Mixdown to Mastering

Performance & Techniques Music Production
1

Mixdown to Mastering

I have a question upon mastering, so it is advised to have some headroom before mastering a track; let’s say -3 to -8 db, but my question is when we bounce our track as a .wav file for mastering the way we give the headroom is actually mixing the track to fit around those db’s or simply lowering the master channel fader down to achieve that headroom?

2

You shouldn’t be pulling down the master channel fader, because the mixdown is still going to be the same relative to itself no matter what the master channel is at. So if you mixdown is peaking and distorting for example, lowering the master channel doesn’t fix the initial problem.

3

And I say usually shoot for between -3 to -6db of headroom

4

Thanks Jason, also another question if you don’t mind answering, nothing on the master channel for the mix down? I know some people mix into mastering chain but it sounds weird to me, so I try to mix with nothing on the master channel.

5

Yeah, I wouldn’t have anything on the master channel myself as far as anything effecting the dynamics of the track (compressor, limiter and so on).

6

Thanks a lot for the answers.