Do people usually listen to tracks with their volume turned all the way up?

[waltz mastering]

Yep, currently working on the mix buss. I'll try out your suggestion, but I can't see why that would change anything?

Mixing and mastering are two different processes/mind sets. The way you're going about it is like trying to put icing on a cake while it's still cooking.

I can't think of to many commercially successful albums or singles where they were mastered straight off the mix buss. Maybe it's better for one offs or ref copies. It can be more of a work flow thing..to get away from the mix for a day and then approach it from a different view.

 

[Fama]

Same here. So I'm not the only one. I don't get why people say 'louder is better'. I know the research dictates that too, but it's really not the case with me.

Do your mixes not sound 'bad' to you then when you master and the volume gets cranked overall? For me the process goes something like this: a) I mix and get it sounding pretty nice to my ears at a low volume, leaves me plenty of head room for mastering b) I master, volume goes up and it sounds baaad.

That's not what people mean when they say "louder is better". When they say that, they mean listening to the mix at low volumes or at high volumes, turning the monitors up or down.

 

[InAbsentia_]

That's not what people mean when they say "louder is better". When they say that, they mean listening to the mix at low volumes or at high volumes, turning the monitors up or down.

There is no difference in your perception of sound when you're mixing or listening to something in any other scenario. The statement 'louder is better' applies to every environment. Just because I'm looking at a DAW on a screen while listening to something doesn't change that. And that's definitely not what people mean when they say louder is better because your frequency perception is distorted at louder volumes, which is what makes it 'better', apparently.

Mixes should sound better when they're louder if they sound good to you when they are quiet, but they don't, not me at least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher–Munson_curves

 

[ze kink]

I prefer mixing on low levels too. It's the same levels I use to listen to music and all such stuff at home anyway, so I know how it's supposed to sound to sound good and translate well. Occasionally I crank it up and play the track through once or twice to check if anything comes up. Very rarely does.

When I'm tracking a band at e.g. the school studio though, I usually crank the monitors quite a bit more. Feels like it's easier to get the band "in the zone" like that.

 

[John_C]

85dB is quite seriously dicing with cumulative hearing damage. Not a good idea. It'll be no good having great skills and the best gear in the best studio in the world that you've built up over 30 years if all you can hear by then is low passed at about 12kHz and with a massive dip from 2-6 kHz.

 

[Fama]

Checking wikipedia, you'd have to spend 8 hours on constant 85 db to get permanent hearing damage. Of course those are just guidelines, but I don't hink it's THAT bad...

 

[Force666]

Mixing and mastering are two different processes/mind sets. The way you're going about it is like trying to put icing on a cake while it's still cooking.

I can't think of to many commercially successful albums or singles where they were mastered straight off the mix buss. Maybe it's better for one offs or ref copies. It can be more of a work flow thing..to get away from the mix for a day and then approach it from a different view.

The thing that's good for us guys though is that when "mastering" on the mix-buss, if something needs fixing in the mix, it's easy to go back and fix what you need to in the mix without taking the time to export a new mixdown.

Not sure about mastering off the mix-buss, but there's plenty of metal releases that were mastered by the recording engineer.

What difference if any is there of mastering on the mix buss vs. a printed mix?

 

[John_C]

Checking wikipedia, you'd have to spend 8 hours on constant 85 db to get permanent hearing damage. Of course those are just guidelines, but I don't hink it's THAT bad...

a day mixing at 85dB may well cause very little problem. A decade of mixing at 85dB almost every day sums all these little problems to create a big one.

 

[InAbsentia_]

The thing that's good for us guys though is that when "mastering" on the mix-buss, if something needs fixing in the mix, it's easy to go back and fix what you need to in the mix without taking the time to export a new mixdown.

Not sure about mastering off the mix-buss, but there's plenty of metal releases that were mastered by the recording engineer.

What difference if any is there of mastering on the mix buss vs. a printed mix?

That's what I was thinking with that comment. I think what waltz was trying to say there is that it takes you out of the 'mixing' frame of mind and into the 'mastering' thing. Focus shifting more or less.