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Originally Posted by joshelevator  is the area of 8.4 khz a known area for problems? i recently had some 808 hi-hats loud in the mix. i had cut everything below 6 k so they were nothing but high end which sounded good in the specific mix. i also had them loud-above the mix a bit. the master sounded great on cd but the hi-hats jumped off the vinyl in a way the annoyed me. |
By the time you get the level right there will be distortion on the hi-hats. No way around it. It's part of the sound that people seem to like but could be perceived as increased level. My comment on mental calculations alluded to this. I'll let the hi-hats distort a little but I won't let a voice do it. No one likes that. You can guess at this by keeping a careful eye on the current meter.
The amount of distortion on playback has almost as much to do with the dynamic behavior of the high end as the frequency content. Very highly dynamic material won't cut as well.
It's counter intuitive but a peaky and bassy bass drum can increase the high frequency distortion. Low end causes large swings (velocity) in the groove. The high end causes small squiggles (acceleration) within the large velocity swings. This stuff is hard to track.