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

[grimtraveller]

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 ?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

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.

 

[Massive Master]

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.

 

[grimtraveller]

Are lower peaks easier to work with than say, peaks of -6 ?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Are lower peaks easier to work with than say, peaks of -6 ?

Anything that's not clipping is good. Well above the noise floor is good. One ME I worked with who used an analog signal path said a bit higher than my -18dBFS average would have been preferable.

 

[Br3n]

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?

 

[zorrofox]

if it is for streaming i bounce out at -14 everytime

 

[witzendoz]

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