Can there be too much headroom in a mix before mastering ?

grimtraveller

If only for a moment.....
Pretty much everything I've read about mastering indicates that the mix should have good headroom before being sent to be mastered. But is it possible to leave too much headroom ? Can the final mix level be so low that nothing can be done with it ?
 
If it's so low the digital noise floor is impinging on the audio, yeah, that would be too low. In 24 bit audio that would be really, really low.
 
Had an engineer come in once with mixes that were (to this day, a mystery why) *peaking* at -48dBFS. At first, we thought they were "blanks" but you could hear something going on. Hit "N" (Normalize) and there they were. Sounded perfectly fine. Still, he went back and exported everything again - But in a pinch, there was nothing particularly wrong with those files.

Of course, that was some sort of export error. In the "everyday" world, I get stuff in all the time that's peaking anywhere from -20dBFS (peaks - not RMS) all the way up to +18dBFS (32BFP - I'm quite certain that was another export error). There is no "normal" in this case.
 
Quite interested in this thread actually.
I tend to aim for a -24 dB integrated level but this is something I don't really pay attention to until I am getting close to what i think is a good mix.

What I find is I tend to get a small dB range around 6 to 10db is this range something that should be worried about with all the new average levels being more important?
 
You know that I never worry about the level, as long as its below 0 and there are no peaks who cares. What I do worry about is not to pre-compress the mix in any way (compression on instruments within the mix is fine) and to make sure that there is a good dynamic range going to mastering.

Alan
 
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