Hello

I want your opinion, on one of the streaky video courses I did, he advises setting all tracks at -9DB to allow for headroom with mastering etc.

Do you do this or do you follow another rule?

 

You could make it more if you wanted to. You will see some mixers do -6dB, -10dB, or even -12dB. For purposes of following the tutorial, I would go with his -9dB. But that number is somewhat arbitrary, also. In Logic, if you select all the channels; you can go to the region inspector and apply -+ gain by just typing that numeric value in. You are just giving yourself room to work, and also getting your faders back to unity. Or as close to it as you want to.

You are watching Deep Dive? For Logic, that is a good "course".

 

I've never heard of that rule. I don't follow that kind of mixing/mastering rule at all. Your own material should be the real determining factor for this, not a tutorial.

 

As I've already said in another thread, if a mastering engineer doesn't know how to adjust the level of a track, he isn't worth being called an ME.
As long as it's not clipping you can use any level up to 0dB FS (16 or 24bit). If you export at 32bit FP you can go as high as you want (just stay below 1.5kdB ).

But @clone is also right by saying

 

A mastering engineer's role includes ensuring the tracks on an album have a consistent balance and sound quality across the board. This involves adjusting levels, applying equalization (EQ), and managing dynamics to make sure each song fits well with the others on the album, providing a cohesive listening experience. The use of EQ, such as tilt EQ, can help balance the tonal characteristics of the tracks. Also, maintaining headroom is important in mastering to prevent clipping and allow for dynamic range, ensuring that the final product sounds great across various playback systems.

But you don't even need the mastering phase for that. Let's say you've over-listened to your track, and then the next morning you wake up wondering why there's so much high end on it. Then you'd need to use a tilt EQ too, so you still need that headroom.

etc.

 

In the course, all he is doing at that stage is just bringing in stems, first listening to the project, organizing his session with colors, filenames, grouping instruments together starting with his drums group, and establishing that none of the channels are individually clipping, and also the entire project is not clipping. (which it is to start off with).

He drops everything across the mixer down to a level where every channel fader is the same, and creates headroom to work and know the project is not clipping when summed. it's also to show how you can do a lot of your preliminary mix by using the "Clip Gain" in the Logic Region Inspector. This step in his process is before even adding a single plugin.

It would really help to watch it before discussion of his processes. The question as asked, is not correct in the first place. He does not end up with a -9dB track. He moves the faders to set preliminary levels. That is like video 2 of 25 or something. The folder it is in, is literally "Let's Get Started!".

 

Last edited: Mar 13, 2024

I'm doing the same, but this individual level can vary (I mean the more sems the lower their level has to be to avoid clipping). But when it comes to mastering just a stereo mix, you don't need any headroom, you can easily do peak gainstaging to avoid clipping.

 

the move he is asking about is very early in his workflow, and it is preliminary gain staging. The course he is asking about is "Mixing Deep Dive", and is based on doing a client stem mix. He pulls every fader down so he can have the entire project playing at its loudest points, summing, and not clipping the master stereo output. He even quickly explains the math how to subtract x# dB from current. It just so happens that -9dB was where he could preliminarily set the faders to do that. He is not suggesting it as some "youtube influencers rule of thumb". It's before he even begins to cover the fact Logic's channels can be set to Pre-Fader or Post-Fader; or how you can clip your audio pre-fader in Logic and never even see it happening.

The signal flow of Logic's channel strip is not the way everyone always think it is. The signal enters the channel strip at the top, but then it hits the fader next, and then returns to top, then flows back down the channel strip. Moving the faders is not going to change anything about the signal which is already clipped by then. And so we are left using input trim, but in Logic we use the per-region gain value we can set in the Region Inspector of that channel. If you do not switch back and forth from pre to post fader, you'd never visually notice your input signal is already exceeding 0dB.

It's easily one of the better Logic-based courses I have watched. This "9dB rule" is more of a clickbait subject than anything he says in the videos. It's the audio equivalent of watching a cooking recipe video, getting to the part about boiling water, and then making a thread implying the recipe isn't going to turn out right. The OP should watch the remaining 90%of the course first.