Ableton Forum

How much should I leave?
I vaguely remember reading or watching something that promoted the fact you can drive the channels quite hard and they won't clip. Does that mean I don't need to leave as much headroom.
I am currently reading 'the mixing engineers handbook' and the engineers in there say about -10db, to let any transients come through (They are old school mind you), but it was pointed out that you can go this low because there is not as much noise in new DAWs. I have read - 3db on other forums.

4-6 db is what most mastering engineers are looking for.

my $0.02 (there are people much better at producing than myself.)

drag up on the bar above the track faders so you can see the peak meters. run your track and make sure the master does not go over 0dB, that's all that really matters. I've read on here that people use anywhere from -3 to -1.5dB.

you obviously don't want it too low, that raises the noise floor, over 0dB is clipping distortion. get close to 0db, whatever you're comfortable with. you probably want to be consistent in your decision so your own tracks will sound more similar in terms of sound quality.

Need to get that sound in my mind, obviously everyone has ther opinion. Like you have said. I just want to be consistent in the way I am working.

Thanks for the help.

Clipping on tracks is OK. But don't let the master get into red. Don't. Dont!

.m

If you leave no headroom the mastering engineer will have little flexibility to work with the sounds. I second the -3 to -6 db theory, I think those are the values stated on tarekiths site.

One of Tarekiths best tips is to start with all your track faders at -12db, then mix from there.

This one tip alone revolutionised how I mix my tracks and leave mastering headroom too.

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:Clipping on tracks is OK. But don't let the master get into red. Don't. Dont!

.m

How is this ok? I thought clipping is clipping...

spkey wrote:

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:Clipping on tracks is OK. But don't let the master get into red. Don't. Dont!

.m

How is this ok? I thought clipping is clipping...

Track clipping is a artistic choice.

dysanfel wrote:

spkey wrote:

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:Clipping on tracks is OK. But don't let the master get into red. Don't. Dont!

.m

How is this ok? I thought clipping is clipping...

Track clipping is a artistic choice.

Well... Track clipping is not an artistic choice at all. Track clipping AS an artistic choice though maybe yes...

spkey wrote:

Lo-Fi Massahkah wrote:Clipping on tracks is OK. But don't let the master get into red. Don't. Dont!

.m

How is this ok? I thought clipping is clipping...

Thanks to the floating point audio engine you can drive any internally routed tracks rather hot (about +60 db in Live) without clipping.

Every track that is sent to a physical output of your audio interface should not go beyond 0 dbfs.

Best,
Nico

[nis] wrote: Thanks to the floating point audio engine you can drive any internally routed tracks rather hot (about +60 db in Live) without clipping.

Every track that is sent to a physical output of your audio interface should not go beyond 0 dbfs.

Best,
Nico

Or coming from an audio input. Track clipping whilst recording audio is a no no as well.

Or coming from an audio input.

Right.

levimoniz wrote:

UKRuss wrote:One of Tarekiths best tips is to start with all your track faders at -12db, then mix from there.

This one tip alone revolutionised how I mix my tracks and leave mastering headroom too.

I second this

+1

I actually mix upward from zero, not letting anything peak much above -12 db. Everything seems to have more room to breathe properly and every track is more transparent. I just use a bit of gentle compression on the master channel followed by a limiter to pull the mix up to level if I want to finalise the tune myself.

It all seems to work nicely in a really basic way, if I do need to send the track for professional mastering all I need to do is turn off the master fx and re-render.

Martyn wrote:

levimoniz wrote:

UKRuss wrote:One of Tarekiths best tips is to start with all your track faders at -12db, then mix from there.

This one tip alone revolutionised how I mix my tracks and leave mastering headroom too.

I second this

+1

I actually mix upward from zero, not letting anything peak much above -12 db. Everything seems to have more room to breathe properly and every track is more transparent. I just use a bit of gentle compression on the master channel followed by a limiter to pull the mix up to level if I want to finalise the tune myself.

It all seems to work nicely in a really basic way, if I do need to send the track for professional mastering all I need to do is turn off the master fx and re-render.

Exact same process here.