This is a textbook example of what a well done pop/rock mix looks like prior to mastering. If you are capturing a mix from an analog source, be aware of analog to digital converters that have built-in processing which can affect the loudness, or “soft-clipping” options which can prevent your DAW peak lights from triggering giving you a false sense of safety and headroom, even though you are still essentially capturing a clipped waveform often not ideal for sending off to mastering. You do want a healthy level that is above the noise floor of any analog equipment being used, but you also don’t want to overcook the audio, which can’t be undone. If the mix is being captured from an analog source, you may want to be a bit more conservative and attempt to keep the peaks around -6 dB because some cheaper and even some decent analog to digital converters can sound a bit harsh when the very top range of the input level is used, but hopefully your ears already tell you this. Whether a mix peaks at -12 dB, -6 dB, or even -1 dB, I don’t really care, I can optimize the level of the song for my mastering chain without compromise. In other words, a high average loudness is really what can be problematic, and eventually a mix reaches a high enough average loudness where limiting and/or clipping the peak levels is required. One stray peak isn’t the end of the world, but when this happens throughout the song on nearly every drum hit, for example, it can be a problem from a mastering standpoint, even if it sounds OK at the moment. Once a peak hits 0 dBFS and becomes clipped off from its natural state, this is damage that can’t be undone.
#Max headroom song full#
It’s essentially all the same.Īs a mastering engineer, I really only care if the peak levels of an unmastered mix hit 0 dBFS (decibels relative to full scale) on a 24-bit mix file. The suggestion for peaks no higher than -6 dB was a safe and general recommendation for good reason back then.ĭigital audio has advanced by leaps and bounds since those days so putting too much thought and effort into peaking at -6 dB or -3 dB in your DAW is more or less of a waste of time. These devices were fairly primitive and didn’t sound good when the input levels were clipped or even when levels reached the very top range of the digital scale. You had to be careful not to clip the input which could easily sound bad. It’s my belief that the suggestion of having your peaks at -3 dB or -6 dB dates back to the early days of digital audio when mixes were captured on a DAT (digital audio tape) or on an Alesis MasterLink two-track recorder, for example.
Don’t use a peak-limiter or other similar plugins that prevent peaks that would otherwise reach or clip 0 dBFS by creating a hard ceiling at or below 0 dBFS.Don’t allow peak levels to reach 0 dBFS.While that isn’t incorrect, it’s also a bit arbitrary.įor the most part, following these 2 steps will provide a mix that is ideal for mastering:
Then comes the flood of varying responses, but the most common is to see somebody suggesting peaks at -6 or -3 dB. Not a week goes by where I don’t see somebody on a forum or Facebook group asking about how much headroom to leave on a mix for the mastering engineer.
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