What dB should your mix be at?

How Loud Should My Track Be Before Mastering? If you want to send your mix off to get mastered, you should aim for around -6dB Peak, and anywhere from -23 dBFS RMS or LUFS to -18 dBFS RMS or LUFS average.

How do you make headroom before mastering?

Watching both is the key to good headroom. You should aim to have the peak levels of your sound hitting around -9 or -10 dBFS at the loudest with the average hovering around -18 dBFS. Keep to that guideline while tracking, mixing with plugins and exporting files and you’ll never have headroom issues again!

How do I get more headroom in my mix?

3 Ways To Create More Headroom In Your Mix

1. No Room To Mix. If you don’t leave enough headroom in your DAW then you really have to where to go with your mix.
2. Turn Your Tracks Down.
3. Use Your High Pass Filter Often.
4. Cut The Ugly Low Mids.
5. What’s Stealing Your Mix’s Headroom?

What LUFS should I master to?

The best mastering level for streaming is an integrated -14 LUFS, as it best fits the loudness normalization settings of the majority of streaming services. Although other measurements like the true peak value and other metrics need to be considered, -14 LUFS is the best mastering level when considering loudness.

Can you have too much headroom in a mix?

Music is what feelings sound like. We’ll assume you’re talking about headroom on an unmastered mix that will be mastered. -12dB peak headroom is not too much, nor too little. Any reasonable mastering engineer would be happy to work with it.

What is a good Max crest factor?

In the end you’ll likely find that masters with a crest factor between 8–12 dB work well across a wide range of playback systems, all while still sounding full and punchy. It’s worth pointing out that for contemporary pop and EDM releases, it’s not uncommon to see crest factors of 5 or even as low as 3 dB.

How many LUFS do you need for mastering?

14 LUFS
The best mastering level for streaming is an integrated -14 LUFS, as it best fits the loudness normalization settings of the majority of streaming services. Although other measurements like the true peak value and other metrics need to be considered, -14 LUFS is the best mastering level when considering loudness.

What are the headroom rules for master channel headroom?

Apply the following rules on headroom for the master channel: 1.) -3dB maximum peak volume. More about the above rules will be discussed later. If you noticed some clipping on your master bus, then adjust the master fader by lowering it down. But always remember Rule#1 and Rule#2.

What should be the peak level of an audio track?

As a rule; the peak level of individual tracks should not exceed -3dB to have some little headroom for the track. As a definition, peak level or amplitude is maximum volume level detected on the entire track. The audio track also has its own average level. There is where most of the track volume settles.

Why is the kick drum channel red on my level meters?

The kick drum channel is clipped at +1.3dB and the level meters indicate it as red. It exceeds the maximum allowable level of 0dB. As a rule; the peak level of individual tracks should not exceed -3dB to have some little headroom for the track. As a definition, peak level or amplitude is maximum volume level detected on the entire track.

What is Rule 3 of the master channel level meters?

Rule#3: No clipping on master channel. Most DAW features a master channel level meters where this is the summing volume of all the tracks in your mixing projects. This should not be clipped also or else serious distortion problems can occur later (such as in mastering).