DIY Mix Prep, Pt. 1

Here’s some quick tips that address the most common issues I see with home rolled DIY mixes coming into my mastering studio.

Fix these and be prepared for your track to sound excellent!

How to prepare your DIY mix for the mastering process: headroom and clipping

1) Don’t export your mix too loud. Your loudest spot in the track should be hitting around -6 dB upon export. That’s well below the top of the meter. If you export too loud, you can get digital clipping on your track that’s tricky to remove later.

2) Try to avoid using a limiter on your master track, during the mix. It’s very easy to lose fidelity, if you do this. You’ll notice a loss of quality when it comes to reverb shimmer, dynamic nuance, things like that: a lot of the subtle sonic information can get sucked up by that limiter.

Here’s what your meters should look like, in two different Digital Audio Workstations (Ableton Live and Logic Pro):

Yes! In Ableton

Yes! In Logic Pro

Don’t worry, this won’t mean your track will sound too soft. We’ll get everything up to the proper release level during the mastering process. But, your mastering engineer needs some headroom to work with in order to do their best for you.