So my problem is that I always level my kick at around -9db , and because the kick is always the loudest sound in my mix , I always end up having like -8 or -7 db of headroom. Now the thing that I don't really understand is why most mastering engineers ask for at least -6db of headroom . When I master my tracks I can never get them to sound as loud as the commercial tracks and they always sound awful. This is the chain I use : youtube.com/watch?v=wIbp3-BI6uM. Can someone explain to me this phenomenon ? How do master engineers work with such low volume tracks ? I am really confused. I always end up boosting the levels all my tracks accordingly so that I have -3db of headroom.
Hi there, I watched that video. There are several dimensions to this. Generally, mastering engineers want headroom to ensure the mix is 100% free from clipping and a good bit of margin makes them able to do the whole limiting and gain staging process by 100%, which is kind of how kids do it. Pros don't do it like this, they do roughly 50% of the total limit and gain staging in the post mixing stage, with the intent to remove the gap between mixing and mastering that would allow the limit and gain staging to mess with the mix balance during the mastering process. This is what they mean with headroom, they don't want it at the final level, they want it at such a level that maximizing the rest of it to the final level won't require much mix balance adjustments. Essentially they just want it damn well balanced without any clipping noise present, they require a good enough monitoring solution and -process from the mixing engineer, because else they will have to spend time re-balancing the mix in order to be able to get it up to the final commercial level in an effective way. But they also do it like this so that the mastering engineer has a good understanding of where the producer, recording and mixing engineer roughly wants it in terms of power and loudness ratio, musically speaking.
As I pointed out above, please remember that power and loudness, those are separate. Increased power is the process of making sound sources stay above the perception threshold at lower and lower volumes. Increased loudness is the amplification of the signal relative to the frequency sensitivity curve of the ears. Now, pros actually do not want it powerful primarily. The reason why they want power is so that various sound sources in the mix do not keep falling below the perception threshold on moderate volumes on certain playback systems. That is an issue because it means the mix loses impact to some listeners in some situations. But pro mastering engineers only want it that powerful and not more, because they want the sound sources in the mix to have maximum amount of perceived dynamic range, so that the mix has maximum amount of "musical richness" after the final process. They want the mix to expand as much as possible in various ways on all playback systems and formats when the listeners turn up the volume.
Now I have shared two critical aspects to this. Please also note that power and loudness is important but up to a point. Because listeners know how to turn up the volume and if they do so on a mix that has an incredibly beautiful music and sound, it's enough. And this impacts more than you think. Beautiful sounding masters are not only loud and well balanced in terms of loudness and power, but they are also incredibly big and clear sounding. This is due to the following things (just a few examples):
- High quality production, recording and mixing
- High quality power, loudness, power loudness ratio relative to the particular production
- High headroom signal chain end to end which boosts the performance of the gain stage and monitoring solution and -process end to end
- Phase accuracy from using hardware
- Routing performance from using hardware
- High quality sound source tuning
- Saturation to boost dynamic range
Also, when you A/B your master against high end masters in terms of dB, please understand that these figures mean little in absolute terms. But if you deal with the signal from a volts RMS point of view, then you will begin to know how the high end pros are able to achieve the kind of perceived dynamic range we are talking about. It is already done in the recording stage. By monitoring the volts RMS against LU/perceived loudness, you have a completely different perspective on what perceived dynamic range levels you are able to achieve by using various gear and configurations. That in combination with taking advantage of the cumulatively increasing volts RMS curve using custom built gear, is what makes the difference. And all of this is the difference between the pro world and the newbie world of recording, mixing and mastering. Pros make this right in recording, newbies make this wrong in mastering. And this is why newbies struggle so much with loudness. It's a quite complex mix of paradoxes and confusions that sum up to this. It's very good that you ask this, else you'll easily spend years trying to figure this out.
