My latest mixing problem - peak at -6db.

[AlexRusin]

In the past I used to be pretty adament that people not touch the master fader, as lowering it could lead to a loss in resolution. Or so I thought. The maths involved are beyond me (I hate math), but the loss in resolution from lowering the master fader I've been told is so damn small that's it's not even worth worrying about unless you're lowering it many tens of dB's.

So these days I generally tell people do whatever they find easier, either lower all the tracks by the same amount, or lower the master fader. Personally, I'm still old school I guess in that I never touch the master fader, I just select all the track headers in session view and lower the track volumes until I'm around -6dB. And it's worth reiterating that -6dBFS is only a rough guideline, you don't have to be at exactly that value. Anything between -12 and -3 is probably fine.

Thanks for a help! This topic cleared my mind little bit Mixing and mastering is still new thing for me, so I'm sure I'll have some question in the future.

[Dragonbreath]

Heres a good of doing things.

Dont worry about where the faders are in tersm of numbers, just move them until it sounds good. If your master is in the red bring it down. If doesnt sound loud enough turn up your speakers.

When every thing sounds good and balanced, select one track and hit "command+a"
this will select all tracks in your project. turn all of them down until you can bring you master back to the 0 position and still have -6db or so of headroom on your master

Now your ready to start your mastering.

Heres an easy formula to start you off.

Load in compressor and go easy on the ratio and threshold.
then load up and EQ and do some GENTLE changes to taste.
Slap a limiter at the end and turn up the gain till only the loudest part of your mix (usualy the kick) activates the gain reduction (your looking for about 3b of reduction)

export with normalise on and thats probably gonna sound pretty good

[Tarekith]

Thanks for a help! This topic cleared my mind little bit Mixing and mastering is still new thing for me, so I'm sure I'll have some question in the future.

These might help:

http://tarekith.com/assets/pdfs/Mixdowns.pdf

http://tarekith.com/assets/pdfs/Mastering.pdf

[AlexRusin]

Okay guys, I want to help for everybody's help. This forum is like home for my musical and producer's skills. Thanks again!

[acidpenguin]

Like Tarekith I hate maths and unlike him my understanding of all this is pretty basic.. but from what I can gather from the thread linked below it's better to track and mix at lower levels.
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... tored.html

Now, I may have got entirely the wrong end of the stick (and it's a 148 page stick at that) but personally I just find it much easier to run everything at lower levels and not ever have to think about crap like headroom.

[patrick.olson86]

Well now that I have all of this production knowledge I should probably learn how to play an instrument outside of my vintage flute

[fishmonkey]

Also keep in mind that a lot of the perceived loudness of your track will happen during that mastering stage -- as long as things sound fairly "balanced" at -6 db, it should sound pretty sweet once it gets freshened up in mastering.

a really well mixed track will require little treatment at the mastering stage. if your mix lacks power then a mastering engineer won't be able to make it much louder without changing the sound of your track a lot, and not necessarily in a good way, especially if they only have a 2-track to work off.