Ableton Forum

I find a lot of conflicting info regarding this, and I'm sure there's no specific rule, but I would like to have some guidelines to follow. Basically I want to make sure I'm not making these values too high, and thus adding unneeded compression to my mix.

As a note, the genre of music I'm relating this to is hip hop/electronica, or any style with a prominent kick drum and bass.
Also note I'm using Live's built-in peak meter levels to find the peak db levels of each track (and the master).

Ok, so my questions are:

For Mixing:

1) What should the kick drum peak at? Also what of other percussive sounds?
2) What should the bass peak at? (although the bass doesn't really "peak" but you know what I mean!)
3) What should Synth Pads peak at (I've read varying answers from -12db to -18db)
4) What should piano or guitar peak at?
6) As a general rule, any sound that's not a hard quick attack like a kick drum, what should that peak at?


For Recording:

I've always thought for recording you would want to record as loud as possible to get the best signal-to-noise ratio, but I've also read conflicting info here. Also sometimes you can't play the whole part ahead of time (or if improvising, simply don't know what you will play), so how much headroom should there be?

Also, when adjusting a recorded sample in a mix, should its volume be changed through the clip's volume, or through the channel fader? Is there a difference in quality?


Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me with this, and perhaps provide a good sticky Also I thank Tarekith in advance

First off, remember that most meters use the top half for only about 12 dB of range.

For recording at 24 bit, you just don't want to clip the converters. With even an ok modern ADC you have about 100 dB of useable dynamic range, so even peaking at -20 dB FS and averaging at -40 dB FS is not a problem if you have a good signal. With the old 16 bit systems everyone wanted to record hot to stay way above the noise floor. Not needed anymore.

For mixing, whatever sounds good that is not too hot or too low. Get a good sounding balance, and let the mastering engineer make it loud. Peaks at -6 dB FS to -12 dB FS are fine, and averages as low as -20dB FS, or -30dB FS are fine too.

Hope this helps.

So - my experience of kick/bass oriented music relates to trance/psy. The peak level of the entire tune is determined by kick and bass, so these tend to peak at around -6db, though with 32 bit internal format the exact level is unimportant so long as it doesn't clip. As rough rule of thumb, I load up spectrum onto my master channel, choose the maximum freq resolution and fastest refresh rate. Then solo the kick and bass parts in turn. The loudest frequencies of each (which in my case are around 50hz for bass and 90 for the kick) should be about the same level. I make them interact nicely before adding more parts.

(I also write dnb these days, in which case my sub bass sine wave is waaaay louder than the kick, like a big spike in the spectrum, maybe two if I have an upper octave of sub as well. This may be more down to my lack of experience with the genre than anything else).

Everything else just goes in where it sounds right; usually highpassed, and almost certainly a fair bit quieter than the kick/bass.

Also, when adjusting a recorded sample in a mix, should its volume be changed through the clip's volume, or through the channel fader? Is there a difference in quality?

No difference in quality, it's down to your workflow. Do you want to change the volume of that one sample or the whole track? I usually keep it to one sample per track anyway, so I can change fx on each sample without affecting other samples. Which means I rarely touch clip volume levels.

Also of course, clip volume is pre-fx and channel fader is post-fx. Though you can use utility to change the volume of the entire track pre-fx. Again I do that a lot.

ciw summed up most of my thoughts too. There's really no way to set specific goals like this (in terms of dB values) when it comes to a mixdown. Generally my kick and bass will be between -12 and -18dB, but it depends on the actual sounds too. I think the main thing to focus on is to get nice and balanced sounding, and just make sure it's not clipping the master channel at all. I try and aim for about 6dB of headroom on the master when everything is properly mixed. It's just a rough guideline though, a little more or a little less won't hurt anything either.

WOW! Just wanted to send a very belated **Thank You** to you guys for stopping my anxiety in its tracks regarding my mixes! Working on my first LP now (3 years in the making, oy!), and the mixes have been feeling really great, something that didn't happen when I mixed my EP's back in 2010. I was concerned, though, when I was seeing that the master dB levels weren't hitting anything above -8dBs. Of course, part of me was ready to throw the iMac through a window in frustration (LOL), but now that I'm seeing the generalized levels for a proper EQ'ing are exactly where I've got them, I'm feeling alot better. Really excited to send this baby to whichever Mastering house I end up working with now. So thanks again!