This is a question that sounds basic but I haven’t found a definitive answer so maybe someone out there with more experience in sound engineering can help me out?
Here’s the scenario: I’ve mixed a track to my satisfaction in a DAW (Ableton) but the loudest sections are peaking at 0dB. The engineer needs at least 6dB of headroom for mastering, so do I…
Stick a utility plugin on the master channel and dial it down by 6dB. None of the individual channels are clipping before I do this.
Select all the volume sliders and pull them down groupwise until I have the headroom?
Remix it from scratch?
Some terrifically clever method that I’m totally oblivious to?
Here’s the point - does option 2 reduce the levels proportionally for each channel and will it ruin the mix? Is option 1 a safer bet? Anyone suggest 4?
Like most things it depends on lots of factors, but assuming you’re happy with your mix I’d vote for #1 - literally just turn it down.
The only time I’d want to mess with specific tracks if if there were some big transients that were inflating the max dBFS and turning down the master potentially pushed quiet parts into noise floor territory, but then you should be dealing with those transients before anything else.
Assuming you’re not clipping and the track has good SNR, there’s an incredible amount of leeway and flexibility in digital audio. As long as your track has “good bones” and whoever you’re handing it off to knows what they’re doing you shouldn’t have a problem.
One thing that is dumb with FL Studio is that all the level faders are positioned at 100% by default. Having to lower volume instead of increasing it as needed leads to mixing too loud. There’s usually a point in time when, after many tracks are added, the faders are not at an appropriate level.
Before anyone says, I know I can create my starting template(s) & save it/them, I seem to either forget or can’t be bothered… Writing this reminded me once again that I really have to do it
I did it years ago and thank myself for it every day.
Responding to the wider topic, I have a template that peaks around -12 and then a gain plug-in on my master that I just disable before I render.
In this situation, I would use bitshift gain (a free airwindows plugin) which will decimate the least significant bit of your render in exchange for exactly 6 db of gain reduction. If you’re rendering at 32 bit then this is essentially free as your theoretical max dynamic range drops from some impossibly high number to some still impossibly high number.
Category #4! I would never have thought of this approach but it sounds very sensible.
Same in Ableton. Also solved by creating a template. Early in the production I set the kick to -12dB, bass to -10 and the sub to -18. I work everything else around these numbers until it sounds balanced. It works MOST of the time - the master ends up around -4 to -2 and that’s why I asked the question. I’ve tried #2; to my ears it seems to unbalance the mix but that might just be me.
Started using this. Excellent!
As always, thanks to everyone for passing on your collective wisdom.
I’m not at ALL an experienced sound engineer, uh… But probably the easiest way to do it is take any clippers off and reduce the volume with any simple knob plugin before checking with something like voxengo SPAN for the loudest point. For things with big transients or clipped basses, I think they’re okay to use a clipper, but I would die if somebody sent me fully clipped stems, especially at -6db…
