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So I recently finished a mix of tunes for a friend, and since I'm being paid quite well for it I'm looking for some advice on mixing down and exporting. The songs have all been mastered and I've been using Voxengo Span to monitor the audio spectrum inside Live. Most of the songs seem to be peaking just slightly over -3db in the output level meter, with most averaging right at
-3db.

The problem is, I'm monitoring on tiny headphones so I can't turn up the volume very loud without it scorching my ear drums, and I have a feeling that -3db might be a bit quiet upon exporting. Since I'm not having this mix mastered, I'm guessing I dont need to have the levels set at around -3db for headroom, so should I be getting them to peak just under 0 db since they're already mastered?

And would it be a good idea to put a limiter on the master just to be safe that there are no stray peaks?

yummy wrote:So I recently finished a mix of tunes for a friend, and since I'm being paid quite well for it I'm looking for some advice on mixing down and exporting. The songs have all been mastered and I've been using Voxengo Span to monitor the audio spectrum inside Live. Most of the songs seem to be peaking just slightly over -3db in the output level meter, with most averaging right at
-3db.

The problem is, I'm monitoring on tiny headphones so I can't turn up the volume very loud without it scorching my ear drums, and I have a feeling that -3db might be a bit quiet upon exporting. Since I'm not having this mix mastered, I'm guessing I dont need to have the levels set at around -3db for headroom, so should I be getting them to peak just under 0 db since they're already mastered?

And would it be a good idea to put a limiter on the master just to be safe that there are no stray peaks?

Not sure I follow this, you asking if you need a mix (of multiple mastered tracks) mastered? Or if you should master individual ones?

If you're saying they're already mastered, you can just normalize surely for those extra 2/3 dbs? If you are going to send it to someone for mastering then I think 3-6db headroom is the standard rule of thumb.

by mix i mean like a dj mix (mastered tunes edited together) for a friend to play at an event, and i'm just trying to figure out the best way to go about setting volume levels. since the songs i mixed are already mastered and radio friendly songs, does the whole aim for headroom go out the window since i wont be having this mix mastered? it's going straight to cd, so do i need the levels set around -3db or should the songs be hitting just under 0db?

when you say normalize, do you mean selecting the "normalize" option in the export menu?

Aaah, someone else will give you a better answer, I'm wondering about this now too. I'd imagine mastered tracks won't need much though- the stray peaks limiter sounds sensible enough.

I have often stuck a limiter on the whole thing, and automated the threshold/input gain as necessary as to make sure its not going over by a maximum of like 0.5db. Its a safety net for me.

Well if you've got them all mixed down to a stereo file, normalize to -.2 or something and bounce. It's not really that big of a concern if it's being played on a decent system, an extra 3 dB isn't that much louder.

SunkLo wrote:Well if you've got them all mixed down to a stereo file, normalize to -.2 or something and bounce. It's not really that big of a concern if it's being played on a decent system, an extra 3 dB isn't that much louder.

sorry man i'm a bit confused when you say normalize. do you mean use the "normalize" feature in the export menu? or are you meaning just mix the levels to around -.2db?

I don't use live but that sounds right (normalize feature). Try it out, you should end up with a file where the highest peak is at -0.2.