bitflipper
3. Peak limiting is only indirectly related to perceived volume. It's entirely possible to achieve competitive loudness without exceeding a -1.0 dB maximum peak, or even less. Perceived loudness is all about average RMS, and when you lower your brickwall limit you raise RMS, so sometimes setting a lower limit will actually make your mix sound louder.

 
Good advice.  
 
I roughly adjust levels by eye using K-14 levels in Ozone 7. I'm not really interested in hitting that last 1 db. When compiling for a CD, I also check Ozone 7's 'integrated' meter setting to make sure the perceived loudness of all the tracks are compatible. For me this has been working out at about and average of -16LUFS.
 

I would have thought it would be difficult to give precise guidance as to how to avoid intersample overs in the analog domain by reducing the digital peaks. It would depend on the end-listeners's individual DAC reconstruction filters, and also depend on the slope of the transients in your music. In other words, different DACs will interpolate between digital data using a variety of curve-fitting algorithms, and steep slopes in the music are likely to give more grief (it's harder to "turn the corner").
 
Having said that, while doing a little reading on this, I discovered that Ozone's maximizer has a little button labelled "true peak limiting". I'd always wondered what this did. Apparently it prevents clipping in the digital analog domain by being smart about the maximizing algorithm (and presumably making some assumptions about the end-users DAC). There must be other plugins out there with similar functionality.
 
Cheers, Peter.

This is a great read.

-0.3db for CD quality WAV

I feel your pain about tracking down a "distortion" in the mix - I also suspect it is gain staging within a plugin somewhere, I hope you track it down as I know you are probably not hearing anything else at this stage!!!!!

Thank you all for this thread. I learned a lot from it!

Great thread! Learned a lot.
I usually go for -0.2 for wave, and -0.7 for mp3 (peak level). And approx -10 to - 14 dB RMS. 
I still haven't gotten around to the more "sophisticated" measuring systems 
All the best.

This is all good information. I am in the -0.3 camp, which is what has been recommended most in stuff I have read. I only do wavs, no mp3s. FWIW I use the Waves L1. 

This is good stuff.  I did not realize mastering should be more cautious with MP3s.  I generally just shoot for -0.3 for everything. Time for some experimentation.

rodreb
Great logic, Chuck! I agree, wholeheartedly on the conventional overuse of HP/LP (especially HP). It seems to kill too much phat for my taste. I was drawn into that HP filter everything mentality for a short while but, then every mix sounded too anemic to me.
See, Chuck, maybe this is the underlying reason why you and I have a mutual admiration of each other's work! Ha ha!

Absolutely Rod. No doubt you and I work along the same lines. Right down to the styles of music.
And plug ins :-) I too love that Concrete limiter. Very transparent, a lot of gain boost with little distortion/artifacts.
 

Anderton
The reason for putting a steep HP first isn't to filter out what you can hear (and I go lower than 30 Hz, because if the cutoff is at 30, it's almost certainly affecting higher frequencies), but to filter out what you can't hear - specifically DC and LF offsets. Now, that doesn't mean those offsets can't provide a sort of "bias" to the compression process that you find pleasing, and if it sounds good...do it! But by making the HP filter the first part of the mastering chain, you're removing any chance of DC offset gumming up the works.
 
Furthermore, I use a lot of electronically generated sounds that are often transposed over a wide range, so they can generate subsonics which also screw up compressors and limiters. Again, the HP filter takes care of those. If you ever are in a situation where a cut cannot go up to the same level as other cuts but you've maxed out the headroom and have a high average level, look below 10 Hz to see if anything is there.
 
I wrote an article that talks about DC offset in both the analog and digital domains, I think you would find it interesting. Remember...your 30 Hz filter is still in the audible range and pre-conditioning the signal for the Multimaximizer, I'm talking much lower than that. What might be optimum for you is to leave your HP filter where it is, but add another HP filter at the very beginning that's tuned below the audible range.

 
Good reads Mr. Anderton.
I feel very grateful to have you here on this forum. Your experience, wisdom and advise here is appreciated.
I tried switching this up with the EQ first, It is pretty much un noticeable. but given the DC offset usually isn't something that stands out in the mix :-) I kind of expected that. So im taking your advise and going to try this for a bit. If my Masters suck im blaming you. (need someone to blame )
Thanks again Craig.
 

bitflipper
Depends.
 
2. If your ultimate target is an MP3, you need to leave even more headroom, regardless of how good your limiter is. To be certain an MP3 won't exceed 0 dB you would have to set your brickwall limit to -3.0 dB. In practice, -1.0 dB will usually be OK, though, except for ultra clean genres such as classical or folk.
 
3. Peak limiting is only indirectly related to perceived volume. It's entirely possible to achieve competitive loudness without exceeding a -1.0 dB maximum peak, or even less. Perceived loudness is all about average RMS, and when you lower your brickwall limit you raise RMS, so sometimes setting a lower limit will actually make your mix sound louder.
 
Since you asked what individuals use, I use -0.1 dB for CDs and -1.0 dB for MP3s. But I do so only because I know with certainty that my limiter is capable of assuring that even intersample peaks won't exceed my given limit.

Normally I have been using -0.3db but by accident a couple of months ago I used -3.0db for some MP3's.  It made a huge difference so I have been using -3.0db since.
 
rafone