Your mix is done but a “digital bug” lays dormant waiting to be unleashed on the listener. Unless you have taken the steps needed to check for them, odds are against you that you have them and probably don’t even know it. You’re not alone, the vast majority of commercial mixes are laden with them. What is this Bug? It’s called intersample peaks, and they are present on most mixes, yet they are chronically overlooked by many engineers. Let me explain.
Setting your Levels in the Mixer
With great tools of all sorts at our fingertips, we have a massive selection to choose from when setting up the mix on our DAWs. We use these quite often to enhance and create definition in our tracks, all competing for a space in the mix and to be heard clearly. To aid in this effort, as a good rule of thumb, channel strip levels should be kept as low as possible, between -12 and -6 dB at the most. This leaves headroom to work with during the mix for the mastering engineer, or when you’ve arrived at the mastering stage to be preformed by yourself. Mastering is the final stage where your mix is complete, gets the polish or treatment to give your mix a commercial quality for your given market, be it television, film, radio or CD pressing. Even MP3 uploads need consideration since they too have their own challenges, one of which is they very often bounce out hot and are played back off the web hot.