawg  If it's not a demo, and it's going to be mastered, i try to peak at just a db or two below zero, so the mastering engineer's got a bit of headroom to work with (if he needs more than that, then that means my mix must suck in the first place), and in this cirumstance, i also have no goals as far as RMS or PRMS goes, since if it's going to be mastered i'll probably yank everything off the 2-buss anyway, except for a slight bit of peak limiter, if needed. |
Oh no not this again.
Sorry it's not your fault you've just been hoodwinked by people with an agenda.
First of all, mastering engineers do NOT need any "headroom to work with." That is an absolute, unadulterated falsehood. If you send them something peaking at 0dbFS or something peaking at -40dbFS or at -6dbFS they will have to do the exact same adjustment to the signal level when gainstaging their first processor. There is no difference between those three input levels for a 16bit CD, provided your noise floor isn't so truly pristine that -40dbFS peaks imply you're running out of useful bits down at -144dbFS (a 104db dynamic range very few productions approach even in unmastered form).
So why are they saying this? The ones who are saying this myth are doing so because they are fighting on the quiet side of the loudness war, and they figured if they spread this myth that mixers would stop putting limiters on (or clipping) their 2bus.
Same with the myth of taking all your bus treatments off for mastering. Don't do it! Your bus treatments that you mixed through are ESSENTIAL for holding your mix together, and the mastering engineer HAS NO CHANCE of replacing them! I just went through one of these episodes with someone who pulled all their bus processing out and there was NO WAY I could restore the mix to its original glory, and no, Bob Ludwig wouldn't have been able to either. The entire mix, every decision in it, was encoded with a special device, and damn well needs to be decoded with it too.
BUT, when you have a mix that you've done and like WITHOUT a given set of processing, don't go putting more processing on it after the fact and then hand it to mastering! Because then you're not mixing anymore, you're mastering. And you ought to leave ALL mastering operations to the mastering engineer if they are, uhm, mastering the song.
Let me emphasize:
Mixing through bus processing is not mastering and is fair game for the mixer. Mastering engineers do not need any "headroom to work with."
So go to town on your bus processing if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing on the 2-bus you probably won't know what you're doing on any of the tracks either, so who cares, your mix is going to suck. If you know what you're doing a competent mastering engineer will have no problem fine-tuning your mix while preserving all the essential character you fought and died for during production and mix.
And to answer the OP I mix through limiters with peak output set to -0.5 or -0.3 dbFS and an RMS level of roughly -11 or so, maybe some crests above it. I audition the mix at a variety of volumes, mostly 85 to 90 dbSPL, sometimes more or less. Never above 100 dbSPL though.
People who report improvement at lower levels are having gain staging problems that they should
isolate specifically rather than applying blanket panaceas.