I see Bishu going into red every video, now it make sense.

I’m a songwriter and I “collect and articulate sound”. With that, I’ve NEVER cared about the technicalities of mixing and mastering in the digital space. I’ve released music that wasn’t properly mastered and all that, and they’ve made it to playlists and such. So yeah, in today’s world, it doesn’t matter. I appreciate the art of mixing and mastering, but I don’t fancy myself an engineer like that (even tho I am one). Your ending point about having more time for the fun parts of music making rings true. As long as it sounds good…no one would know or care. Good video! 👍🏼

You really shouldn't feed signals above 0db to plugins or hardware. Gain staging includes all your levels between processors/plugins (input and output) not just the channel meter level. Also any plugins with non-linear responses have sweet spots that react to input gain. There is absolutely no benefit to your method. Even if technically 'you can't clip over 0db in a daw' there's no reason to do it anyway. Why would you want to turn your master down when you can just set proper levels to begin with. Just keep all your levels in a reasonable spot as you produce. The same is vital if you are recording audio.

Honestly I like "rogue" mixing ideas like this coming from producers. I agree don't let mixing stop the creative flow, although it is helpful to do some light mix cleanup along the way. Kinda reminds me of this workflow from Sammy G's production practices: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bNuWeqxyp8qUk2g.html He talks about how he has a send track [I think] with a multiband compressor and a room reverb that he sends any sounds that are not hitting to and its his form of "reverse mastering". It's not exactly the headroom topic you mentioned but its with the idea of deviating from industry best practices for creative gain.

Your plugins will disagree, so will your hardware. Go into plugins with s**t headroom, they will sound crap and alias distort, go into hardware without hitting the headroom sweetspot and you wont get max results.

Whist what you're saying about DAWs having headroom above 0dB is technically true, this is terrible advice. It's far easier to spend a few minutes correctly gain staging everything so that you minimise issues in your mix (such as plugins maxing out and clipping due to the signal being too hot), and it also allows you to use the VU meters for what they are designed for - checking the levels, rather than just seeing them max out (or turn red) for most of the time. Also, it means you don't have to do anything when bouncing your audio out, it just works, and doesn't clip.

Hey Will, I started using Vital because of you. Do you know a good source of free Vital presets?

I can see what you are getting at and agree with it for the most part but what do you think about gain staging within a track? So for example, -18 DBFS being the "sweet spot" for gain going into an analog emulated compressor? Other than that, I agree that the whole "-6 of headroom on the master!" thing is BS.

Yeah headroom is absolutely not a myth.

Without headroom you can't use any analog modeling gear. That means even the stock glue compressor in Ableton. Plus do you really want to be thinking about signals over 0dB? Why?

strong point!! hard to argue

So much bullshit....