I am new to mixing, so please bear with my explanation! *yes*

I have a question in mind related to gain staging and I can't find my answer. I have also seen many mixing videos and tutorials but still can't find my answer!

As a rule of thumb while mixing, the master output track should not go beyond -6dB (or maybe dBFS ) on the meter. So while setting up the gain for different instruments, the gain automatically increases as I start to gain stage every instrument. For E.g. - If I am only gain staging drums, setting it accordingly so that the ouput of the drum mix is not going beyond -6dB and add another instrument (say bass) then what should I do to prevent the master output track to go beyond -6dB? (because when I'll add bass, it will definitely increase the gain.

And as I tend to add another instruments one by one, the gain will increase definitely and go beyond -6dB. So my question is:

HOW DO I SET DIFFERENT LEVELS FOR INSTRUMENTS SO THAT THE MASTER TRACK SHOULD NOT GO BEYOND -6dB?

Sorry I may sound noob, but I can't get through this!

 

Depends on what you're building your mix around and what needs to be most prominent. Some mix off of the kick, some off of the snare, bass, etc. In any case I like peaks at -10db on the most prominent element or the focus of the track and build the rest of the elements around that. That way you leave yourself ample headroom.

 

Yeah, kick @ -10 is a good starting point for electronic for example.
If you're not sure wether you're leaving enough headroom for the other instruments,
you can group or buss the drums for example, so if you usually start to mix from the drums like me,
you can then lower the whole drum group if you need more headroom.
It depends on the genre and on your workflow like Catalyst said.

An advice: it's better to stay lower on the 2buss than hitting it too hard,
if you end up @ -8 no problem, at 24bit you still have plenty of headroom, and you leave enough headroom for mastering too.
A mix slammed at -2 leaves little space for the mastering engineer to work on.

btw everyone have its own workflow and habits, so follow these hints and do your own tests,
try to just make a quick premix with just levels (no panning no processing) and see how hard you can push
the first instruments you are used to handle when you start mixing before going over that -6 on the 2buss.
(then when compressing for example you have to make sure to keep the compressed level similar to the premix one)
If you always mix similar genre then you can take that values as a rough guideline for your mixes.

 

Actually, if I understand the question, it's very simple (though I'm not clear on why -6 dB is your max peak level; some people say -4 dB, some people have it down to -12 dB and I could simply point out that each song will have odd peaks and valleys, no matter how you set your levels, so that one song with the same basic structure might top out at -6 dB and another might clip 0 with almost the same levels). Set (not automate) all your levels wherever they sound good. Just worry about mixing, don't look at the meters yet. Once you have all your relative levels set for your basic mix, play it through one time and watch the output meter. Peaking over -6 dB? Pull all your faders down by -1 dB. Play it through again and knock all the faders down again by -1 dB until the peaks are where you want them. At that point, you should DEFINITELY not sweat an occasional overshoot, just keep your eyes on the output meter during the snare hits (usually, the peakiest part of a regular rock/pop/rap/country/whatever song). If it's mostly staying within the boundaries of where you're trying to peak out, you're okay.

 

Just to make sure you are gain staging each track with the fader at unity gain. I set all my faders, including the master fader at unity gain and then adjust the "gain" or trim to be around -6dB on each track. When that is done, you can mix levels with the faders. It is here that you want to watch the Master fader to stay at the level you want.

Here is a good video to show gain staging. It is for Studio One, but the principle applies to any DAW.


Mixing Video Gain staging part starts around 9:07

 

i mix everything around 0, then re-check everything so the track doesn't go over 0 and after all, select all channels and reduce by 6-7 db. so in the end the master tracks peak at -7, -6 db

 

First of all you must understand what is level.
For instance, a high pitch instrument can show a percieved low level because it has an anwanted bass, off course bacause someone do not use high pass filter.
Thats is way there are plenty plugins with a lot visual meters.
Another things to think
1 its style dependent (Dubstep have mor lows than a balad)
2 Its a question of ear and taste (so its subjective, persoanal, a question of identidy)
3 its orquestration dependent. Depends of how many instruments and conflicted frequences that amplify each other. For example a hi folk rhythm guitar probably will amplify a hihat..
4 Its a questiion of enviroment. Good headfones, monitors, visual meters and room acoustics.
5 its a question of shapping instruments. Some schools say that you must use hipass and lowpass in everything, even buses and aux channels. A good shapping with no conficted frequencies will make you instrument sound louder with lower level.
6 its a question of public or client taste. A work must have target right?
I hope it helps...

 

Having some headroom is a good thing, many plugs that you send effects too are often modelled from hardware that would work well with a average of around -16 to -18db in the real world, as tape hiss and such like isn't a problem with digital recording, there's not the need to max stuff like they used too. A top producer taught me this, and when I started using this approach I found that adding the tracks together gave me a little headroom on the output usually peaking around -6db if there wasn't anything that didn't need to standout like a explosion.
my 2 cents worth

 

Great! Thank you guys for your advises !

Thanks man! Great video... My doubts are totally clear now!

 

Try to focus first in your low end elements and get a nice balance of them, around the overall levels mentioned before.
Bass heavy stuff tends to be the range that adds more to the staging, and it´s the tricky range because you need more energy there to perceive the loudness.
Once you have a solid base with a nice headroom, you should move to other instruments, placed in upper frequency ranges. If you get a huge amount of raising gain in your master when including upper stuff, you should check for unneeded low content there and treat it with EQ. Your final gain shouldn´t be increased too much with not so overlapping material. Then, repeat the process and you should end with your meters peaking higher, but safe. Higher elements don´t need so much energy to be heard, so when moving upper you shouldn´t need a lot of gain there.

 

I also always normalize each individual track to -0 dB after recording them, just to make sure I'm always mixing tracks at their optimum levels. Occasionally, this can be a problem -- a super-soft piano might end up being much louder than a regular piano maxed out to 0, or a distorted guitar might have weird spikes that, when maxed out to 0, prevent it from getting as loud as a different distorted guitar track (in which case, I usually insert a simple Waves L1 and render that before normalizing. L1's are great for determining unusual peak spikes numerically, which you can then use to adjust the threshold so that the unusual spikes are knocked down without otherwise affecting the sound) -- but for the most part, you wind up with uniform track levels from song to song, so when you say "The kick needs to be set to -10 dB in every song", you always know you're at least in the ballpark.

 

put sonalksis freeG or any other similar tool (sonalksis freeG has a level metering) in your master (chain) and simply adjust the level with it. Overshooting the busses is no problem since your internal processing works at least wit 24 bits. Keep it simple, bro. There is actually no need to worry about that thing. Just do not forget always to have a brickwall limiter in the end of your master chain to prevent damages to health or equipment. I assume you to be working on a daw. If not, forget what i said

 

Turn shit down (the more stuff I add, the more I turn them down). That's what I do. I'm oldschool like that (setting my master fader at unity gain...and not letting my first master insert slot run hot).
Proper gain-staging and mixing FTW.

 

well man, ok but, as you said, old school. Nothing runs hot at 24 or probably more bits internal processing. Not even lukewarm. But you seem to have passion and time. I appreciate that.

 

faders acting very different in all daws ...did u heard that?? ...thats why many say a daw is better than other at mixing ...faders are of so importance you wouldnt believe it ...use fine tuning when mixing ...take your time

 

100% yes but his question was how to achieve a goal by bouncing a track not overshooting -6 db. Not how to mix properly over all.