Maybe someone can help me on this. I used to master my songs in a complete project with the entire mix in front of me to tweak. I would drop the mix to -6db and master that way by raising the volume with the maximizer. I learned that this way of mastering in your mix was not the best way to do it so I switched to exporting a stereo wav file and importing that file into a master template. The problem I have is that my export is too quiet. The waveform at -6db give or take is very small and hard to work with. So I decided to do -3db and export at that loudness and I got better results, but I am new to this way of mastering. Is there something I am doing wrong because I also cannot seem to get any of my songs louder than -14 LUFS. I guess my question is, What True Peak do I want on my mix before exporting that wav. file for mastering? Thank you in advance.
I am not mastering engineer but am just learning. The level of the mixdown exported to the master session is no issue, because the first thing I do is to increase the pre gain of the track, having a brickwall with ceiling at -1 dBFS measuring the short term LUFS at the loudest passages of the song, aiming to the value I want to, depending of how dynamic is the song. But I use the short term LUFS for that adjustment, the integrated just results after te whole process.
And if your issue is just that the waveform is visually too small, you can zoom it with that little handle at the right.
-6db export is very good for a master, apply a compressor and whatever your mastering chain includes with a limiter at the end to take it to -1db.
The -14 LUFS is the average for the whole track, so if your tracks are sparse, soft etc, then the average may be low due to your sound and song/arrangement choices.
If you add saturation too, the track will sound louder than it actually is.
Check out YT, Chris Selim and Dom have videos about this.
So what you are saying basically is the master export can be at -6db because everyone talks about leaving headroom. I see. Thank you for your response back.
It is always good to leave room to the master engineer. Others with more practice or knowledge can tell you the advisable levels, but I would say between -6 and -3 is ok. If I will go to master a track I prefer that it doesn’t peak higher than -3 before any adjustment.
