Everyone loves music that’s loud, loud music sounds better, and as mastering engineers it’s our job to not only make the track sound better dynamically and tonally but to make it loud enough to compete with other commercial releases.
One thing that we often get in the studio is mixes that have been run through some sort of mastering processor or have been peak limited, which you don’t need to be doing before a mastering session as the mastering will bring up the volume anyway. Head mastering engineer at Hafod Mastering,Donal Whelan, explains all in his new video blog entry. Check out the video and essential mixing for mastering tips.
Things to remember when mixing:
If your planning on getting your tracks mastered, don’t run the tracks through mastering processors. If you mix through mastering processors, maximisers or limiters then mastering engineers will require your tracks without any of these things in. If your tracks have been mixed with these processors in, the likelihood is that the mix will sound totally different when these are removed. The best answer here is simply, don’t do it.
Reasons why you might:
You want to cast a good impression. We will have heard much worse, so don’t worry about that.
You have clients, the clients may have said ‘It’s a bit quiet’ so you may want to send the band a version which is peak limited so they can listen to it against other commercial releases. If this is the case, make sure you have a copy that isn’t peak limited for the mastering session.
Maybe you’ve mixed through a mastering plugin. Please don’t do it. This should only be done if the track isn’t going to be mastered. If there is any chance this will be going to a mastering studio then if you’ve made all your mix decisions based on mixing through the mastering processor, when you take off the plugin your mix will change completely. It’s good practice to do your mixing with a clear mix bus.
Mixing like this also leaves you with no choice, if you’ve mixed through the mastering processor then you can’t take it off because the mix changes too much, so you’ve taken away the choice of getting it mastered properly.
There is no need:
There is so much range in a 24bit system that you can afford to peak really low and you’ve still got plenty of dynamic range, so there is no need to go anywhere near that 0dBFS.
Another reason is you want the finished product to be loud, so you may want to get it up to where the mastering engineer would want to have it, that doesn’t matter. If your mix comes in peaking at -10dB then we will just boost it up to the volume we want it in the end. If you make the mix louder than the master needs to be then you’ve squashed it more than it needs to be, so that’s another reason why you don’t need to.
The chances are that mastering studios will be able to do the peak limiting better, they will have better tools than you have at your disposal and more experience at doing that, so there’s no need!
Bad things WILL happen:
If you peak limit the mix then the mastering engineer will need the mix without the peak limiting or mastering processor, this means a lot of time spent getting hold of the mix, and sometimes it isn’t possible to get hold of the mix without the mastering processors.
When using EQ with a track that has already been peak limited, the track will be pushed into the red due to distorting of the signal as it has been phase shifted, and will have to be peak limited again due to this.
Peak limiting basically restricts what we are able to do with it. Peak limiting should happen at the last stage before the sample rate conversion. Peak limiting means there are compromises in mastering…to the good news! (below!)
The good news:
Almost all the great records were mixed this way, traditional mixing has been done for the last hundred years with all the dynamics in tact. Pull down all your faders, start your mix with loads of headroom. Keep an eye on your output meters, make sure there’s loads of room there. You may have to work harder, but it’s good work, it’s satisfying work! If you can get a mix with dynamic range that sounds fantastic, it will go away to mastering and come back sounding even better.
Mastering World Blog 