# What are your mix levels like before mastering?



## Tom78 (Apr 17, 2017)

Hey everyone,

I'm curious to know what levels you hit on your master bus before mastering? I started from an electronic dance music background, where loudness seemed to be what clients wanted.

I've moved very much away from this practice, and over compressing, but on some of my less epic, quieter underscore tracks, I'm struggling to make my mixes seem loud enough, especially on tracks without percussion.

I'm trying to hit around -6dB on my master bus. Perhaps my ears are still used to hearing those loud house tracks!

Thanks


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## ceemusic (Apr 17, 2017)

My source mixes are around -23, -26 RMS w/ -10dB, -8dB peaks


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## John Busby (Apr 17, 2017)

Tom78 said:


> I'm struggling to make my mixes seem loud enough


when you have multiple tracks on an album or ques for a film, then the mastering is primarily used to balance all of the tracks together, so the mix/master bus levels for each track or piece doesn't really mean too much in my opinion.
so, with underscores and/or orchestral beds not being as loud and in your face as electronic stuff due to dynamics, there is definitely a fine line where too soft is too soft and too loud is too much.

with all that said, i try to always have a peak level of -6db before mastering/limiting
i don't think that's a "rule" but it works for me


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## Joram (Apr 18, 2017)

The Meters in my DAW, which is ProTools are on K-20. That is perfect for orchestral and hybrid scores. I'd like fill my 24 bits as much as possible so I aim for peaks at 0dB. Different mastering engineers have let me know that they prefer it that way. 



johnbusbymusic said:


> when you have multiple tracks on an album or ques for a film, then the mastering is primarily used to balance all of the tracks together, so the mix/master bus levels for each track or piece doesn't really mean too much in my opinion.


You are right. 

When the tracks are used for film the re-recording mixer will balance the tracks accordingly.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 18, 2017)

I do at whatever level I like and don't have to look at meters since my monitor level doesn't change and there's enough headroom that I rarely clip the master bus since that's very loud (usually only on very transient percussion where the apparent loudness isn't as great). If I'm sending a rough mix to someone who isn't using a calibrated system then I just normalize to 0dBFS before sending it out. Mp3's get a little lower level. 

With loudness normalization it doesn't matter how loud it is and the louder the mix is, the more it'll get automatically turned down. If you want to compare your track to other mixes forget about meters or playing them at the same level. Play them at the same loudness normalized level and then see how they compare. 

Even the best converters only do around 22 bits so even if you're only hitting -12dBFS you're not losing anything so until it gets mastered and reduced to 16 bits, it doesn't really matter.


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## Joram (Apr 19, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> With loudness normalization it doesn't matter how loud it is and the louder the mix is, the more it'll get automatically turned down.


It does very much matter how loud your mix is. Digital clipping is still clipping. What you perhaps mean is that it doesn't matter if the mix is quite dynamic, since the average level is a reference for distributors (tv, film, radio, streaming services) next to peaklevels.



Gerhard Westphalen said:


> Even the best converters only do around 22 bits so even if you're only hitting -12dBFS you're not losing anything so until it gets mastered and reduced to 16 bits, it doesn't really matter.


Errrr....it works a bit different. But you are right when you mean that it doesn't really matter when it comes to noise level.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 19, 2017)

Joram said:


> It does very much matter how loud your mix is. Digital clipping is still clipping. What you perhaps mean is that it doesn't matter if the mix is quite dynamic, since the average level is a reference for distributors (tv, film, radio, streaming services) next to peaklevels.



Loudness doesn't equal level on a meter so yes, how dynamic it is. Squashing a mix close to 0dBFS won't make it any louder than something with much lower levels so it doesn't matter if you're squashing it and that'll likely only make it sound worse next to everything else. Once album-wide loudness normalization is properly implemented everywhere, the loudness war will be over. 




Joram said:


> Errrr....it works a bit different. But you are right when you mean that it doesn't really matter when it comes to noise level.



If you're only hitting -12dBFS in 24-bit and it gets brought up to 0dBFS in mastering, the same amount of signal will be present played out as if you had hit 0dBFS prior to mastering. With a 16-bit recording you can get an audible dynamic range of 115dB but that's still only equivalent to 20-bits.


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## Joram (Apr 19, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> With a 16-bit recording you can get an audible dynamic range of 115dB but that's still only equivalent to 20-bits.


I think you are misinformed regarding bit depth. Read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 20, 2017)

Joram said:


> I think you are misinformed regarding bit depth. Read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_bit_depth



I think you're misinformed. I trust Bob Katz and not a wikipedia article. Read this:

https://www.digido.com/portfolio-item/dither/

Signal to noise ratio is different from dynamic range. Yes there's only a 96dB range but you can hear music below the noise floor on a properly dithered recording.


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## Joram (Apr 20, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> I think you're misinformed.


Don't worry about me. 



Gerhard Westphalen said:


> With a 16-bit recording you can get an audible dynamic range of 115dB but that's still only equivalent to 20-bits.


Please explain why you write that the dynamic range of a 16 bit recording is equivalent to 20 bits.


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## Foni Al Foniya (Apr 20, 2017)

I think orchestral music does not require sadistic compressing, even more difficult than EDM.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Apr 20, 2017)

Joram said:


> Please explain why you write that the dynamic range of a 16 bit recording is equivalent to 20 bits.



115dB is the most you can get out of 16 bits. 120dB is what you'll always get with the signal to noise of 20 bits. I guess it's closer to 19 bits which would be 114dB. So you can get the same dynamic range with a properly dithered 16 bit recording as what you'd normally get from a 19 bit recording. 5 free bits would mean 30dB that would be lost in comparison to 24 bits so you can be hitting only -30dBFS and not lose anything if it's brought up to 0dBFS.

These numbers are all only using 6n and not 6.02n + 1.76.


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## Joram (Apr 20, 2017)

Thanks for explaining, Gerhard. Now I understand. I always make 24 bit masters and let the mastering engineer "do the math" for 16 bit releases. I prefer hi res digital audio and that is my reference.


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## Serg Halen (Apr 22, 2017)

Picks can be like -10, or -20, this is doesn't matter. I have compressor on the master, and he comress around -2/-3 db, and if i need i can up gain like example +10, or +20 db. And after compressor i put limiter just for limiting over 0 db. This setup working for all types of music, styles, genres, whatever.


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## Tom78 (May 11, 2017)

Sorry for the late response on this thread. Thank you all for your advice. I think I'll be reading a little more about K-20, and experimenting a little more.


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