pre mastered mixing levels...

[jkhuri44]

hypothetical question...

when mixing a dynamic tune, with sections of near silence, very large and heavy bits, and moderately soft bits...

what is a good ball park figure to work with in terms of volumes?

sure, i know loud and heavy bits should be hitting as close to 0 as possible...but is it a good idea to have things in the -20 dB areas at all, or will they get lost on average playback systems??

also..

if i have an ambient tune in close conjunction to a loud one, should I be mixing that ambient tune "softly" ie...no louder than -15 dB, if thats the way i want to hear it? or should i be mixing it to 0dB and let the mastering engineer set its final volume during the compilation stage?


these might be silly questions..but im confused, hehe

[Chris H]

For starters i try and mix a tune the way i want it to sound finished with respect to quiet sections compared to loud sections. When mastered well, the song will retain the same sence of louder and quieter sections even though the dynamic range will be different.

Something i have heard a bit of latley is over squashed mastering resulting in the song sounding smaller in the rocking out section than in a quieter bit that actually sounds like the song all of a sudden opens up and sounds bigger, because it is not pushing as hard against the peak limiter as much.

Also i have been reading a few respected opinions on the web that think it is a good idea to mix to a lower level in the box as this helps with digital summing and benefits of headroom when adding eq and plugins etc. Can't say i have heard great improvement in doing this exept it is a better approach than putting a limiter on the mix buss when bouncing a mix. If you are doing a mix to 0 say for a quick reference master, i set the limiter in logic to minus point 3 of a dB to avoid the possibility of distorting the CD player.

Generaly i will mix a song to about -10 dB on the peak meter and retain the dynamics of a natural performance. If a quiet section was recorded to sound too quiet then i will automate that section to sound as i like it.
Also i pick a mix as areference when doing a bunch of songs from the same artist or recording session, so the songs have continuity with respect to sounding louder or softer. The final flow of one song to the next can be worked on during mastering the finished mixes.

[heathen]

In the days of mixing to 1/4 or 1/2 inch tape from memory a good level was around -7 to -5 vu with a few higher peaks occasionally, with digital it is very important to leave a few DB of headroom. Going to Zero is not needed at all, it is actually detrimental as the first thing the mastering guy will most likely do is bring the level down several db so he wont overload his analog chain, thus truncating the bit depth on your track.

Keep your final mix levels around -7 to -3 dbfs and -20 to -16 rms and you'll get a superior master if its a great mix, as Rick always says"Ya cant do what I do at home", they have the gear and the experience.

Gain staging is extremely important too as internal clipping will 99% sound pretty shite and cause other problems in different playback environments such as radio.

Also if on mixdown your going out through an analog eq or comp and back in through your converters, alot of average quality converters will start to clap out in the analog front end way before zero.

Being conservative with compression and stereo mix levels will generally get you a louder master with more dynamic content, compression and poor gain staging cannot be undone.

Every song or album has a loudness potential based on the dynamics and freqency content, a good Mastering guy will/should not go past this level unless pushed to. So many great records have been destroyed recently by clipping and going past this loudness potential.

[jkhuri44]

thanks for your replies dudes.

will go on mixing as planned....BUT..make sure im below -3 :)