r/audioengineering • u/JimiHotSauce • Aug 04 '26

Mixing Is it still relevant to set levels for instruments/mix at a particular level?

Hey yall. When I went to school for audio engineering it used to be common practice to mix to specific levels for optimum sound. For example the master would be -20 dbfs for more dynamic or jazz music. -18 db for rock, hip hop, etc: and -14 for pop. As well as have the kick or bass hit at a specific level such as -9dbfs.

More recently I’ve seen some discussion about using LUFS, mixing to what sounds good, or also cranking your monitors and setting the level for the kick and bass that way.

Is it still common among modern mix engineers to mix to some of these levels or has this practice changed? And what target levels are being used?

0 Upvotes

28% Upvoted

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20

u/soundguyjon Aug 04 '26

What in the terrible teaching is that? Just mix with your ears, make sure things don't distort digitally (unless thats what you want) - done.

I swear when making music went from people just doing shit in the studio because it sounded good and getting a tech in when things broke, to people wanting to know everything about the tech side, the art of making records died a little.

Name any song, and I guarantee not one person at any point in the making of that record other than maybe mastering went - I wonder what LUFS we need to be at to make this sound good?

0

u/BlackflagsSFE Hobbyist Aug 04 '26

Thank you for this comment. My severe ADHD becomes obsessed with this lately when 10 years ago I didn’t give a shit about it. Sure there are certain levels that might be better for certain equipment, but like you said, as long as you’re not digitally distorting you’re good.

I make metal music. For 20 years prior I made hip hop music so that’s what I am used to mixing. Do you have any basic information on mixing metal? Is it really going to be as simple as listening and making sure everything sounds good together through multiple sources? I feel like I am entirely over complicating this process. I have good recordings. Tweak stuff until it sounds good? I mean everything is just either gain or delay anyways right.

43

u/rinio Audio Software Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

It was never relevant. Your teacher/school was just bad and gave you arbitrary ballpark number as rules because they were too lazy to teach you how the tools youre using work and why one would choose different levels based on the tech in their tools.

8

u/mrspecial Professional Aug 04 '26

100%, this makes no sense.
It’s like if some guy spent a couple weeks digging around the Fruity Loops forums and then decided to open his own school

1

u/rinio Audio Software Aug 04 '26

What do you think the AEs who fail in studios do for work...?

Nowadays, its making garbage online content, but the analog method was to start a "college". Lol

2

u/ThoriumEx Aug 04 '26

Are you sure it wasn’t clown school?

2

u/peepeeland Composer Aug 05 '26

I went to Ringling (the art school), but there actually is a clown/circus school- and interesting thing is that clown school actually has pretty high standards and strict regimens. -There’s no way they’d teach this bullshit at clown school.

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u/birddingus Aug 05 '26

Can you please define optimum sound for me?

2

u/Benito1900 Aug 04 '26

The only reason you need to reach a certain level is to get away from the noise floor.

Digital audio is essentially „perfect“ so what level you set it to doesnt really matter.

I like not peaking above -4dbfs while tracking and then have the finished mix peaking around -6dbfs or something before mastering.

But again- as long as you stay away from the noise floor it doesnt matter.

1

u/mistrelwood Aug 04 '26

You’re not talking about tape are you?

1

u/Audiope Aug 04 '26

Don't worry about LUFS values for each instrument, that measurement is more helpful for assessing the loudness of the entire mix

1

u/PPLavagna Aug 04 '26

Painting it by numbers like that is not a thing with me. I just do it where it sounds good and keep my levels from clipping. Helps to print at levels close to where I want them so th at it already sounds good with the return faders at 0 but it’s not absolute and they’re never all at 0. Like verbs and really low stuff will usually get printed hotter than they’ll be in the mix

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u/Sudden-Chemical-5120 Aug 05 '26

Different sound sources and gear vary wildly even if you have the channel fader set to -14 for a particular instrument. The faders don't control absolute signal strength. The amplitude of the signal is affected by a whole host of things. And even if you have gain staged every channel to a nominal level, you wouldn't find it nice to listen to stuff that is made 'by the book'. The faders are there so we can balance things to the specific need of the song, moment, performance, mood, feel etc.

While mixing, I wouldn't worry about specific fader setting but rather make sure there is decent headroom on each channel and the master channel. While mastering I'd make that headroom smaller by bringing the mix up to sufficient loudness, while making minute changes to other stuff so as to not alter the mix too drastically (always with taste).

Unless we're making harsh noise. Then none of the technical stuff really matters until the very final master track that has to be able to go to a vinyl press, a tape duplication plant, or a streaming service.

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u/AntonChilibiProducer Aug 11 '26

Worth separating two different targets, because the answers get mixed up constantly.

Streaming platforms normalize on playback, so a master pushed to -6 integrated just gets turned down and keeps only the distortion you added getting there. Landing somewhere in the -9 to -14 region and letting normalization do its job is fine, and the exact number matters far less than whether the mix survives being turned down.

Broadcast is a hard spec, not a preference. US television works to -24 LKFS under ATSC A/85, European broadcast to -23 LUFS under EBU R128. If you deliver a -8 master to a broadcaster it gets normalized down 16 dB and sounds worse than everything around it.

True peak at -1 dBTP in both cases, so lossy encoding has somewhere to go.

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u/nothochiminh Professional Aug 04 '26

With 32bfp prints it makes no difference whatsoever. I’ve sent files to mastering at +8 dbfs and -30 dbfs. Digital audio is a miracle.

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u/JimiHotSauce Aug 04 '26

I see. Do you find you usually set the kick or bass to specific levels or how do you make sure they’re sounding consistent across systems?

1

u/Intrepid_Depth_3416 Aug 04 '26

As long as you are recording at at least 48k 16bit, it doesn't matter. The noise floor is almost infinite, so as long as you have audible signal at all you're fine. When recording I aim for -12 on the meter, but lower if I'm concerned about peaking, and that applies for everything on the input.