Danny Danzi


"When I mix something, I do my best to make sure the mix peaks at -3 dB and do my best to achieve this using the track faders without touching the master bus. If I don't do this and just adjust the master bus fader and say it ends up being the master fader set to -4 dB to achieve a -3 dB peak in a full play of the song, a limiter is not going to get me to -3 dB because the fader is set to -4 dB."
-Danny

I ain't much of an engineer--no credetials, just lots of great gear.  I thought we should always keep that master fader at 0, otherwise there will be gain staging problems. (?)

Yes, keep the master fader at zero. 0db, however, is not the goal for your mix. Two different things. If you mix is too hot, you don't adjust the master fader, you adjust the master gain control or the input level on the limiter.

There's nothing inherently wrong with adjusting any of the bus levels, including the Master bus. In SONAR that bus is still 64bits... you can't really squash the sound.

A rule of thumb, in digital work station mixing, is too avoid adjusting the "Main OUTs" or any of the other hardware outputs as that may result in a loss of resolution in bit depth.

A good reason to never adjust your Master bus level and leave it at "0" is that it seems helpful to maintain consistent gain structure on your output so that you can develop consistencies in how you handle the levels in your tracks and sub buses. This makes it faster and easier to work and get a mix started.


best regards,
mike

bitflipper


Yes, keep the master fader at zero. 0db, however, is not the goal for your mix. Two different things. If you mix is too hot, you don't adjust the master fader, you adjust the master gain control or the input level on the limiter.

Good advice, bitflipper and mike.  Just curious:  why is the master gain control different from the master fader for this?

Gain is the level going in to the bus (pre-limiter), volume fader is the final level leaving the bus (post limiter).

Got it.  In what situations is the master fader useful?  Why does it even exist if it should stay at zero?  Is that why some control surfaces (like Nucleus) have no master fader?

The only time I ever use the master fader is when I want to turn the whole mix down for monitoring while playing a new part. I suppose it might also be useful if your mix is unmastered and your mastering engineer has requested Xdb of headroom. You could turn it down before exporting.

Most of us master our own material, so we let the limiter dictate the final levels and leave the fader at zero.

Flanged vocals take a powder in mono? Hmmm.

Overs on the same track?

I recommend just pulling down each sub-mix fader until the Master buss shows no overs. Solo each submix buss and find the one that kicks the overs in the Master buss. Leave the Master Fader at zero.

Jay Tee 4303


Flanged vocals take a powder in mono? Hmmm.

Overs on the same track?

I'm using an extreme situation with no original vocal. 100% flange... So I was guessing that it might be phase cancellation of some kind...


Funny, as I reduce the width, the vocal level needs to come up quite a bit to be as apparent. So again I'm guessing some issues... But as most of my critiques of the current mixes for this song a that the vocals a too low... This seems to change the situation as I felt they needed to be louder as their width was reduced...?


The overs I was having was when I applied then CL to this piece's master... Something I rarely do.... And I'm not doing it here... I've already solved the peak issues in another way and removed the master's limiter....

Keni