subsekt

Hi,
just had a conversation with a friend and even we both agree on that the final mixdown needs some headroom we are a bit confused of how much and of what.
My understanding is that the average level of the mixdown (which I suppose can be measured in rms, luv or any other timedependent scale) needs to be a good bit under maximum to allow the transients to be there without peaking. Now the confusion starts. We have been told that the people for mastering want the mixdown to be -6b, which we heard before but as it seems there is aconfusion what exactly this means. Does it mean -6db in peak (which we think is what the engineer said) which we think would mean that there is 6db of completely unused headroom. Or is it -6 well of which scale to make sure the average level sits at -6 (of whatever) allowing transients to peak.

Thanks for helping

Jens

Sorry it should say mixdown instead of masterfile

As long as you don't clip your master bus you're (almost) good . The -6dbFS is simple guidance ensuring a "safety net" so you wont clip your masterbus (Too many DAWs and meters out there show faulty information), not a solid rule. However you can still use up your internal headroom in your DAW mixer or in plugins so just relying on that the masterbus have headroom is not a fail-proof strategy. So simply; do not USE too hot the signals in digiw-orld and never clip your digi mixers and you're golden.

Internet is great at confusing people. This is a classic.

cool, thanks!

Yeah just be safe, -3db peak -6db peak are all arbitrary.
It doesn`t matter as long as you don`t clip.

Things are different in analog realm and especially analog recording mediums, in both cases with noisefloor issues you want as hot as final signal as possible without clipping.

Ok cool. Thanks for helping

Mattias wrote:As long as you don't clip your master bus you're (almost) good . The -6dbFS is simple guidance ensuring a "safety net" so you wont clip your masterbus (Too many DAWs and meters out there show faulty information), not a solid rule. However you can still use up your internal headroom in your DAW mixer or in plugins so just relying on that the masterbus have headroom is not a fail-proof strategy. So simply; do not USE too hot the signals in digiw-orld and never clip your digi mixers and you're golden.

Internet is great at confusing people. This is a classic.

So if my master channel is at around - 6-10db is it good enough to send somewhere or it's ready for digital streaming, i'm quite confused, but if you would answer this one, you would help me alooot

juodas wrote:

Mattias wrote:As long as you don't clip your master bus you're (almost) good . The -6dbFS is simple guidance ensuring a "safety net" so you wont clip your masterbus (Too many DAWs and meters out there show faulty information), not a solid rule. However you can still use up your internal headroom in your DAW mixer or in plugins so just relying on that the masterbus have headroom is not a fail-proof strategy. So simply; do not USE too hot the signals in digiw-orld and never clip your digi mixers and you're golden.

Internet is great at confusing people. This is a classic.

So if my master channel is at around - 6-10db is it good enough to send somewhere or it's ready for digital streaming, i'm quite confused, but if you would answer this one, you would help me alooot

????

Good enough to send somewhere really has nothing to do with final level.
As I said in my previous post, these are arbitrary numbers. They are there just to make sure you mix is not clipped.
If your mix is not clipped, then it is fine to send for mastering, providing the mix is mastering ready in terms of EQ balance and Dynamics.

Have you read the massive mastering thread stickied at the top of this forum that covers all of this?