how LOUD do you mix?

[Jaques Beraques]

The moment when I switched from recording hot and mixing hot to leave a good amount of Headroom was one of the biggest improvements I ever made.
I Mix at around -12 till -16. Its so much better for everything.

[Unclenny]

You guys use meters?

[Kadden Heart]

half question:

usually i set up my master fader with conservatice settins as i start then adjust eh master fader plugins as i go.
t-racks compressor (with almost no GR) just to set the "stereo enhancer" a little bit
liquid mix API or SSL buss compressor grabbing about 2DB GR
liquid mix SSL EQ to add like 1DB high shelf, 1DB low shelf, and maybe cut the mids by 2DB
then i put the "final plug" on to dither

usually by the time i'm done mixing my RMS is pretty high and my peaks re hitting -.2

i only do this whe it's not going off to be mastered,..but,...it appears most people think this is too high,..however i like the wya it sounds,..when i pull the master plugs off my mix doesn't fall apart,..but it doesn't glue like i mixed it too,..

i'm in a constant self-struggle of whether i should do my mixes with nothing on the master fader,..or continue as such,..

,....maybe i should make this a question on another thread....

but even in my own head i feel that peaking at -2 is too high.

[The Beatsmith]

er, -2 or -0.2?

[leebridges]

Originally Posted by xmostynx

your murdering dynamic range...

what's your point?

have you listened to any modern records? pop radio? anyone?

i like what i do. so do my clients. also...when i speak of mixing hot, i'm talking about on pop or rock choruses. in the verses, i obviously have more space and dynamic range. and on more ambient records i would guess i have a -20 to -25 RMS on a lot of sections.

i'm not sure why you have to assume what i do needs to be changed because it's not what you do. this is how i get my best results. how you do is how you get your best results. that's cool. you're cool. i'm cool. we're all cool.

[The Beatsmith]

i still don't understand

24bit has so much headroom. and numbers are numbers. as long as it doesn't clip and no intersample peaks, what does it matter if i'm peaking at -1db or -2db? why would -12 be better?

all this means is that the ME is going to have to set the threshold a little lower on their comps/limiters, or pump the input more - who cares?

[Musiclab]

I monitor softly and mix pretty loud. I use an analog console that has a pretty hot rodded 2 buss, also I'm mixing into an SSL FG384 set to a ratio of 2, with the threshold around
2:00. My mixes don't sound smashed and the rms level is usually around -20

[hurd300403]

85db

[DesertDawg]

Originally Posted by xmostynx

sorry for the confusion but i'm wondering what your master fader meters look like.

does that help?

Yes... Ok, so if it's a demo or something like that, my goal is to peak at -0.3, and if it's modern hard RaWk/nu-metal, i'm trying to get the PRMS in the -5 to -4 range. For RMS, i don't care so much about that under those circumstances. If it's another genre, then it's all a matter of what sounds good & feels right... funny how that goes, huh?

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.

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by leebridges

1. the client is going to reference other material that is mastered 2. to use up as many bits as possible...at lower gain, you lose resolution in digital, right?

I understand your first point. With many clients I'll strap an L2 on the end of the chain for their mix so I don't hear whining about it "not being loud." It gives an idea what mastering is going to do to your mix as well, but the final mix will be hitting that spot I want it to.

However, the loss of resolution--which is going to be minimal--doesn't make up for the loss of microdynamics and transient bursts that fly past the meters. Chances are portions of your audio (either freq bands or transients) are clipping.

Originally Posted by leebridges

i learned to mix under a guy that slams the 2-buss of an SSL (VU's are always in the red)....we had the 2-buss A/D's set to -23dB at one time (if that tells you how hot he mixes). if you were to look at his mixes, they look like they've already been mastered...pretty square wav-ish.

Wow. I don't like to cast judgement down without hearing the man's work, but that's not how I go at it. However, that being said, there is a time and a place for hitting the console heavy. But, generally speaking, I prefer to keep the console interaction to a minimum and keep the signal clean.

Originally Posted by leebridges

it's all gonna end up peaking at 0dB anyways...i'd rather mix it like that than be surprised by what happens when the ME gets done...and i've found that the good ME's don't mind getting something that is pretty hot already (as long as it sounds good). they're used to it.

I dunno, like I said earlier I feel something is missing when listened to at equal volumes... microdynamics and transients. Granted, those are getting pummeled during mastering, but I'd rather it happen ONCE... rather than pile compression on top of compression, distortion on top of distortion.

Keep in mind I like very clean, transparent mixes with a few elements "pushed" on the channel. I don't even hit the buss compressor very hard compared to most. 4db GR max on the buss compressor. I did a song earlier today where the buss compressor was only hitting about .75 db of GR and that was the sweet spot. Subtle, but not having it seemed a major loss, and overdoing it past that was just too much.

Ultimately, in the end if the song communicates what the client is going for and sounds good it doesn't really matter what we do... it's just a bunch of thoery and numbers. Proof is in the puddin'.

[peeder]

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.

[FBM]

Hi peeder, I agree a 100% with your post. But there are Mastering Engineers who master with the bus tracks.
Look at him:
Robert Babicz about mastering audio on Vimeo
I'm not a mastering engineer but it's seems much easier to me to have
those tracks to master or not?! Because then you can realy correct something.
Greetings David

[peeder]

Originally Posted by FBM

Hi peeder, I agree a 100% with your post. But there are Mastering Engineers who master with the bus tracks.
Look at him:
Robert Babicz about mastering audio on Vimeo
I'm not a mastering engineer but it's seems much easier to me to have
those tracks to master or not?! Because then you can realy correct something.
Greetings David

Well it all depends. If someone doesn't know what they're doing, and the mastering engineer does, then certainly it's possible to take crap off on the mix and have the mastering engineer try to make chicken salad from it.

But what I feel is that too much online production advice centers on helping clueless newbies avoid excessive damage to their material. The problem with that is the advice becomes dogma that binds people, and they find it difficult to impossible to grow out of.

Everyone out there has their biases and their formulas that work for them. But many of those formulas are based on mistaken observations. Someone is clipping a bus processor on all their mixes, without realizing it, and they decide to lower their tracking level. This stops the bus processor from clipping and they wrongly conclude they were tracking too hot. They then screech at the top of their lungs that everyone should track lower when all they ever needed to do was pull the master fader in front of the bus down a couple db. By tracking lower as a religion, they just prevented themselves from enjoying tons of analog mojo from their outboard...

There is cause and effect galore, and it's hard to measure what is success and what isn't. If you look to advice from others, you're always tempted to use their credits list as a truth quotient for their advice. But in fact I've read many false statements from people with incredible credits lists, and credits are often not so much a matter of skill as they are of human relationships.

So the best thing to do is be skeptical of everything you read and hear, and try to understand each piece of equipment on its own merits and flaws. Use test tones and RTAs and things to understand gain staging. Place most of your focus and money on being able to hear minute differences. (And put no money on things that don't actually make a difference.)

Just about everything can work in mixing, if you can learn it. For instance, multiband compression doesn't have to squash any life out of anything...in fact it can be incredible and indispensable virtually anywhere. It's just a touch too complex for some people (apparently Mr. Babicz among them) to really master how to use it. Since most people in this business have healthy egos (the more successful the larger often), oh, it can't be THEM who don't understand the processor, it HAS TO BE THE GEAR'S FAULT.

No it usually isn't the gear's fault.

[Mr. Green]

Originally Posted by peeder

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.

Good post!

[leebridges]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

However, the loss of resolution--which is going to be minimal--doesn't make up for the loss of microdynamics and transient bursts that fly past the meters. Chances are portions of your audio (either freq bands or transients) are clipping.

haha. i don't clip stuff dude. i use 2-buss processing to control all that. the consumers (and most clients) don't care at all about sonic integrity...no one knows if a snare drum is missing transients...it just needs to sound cool. and btw...do you think CLA worries about microdynamics?

Originally Posted by James Meeker

Wow. I don't like to cast judgement down without hearing the man's work, but that's not how I go at it. However, that being said, there is a time and a place for hitting the console heavy. But, generally speaking, I prefer to keep the console interaction to a minimum and keep the signal clean.

different schooling. this guy is very well respected. more than likely, you've heard something he's mixed.

[Kadden Heart]

Originally Posted by leebridges

haha. i don't clip stuff dude. i use 2-buss processing to control all that. the consumers (and most clients) don't care at all about sonic integrity...no one knows if a snare drum is missing transients...it just needs to sound cool. and btw...do you think CLA worries about microdynamics?




different schooling. this guy is very well respected. more than likely, you've heard something he's mixed.

i hate to say this, but,..
looking at your craft in such a lackluster way will only perpetuate the poor state our "sonic integrity" and further carry down to the kids who will continue to listen to earbuds blasting 126kbps mp3's all day.

regardless or not of how the consumer looks at our music,..you need to do the ebst you can t preserve that music,..if you dn't care about the microdynamics,..and snare transients, etc... then why are you on GS?
you would obviously know enough about what you're doing to continue making records to you're liking,..no need to learn anything new if you don't BELIEVE if making better music.

this isn't meant to be a personal attack at all by teh way, i just think we should care about getting the BEST possible, mix out of our stuff, whether or not only us engineers will notice it.

EDIT: i obviously don't care enough about typing to do it correctly,..i think everyone on GS has realize my completely abhorable typing skills

[leebridges]

Originally Posted by Kadden Heart

i hate to say this, but,..
looking at your craft in such a lackluster way will only perpetuate the poor state our "sonic integrity" and further carry down to the kids who will continue to listen to earbuds blasting 126kbps mp3's all day.

regardless or not of how the consumer looks at our music,..you need to do the ebst you can t preserve that music,..if you dn't care about the microdynamics,..and snare transients, etc... then why are you on GS?
you would obviously know enough about what you're doing to continue making records to you're liking,..no need to learn anything new if you don't BELIEVE if making better music.

this isn't meant to be a personal attack at all by teh way, i just think we should care about getting the BEST possible, mix out of our stuff, whether or not only us engineers will notice it.

EDIT: i obviously don't care enough about typing to do it correctly,..i think everyone on GS has realize my completely abhorable typing skills

you're missing my point. i care a great deal about how my mixes sound. i'm saying that microdynamics are not always important for the end mix to sound good. the overall mix is not about microdynamics, transients, frequency flatness, etc...to me, it's about the emotive nature of the mix. does the mix produce a feeling in the end listener? does the mix draw you to certain melodies/parts? does it do that in an interesting way? those are the things i'm concerned with. sometimes, in certain styles of music, the transients of certain instruments can definitely play a part in the mix being good, but they are not necessities. nor should you make rules about mixing...

if i were trying to tell someone what my job was, it would not include "preserving transients." look at the big picture, not the minutia. the technical aspects of a mix should serve the mix...not the other way around.

[Kadden Heart]

Originally Posted by leebridges

you're missing my point. i care a great deal about how my mixes sound. i'm saying that microdynamics are not always important for the end mix to sound good. the overall mix is not about microdynamics, transients, frequency flatness, etc...to me, it's about the emotive nature of the mix. does the mix produce a feeling in the end listener? does the mix draw you to certain melodies/parts? does it do that in an interesting way? those are the things i'm concerned with. sometimes, in certain styles of music, the transients of certain instruments can definitely play a part in the mix being good, but they are not necessities. nor should you make rules about mixing...

if i were trying to tell someone what my job was, it would not include "preserving transients." look at the big picture, not the minutia. the technical aspects of a mix should serve the mix...not the other way around.

maybe i misunderstood a bit then.
granted the overall emotion is always the biggest concern, at the same time though once you get a great mix going focusing on the smaller things can really bring it to life even more.

but,..by the same token,..CLA mixes aren't exactly the most dynamic, or "organic"
nor does he really preserve those micro-transients,..and kind of the name in mixing so.

guess maybe it's just different outlooks?

not that i'm an expert.

[AllAboutTone]

I mix very low, very loud and also use great headphones to sum up all my mixes, btw OTB

[sonicdefault]

Originally Posted by peeder

Well it all depends...

Peeder... I always like reading your posts!



-SD

[sonicdefault]

I'm glad to see so many people varying their mixing levels. I was always a little curious at the idea that once you calibrate your monitors at a certain reference level, you should stick with it. That appraoch always seemed counter productive to me. I mix at volumes all over the place to keep my mind from zoning out. I ALWAYS like it best LOUD though.


-SD

[ScumBum]

80 db to get tones , and real real quiet to set levels .

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by leebridges

the consumers (and most clients) don't care at all about sonic integrity...no one knows if a snare drum is missing transients...it just needs to sound cool. and btw...do you think CLA worries about microdynamics?

Wow. I'm speechless.

[staudio]

One good reason to leave some headroom on the master bus is that it makes it very simple to do minor level revisions like vocal up and the like. Scaling a lot of automation up and down is no fun. If you have some room at the top then just add a dB to the vocal with a gain plug or the master level of the EQ or Compressor. Simple.

[Sigma]

i used to mix at @ 124 dB ..umm yeah unfortunately

now i's a reasonable 85-90 dB..and way lower near the end

ooppps right answer to wrong question





err... -0.3 dB from full scale usually bet -12 and -10

[Knastratt]

-16 dB last project.

Originally Posted by Unclenny

You guys use meters?

Yes I do. When I'm supposed to supply the RMS.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by staudio

One good reason to leave some headroom on the master bus is that it makes it very simple to do minor level revisions like vocal up and the like. Scaling a lot of automation up and down is no fun. If you have some room at the top then just add a dB to the vocal with a gain plug or the master level of the EQ or Compressor. Simple.

I don't see why you can't make the adjustment on the bus itself. Scaling up and down a lot of automation?