Quiet Mix at Prior Mastering Stage Problematic?

  • Thread starter Thread starter LaurenceConway
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LaurenceConway

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Hi,

I have a couple of recordings of possible concern, one a folk sounding group and the other a solo acoustic instrumental guitarist. they are both rather quiet in comparison to popular music of a similar style. I have reassured myself that this is fine / even preferable for a mix at in a pre mastered state for a mastering engineer to have headroom to work with? am i wildly mislead?

Any help or knowledge greatly appreciated

Thanks

Laurence
 
You're absolutely right. A mix can almost never be too low, just too loud. Don't worry about volume at the mixing stage. I'm sure most Mastering Engineers (of which I am not one) wish more people would give them "low" mixes.
 
I have reassured myself that this is fine / even preferable for a mix at in a pre mastered state for a mastering engineer to have headroom to work with?
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In the past 16 years, I've had exactly *ONE* mix come in that was honestly "too quiet" -- And it was a technical anomaly (for some reason, -0.0dBFS was offset to -48dBFS).

And to be honest, the mix sounded just fine even with 60dB of gain added. Although I sent the engineer back to re-render anyway.
 
Thanks for the reassurances RAMI and Massive Master
 
To put it another way, a track or mix is only "too quiet" if it is competing with the digital or analog noise floor. That is to say there is too much background noise due to it having been recorded or mixed too low.

The two things to avoid are - and always were - noise and distortion. If the recording is not noisy it's not "too quiet". If it's not clipping, it's not "too loud". In practice, with good modern converters, there is enormous leeway.
 
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