Someone explain a legit technical why you'd mix to anything other than 0dbfs.

Go on. I'm waiting

Read this article: http://transom.org/2015/the-audio-p...de-to-loudness/

It's more about having a consistent playback level on devices, no matter what is being played.

Also: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/fe...oudness-war.htm

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Originally posted by DJ RANN Someone explain a legit technical why you'd mix to anything other than 0dbfs. Go on. I'm waiting

Are you referring to my post or someone else's? And if you were asking me that question, were you asking why gainstage to a few db under 0db to prepare it for mastering? It's for safety's sake, ME's always ask that x-db amount of headroom is left for them. I don't ever put a limiter on the master bus of any premasters, I keep a close eye to see what the max peak is and gainstage the song so that the loudest peak doesn't exceed what the ME says to leave for headroom, the amount of headroom needed by the ME is an arbitrary number, it's just so the ME doesnt have to deal with any clipping. Yes you could limit it but why would you put a limiter on the master bus of a premaster, just to turn around and send it to a ME who will do the master bus limiting? Makes more sense to let the ME handle limiting on the master and just gainstage it properly for him.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN Someone explain a legit technical why you'd mix to anything other than 0dbfs. Go on. I'm waiting

Mix into +1 db, it sounds better.

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Originally posted by Mel David Read this article: http://transom.org/2015/the-audio-p...de-to-loudness/ It's more about having a consistent playback level on devices, no matter what is being played. Also: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/fe...oudness-war.htm

Thanks Mel but it was facetious and rhetorical question.

The answer is there is no good reason to mix below 0db, unless as Dizzy alluded to, your chosen mastering engineer wants it.

Even then, I really don't get it - If you send them a 0dbfs mix which has been properly mixed on a calibrated system, what is the possibly scientific logic stopping them from taking that file, poppin it in to their 32bit floating point environment and dropping the gain by 3db or 6db if that's who they like to work?

However, if you mix to say -3db or -6db, you're printing the file, with the relative noise at that -3db or -6db point, which means if they then maximize or makeup gain or raise the volume (whatever to get you to 0db) then they are raising the noise floor with it and effectively introducing more noise than.

Personally, I think it stems (soz for the pun) from mastering engineers receiving brickwall limited, clipped peaked files that were a pain to work with so they told these idiots to mix to -3 or -6 as they can at least work with that headroom.

But if I sent a file that was properly mixed to be mastered, and the ME asked for it -3db lower I'd tell him to give up the day job.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN But if I sent a file that was properly mixed to be mastered, and the ME asked for it -3db lower I'd tell him to give up the day job.

The few times I had something mastered, and the engineer asked that the level be -6db or whatever, I always wondered why they can't just turn the gain down themselves, that's what I'm gonna do before I send it. Next time I shop around for mastering, which I'm doing now, I think I'll avoid the ones that require the mix to be below 0db.

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Is Raphie purposely staying away from this thread?

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What's the question again?
Also what's the purpose?

Mastering is NOT about levels, It's also not about loudness.
It's about a great ear, in a great room, with world class monitoring, pointing out what you are missing in your bedroom or while mixing on HP's
Every mix (and arguably genre) has it's loudness sweetspot, going beyond that point will sound sub optimal, distorted and squashed.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN Someone explain a legit technical why you'd mix to anything other than 0dbfs. Go on. I'm waiting

intersample distortion would be a good one. I can list a bunch of others but i think that pretty much satisfies legit and technical.

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Originally posted by Looney4Clooney intersample distortion would be a good one. I can list a bunch of others but i think that pretty much satisfies legit and technical.

Bring it my biarch.

No clipping = no legit reason. And even if the MA wants it lower then just reduce the master on your finished file by that amount and print. The entire point of gain staging is to get the highest level and lowest noise floor without distortion. It's bonkers to try to mix to say 80% of you available headroom when there's an inherent relative noisefloor.

Following this subject and please guys, keep it going. Attempting to learn about this as much as possible..Which, prompted me to do some research.
I read an article at SOS and it spoke mainly to a mix rather than a master however, it was all lead up. From what I am taking in is that both L4C and Rann both have valid points at the same time, this article spoke of the difference in headroom achieved from a 32 bit - 64 bit Daw & analogue system. All were different.
Needless to say, the interest I have in this is the whole gain staging topic. This article seemed to agree with Rann in the fact that people do not realize that just turning things down can eliminate alot of problems. Using tremendously high level signals in a mix can lead to issues in the mix.
Is this a correct assessment? Or did I just troll the fuck out of this thread..lol

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