Quick post, in between students.

When you say you "want them as nominally loud as they can be so I can cut them when mixing", you are thinking of analogue style of mixing. In the digital world you need to think the other way round.

You need your tracks at much lower levels so you can have the headroom you need for mixing. Adding compression, EQ etc to your tracks results in gain being added.

Check out the link to gain staging I put in your other thread.

Maybe you need to think of it as mixing up. I'm no expert but I know more than I used too. I'm sure others here will come in with more experience to help.

Mixing and mastering are two different things. Mastering comes after all the mixing has been done. This is when the silences between tracks, the order of tracks, the tweeking of compression and EQ and numerous other polishing details are taken care of.

To get the levels up to those slamming levels so popular with pop music, they often use a brickwall limiter to get them up to or close to 0db.

You say you need a starting point, so did I. This is a you-tube link to extracts of some of the videos I study. It will give you an idea as to whether you'll find them useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCi6cLmgiNQ&feature=channel&list=UL

I watched all the DR77 videos before I decided to invest. (again I'm not trying to push these but I do know they helped me gain more understanding)

Got to go, good luck! (EDIT)In a rush forgot to put in the link.

Last edited by yjoh; 10/23/12 09:25 PM.
yjoh

[i]Music...a joy for life.