what db level do I master at?

Hello. I love Music Creator 5, and I am ready to master my songs for iTunes...I am mixing using the 24 bit option, but I am exporting and dithering to 16 bit WAV....I am trying to mix and master at the same time before exporting. I figure if I can fix something in the mix it is better than trying to after exporting. I recorded every track below 0 db, and I have mixed to where the peak of the master level is almost 6 db. The reason I did this is because I am familiar with the loudness war, and I compared my mixes to popular songs to get an idea of where they peak. The new Bob Ludwig remastered Rush Moving Pictures cd peaks just around 5 db...My question is: is this a good way to do it yourself? Mixing at a 0db peak seems weak sounding...Any advice?

+1 to what Kalle said, especially about not going over 0dB and about leaving extra headroom for mp3's.

I really like using George Yohng's version of the W1 limiter; I use it for any kind of mastering/heavy compression I need to do.  You can accomplish it through the plug ins Cakewalk gives you, but I've really gotten hooked on this plugin.  i actually also use it in track on a lot of metal vocals and drums for aggressive compression.

And I'd like to reiterate what someone said about it depending on the kind of music you're mastering.  Things like Jazz and Classical need more "breathing", whereas extreme metal (death, black, grind) often needs to be compressed all to hell to really get the right effect.  In my experience, rap vocals are also the same.

I prefer to get my overall mixes pretty hot, but obviously never clipping.  That way, mastering EQ and limiting is as it should be...very, very subtle. 

Also, I would like to point out that in my experience, if you need to have something in mp3/wma/any compressed format, DO NOT export directly to that format.  Export from your editor/daw as the original wave file, then use a file conversion program to make copies in whatever other format you need.  The quality will be better that way; you won't have any problems with gain, clipping, distortion, etc.  And NEVER delete your original Wave file, haha.  I made all of the above mistakes on a demo of mine a couple years ago....now all I have left of those songs are mp3 files that are slightly clipped in parts and annoying as hell. Lol. Good thing they were just demos, and were extreme metal.

"sometimes you realize that you need to go back to square one"

It took me all too long to figure that one out, haha.  People all too often get in the habit of overprocessing things, and when they mess up, they process the stuff even more to try to correct it and it sounds even worse.  And then you're stuck with it if you haven't kept copies of the original.

I really wish I had figured out that concept a long, long time ago...much earlier than I did.

Anyway, back on topic....I'd like to point out that mastering and levels depend on a lot of variables...what kind of equipment/plugins you use, what tweaks you do to the equipment (knowing how to use it), how it sounds on various mediums, etc., in addition to how loud it is. Mastering is a completely different art form; it is [supposed to be] an extremely subtle use of compression and EQ, assuming the mixing engineer has done his job correctly.  There is a long standing concept we were taught in school that as a mastering engineer, most of the time, if you have to make an adjustment in compression or EQ of more than 3dB, then a) you are overdoing it, or b) you're getting stuck having to compensate for incompetence on the part of the mixing engineer.

Anyway, I want to reemphasize that a lot of it is not necessarily how loud it is, but how it sounds.  I just recorded a simple little piano/strings demo, and did three different "masters" to demonstrate my point.  All of these, to the average ear and on a couple of different consumer mediums, are about the same amplitude, but they sound completely different, and not all good:

This is a lightly limited mix.  It sounds good; has some headroom and dynamics (which is good for that kind of music)...but it is ever so slightly quieter than the other two:



This is a more moderately limited version, which is perfect...it's a little bit louder and still sounds pretty good.  Has a little less dynamic to it though, but this version sounds the best:


This is a heavily (and carelessly) limited version.  Its slightly louder still but any halfway trained ear can definitely hear the compression in it.  This is what most commercial songs look like waveform-wise, but the engineers who master this stuff have much more expensive equipment, far better listening environments, and spend hours upon hours making very subtle adjustments to make sure that you can't hear the compression/limiting here.  Your home recorded stuff should never look like this unless you have a ton of experience and some very good equipment, otherwise I guarantee it's going to sound crappy to anybody other than the average, stupid music hound:



And just for reference (and giggles), this is the waveform of Trapt's "Who's Going Home With You Tonight", from 2008's "Only Through The Pain". The dude that do this stuff know what they're doing...and get paid big bucks to play with rather fancy equipment all day long:


So yea, there's my two cents.

Oh, by the way guys, in reference to the whole clipping at 0dB thing, not necessarily.  0dB is the absolute clip point for digital audio, but not for analog.  You can push levels on tape to 6 dB, and there are a few studios around that still strictly record to tape.  However, (to the OP), since you're recording digital, yea, you don't want to go over 0dB unless you want some nasty distortion....when you do that, you cut the peaks and valleys of the waveform off (clipping) and unintentionally create what are called sawtooth waveforms.