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I've been reading a lot about compression and limiting and whatnot in order to gain a more solid grasp of mastering, and I had a weird idea: What if I set my PC volume (how loud the speakers play) to about 150% of my normal listening/mixing level while lowering the peaks of all of my mixer tracks, resulting in a song that sounds (with my PC volume still turned up) like it's at a normal listening volume. When I turn my PC volume back down to normal levels, the track sounds quiet, but it's mixed so much better than I could ever have done at a louder volume setting for my computer.

My reasoning behind this is that it leaves about 6 dB of headroom as I mix, but it still sounds great in my ears. When I want to export the track to get mastered, I can simply export it as it is, because with the above method, I already have plenty of headroom for the audio engineer to work with. I found that it is much easier to balance the levels of drums, bass, synths, white noise, everything, just because nothing is being crushed to shit. The only problem is that opening new instances of certain synths, particularly Massive, can blast my fucking ears out if I'm not careful about making them quieter before experimenting.

I should also add that I throw on compressors on individual tracks as I go to maintain a balanced spectrum... All I have to say at this point is that my mixes have sounded much more warm and beautiful after using this technique.

What are your thoughts? Is this a good idea, or does it actually do no justice to the song, and it's all in my head? Am I full blown retarded?

yes

Yeah, you're dead on mate, that's how most of us do it (that or just turn up the monitor volume). Throw a limiter on the master if you're worried about blowing out the speakers, might even set the ceiling to -4 dBs or something. Just watch it every now and then to make sure it isn't limiting the track except for those loud peaks you described, otherwise you're gonna fuck up the mixing if you do it with a limiter on.

Maxxan wrote:Yeah, you're dead on mate, that's how most of us do it.

So I'm not even original... Hehe well thanks, now I feel better

Flywheel wrote:

Maxxan wrote:Yeah, you're dead on mate, that's how most of us do it.

So I'm not even original... Hehe well thanks, now I feel better

Yup it's good practice

nah mate, you dont want the speakers too loud as they use too much eclectrocity and can burn out (with actual fire)

so if i were you id turn shit down and then just clip each channel for some nice saturation. It looks cooler then too with all the red flashing bulbs

skimpi wrote:so if i were you id turn shit down and then just clip each channel for some nice saturation. It looks cooler then too with all the red flashing bulbs

You generally want to avoid clipping. If you want saturation, use a saturation or soft-clipping plugin. Check the moneyshot thread.

Leave your master fader at 0, and turn down the individual channels. See how your mix improves.

jonahmann wrote:

skimpi wrote:so if i were you id turn shit down and then just clip each channel for some nice saturation. It looks cooler then too with all the red flashing bulbs

You generally want to avoid clipping. If you want saturation, use a saturation or soft-clipping plugin. Check the moneyshot thread.

Leave your master fader at 0, and turn down the individual channels. See how your mix improves.

Judging by the first part of his post it sounds like he was joking

Why am I still not sure?

Weird thread. I don't really understand what the OP is trying to achieve. Surely just mixing and leaving a few db of headroom should be fine. Most people have volume controls on their DAW, audio interface and monitors. So setting a good listening volume shouldn't be a problem.

By mixing too quietly you're reducing the resolution and raising the noise floor of your master. Might as well make as much use of 24bit audio as you can within a few db.

Welcome to gain staging! I have a template project with all the faders down aprox 12db each apart from the master out which is at unity gain (0db).

VirtualMark wrote:Weird thread. I don't really understand what the OP is trying to achieve. Surely just mixing and leaving a few db of headroom should be fine. Most people have volume controls on their DAW, audio interface and monitors. So setting a good listening volume shouldn't be a problem.

By mixing too quietly you're reducing the resolution and raising the noise floor of your master. Might as well make as much use of 24bit audio as you can within a few db.

Noise floors doesn't matter nearly as much in electronic music as live recorded music. And with the internal fader resolution of modern daws it doesn't really matter having a low level mix. I do get your argument though

Depone wrote:

VirtualMark wrote:Weird thread. I don't really understand what the OP is trying to achieve. Surely just mixing and leaving a few db of headroom should be fine. Most people have volume controls on their DAW, audio interface and monitors. So setting a good listening volume shouldn't be a problem.

By mixing too quietly you're reducing the resolution and raising the noise floor of your master. Might as well make as much use of 24bit audio as you can within a few db.

Noise floors doesn't matter nearly as much in electronic music as live recorded music. And with the internal fader resolution of modern daws it doesn't really matter having a low level mix. I do get your argument though

Was gonna say this, however with some of these analog emulations out there I have started to have to factor in the noise floor that these create. Wish there was a way to turn it off.

Flywheel wrote:it's all in my head? Am I full blown retarded?

hudson wrote:yes

I've read somewhere before that 83db was prime for monitoring because that is where human hearing is most linear.

Depone wrote:Welcome to gain staging! I have a template project with all the faders down aprox 12db each apart from the master out which is at unity gain (0db).

Quick question, if you have this setup then start to mixdown - do you mx the faders up or down, or both? As in presumably everything will be low from the start so do you mainly bring up tracks to the forefront or do you push background stuff even lower into the mix? I know that probably sounds full-on-retard, but yeah just wondered...

i just turn down my master fader, come at me bro

Digital music has a different kind of noise floor. It's still there. When you export a track to wav audio, you basically convert each time segment (a "sample" (the number of those per second being the samplerate)) to one specific value. Since we are limited in such possible values (there's only 16 bits of those), exporting something at low volume as opposed to having your mix peak around 0 db will mean that all your values will be fitted in amount of space rather than using the entire range of values like you would when mixing at higher volumes.

As for the monitoring technique, just monitoring at different volumes constantly as you mix is generally good practice, since our ears perceive frequencies differently as listening volume changes.

remember this always in the world of audio: "if the ends justify the means"