When I started producing I was told that you should always mix with some headroom in order to avoid clipping. If I were to start with the kick at 0db then the minute I added a second element such as a snare the mix would start clipping. It always made sense for me to lower the faders in the mix and then increase the volume using a limiter during mastering in order to get that 0db hit from the kick.

Then again I've heard and seen some pretty weird production methods. Deorro who went to my high school and came from the same city as me mixes with nothing on his master. He self taught himself almost everything since he was homeless at a point and didn't have money to afford wifi to watch tutorials.

after hearing Flux say some of his tracks go into the red, I just do whatever sounds good now.

This is only fine when you are working in 32 bit floating point or if you want to ruin your music before it is finished.

When I mix my songs, I bring up the kick so it has 12 dB of headroom. When all faders are brought up, I usually end with 3-9 dB of headroom. I take care of the final loudness while mastering.

Well that's a bit harsh... No faith in my taste?

I don't know your taste, no comments on that. 

But clipping the sound into the red is adding distortion. Is it your purpose to add distortion while creating the song? Distortion can be a good thing when done on purpose, but just sending channels into the red sounds like a broken amplifier.

I was just refering to the basics of audio production, no personal insult intended.

Gain staging is the process of managing the relative levels in a series of gain stages to prevent introduction of noise and distortion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_stage

https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep13/articles/level-headed.htm

Quote from: Lydian on January 14, 2016, 08:53:22 am

When I started producing I was told that you should always mix with some headroom in order to avoid clipping. If I were to start with the kick at 0db then the minute I added a second element such as a snare the mix would start clipping. It always made sense for me to lower the faders in the mix and then increase the volume using a limiter during mastering in order to get that 0db hit from the kick.

Then again I've heard and seen some pretty weird production methods. Deorro who went to my high school and came from the same city as me mixes with nothing on his master. He self taught himself almost everything since he was homeless at a point and didn't have money to afford wifi to watch tutorials.

I love Deorro! Have you had a chance to check out his interview at Ignorant Philosophy?

I recently learned that the way you master/mix/produce is completely up to you. I always thought it was good to leave some headroom but after hearing Flux say some of his tracks go into the red, I just do whatever sounds good now.

I actually haven't seen that interview. It's amazing to see how he blew up. He dated my sister and used to come over to my house when I was real young. (6-7 years old) We just called him Eric though. Never thought he would end up getting big and blowing up. Back when he was Ton!c he would trade CDs with my sister and we would listen to them in our spare time.

Here he was.



I feel like there are two ways mixing & mastering. You have the people who are very strict with keeping nothing on the master at all times and then you have the people who do both simultaneously. I know that madeon and zedd have mentioned that they mix with stuff on their mastering chain.

So what you're saying is that when you look at professional tracks, you see that they're hitting at 0 dB or close to it all the time. That's definitely true, but that's probably not how you should mix down your track. I say probably because it's really up to you - there are tons of different ways you can mix your track while you're making it.

Generally, you want to mix your track with extra headroom. Whatever the loudest elements of your track are will be mixed the loudest (duh), and you can decide what decibel level that is. I generally mix my kick and bass, the loudest elements in my tracks, at -10 to -12 dB. Then structure everything else around that, but quieter.

The reason you see the professional tracks hitting at 0 dB isn't due to mixdowns, it's due to mastering. Tracks that have headroom after mixing can be brought up to 0 dB using compressors, limiters, etc. Basically making the track loud+other tweaks to eq, compression, and other things. When you master, it's probably a good idea to do what you've been doing in listening to pro tracks, since that's a good reference to how you want your final track to sound.

Of course, there are exceptions - I remember reading GTA had everything in their song Saria's Turn Up clipping like crazy during the mixdown and they just slapped a limiter on it and called it a day. That sounds fine too. So I guess just experiment and see what works for you.

Guys, does it really matter? Everyone of us has a big volume knob on a soundcard, so listening levels are not the issue. We all throw the result into a limiter, so output loudness isn't effected by this at all. We don't produce so delicate and quiet music bitdepth would become an issue, so why to worry? As far as it's not clipping on the master (preferably not even on tracks), I'd say it's ok.

Only problem you might have is if you rely heavily on track's meters without actually reading their value. Then you might wanna make a good habbit so you don't get lost. But otherwise, no stress.

Guys, does it really matter? Everyone of us has a big volume knob on a soundcard, so listening levels are not the issue. We all throw the result into a limiter, so output loudness isn't effected by this at all. We don't produce so delicate and quiet music bitdepth would become an issue, so why to worry? As far as it's not clipping on the master (preferably not even on tracks), I'd say it's ok.

Only problem you might have is if you rely heavily on track's meters without actually reading their value. Then you might wanna make a good habbit so you don't get lost. But otherwise, no stress.

This pretty much. It really doesn't matter what levels ur at, just make sure u don't clip (if unintended). Srsly, you can put ur kick at -10000 and just bring it back up with a limiter. Don't really get why this is even a discussion hahaha.