Some questions about using Reaper, Mixing, and Mastering

[lakefx]

Seriously, read the link I posted earlier, evendors if you only reat Yep's posts. It answers every question you've asked. In short, there is no wrong mic, just ones that sound the way YOU want and ones that don't. One of the best pieces of advice in that thread is that you need to trust your equipment. Not that it needs to be "good", but that you need to trust it. The only advice that's more important is to use your ears.

We are in the process of recording a "bedroom EP" that is essentially rehearsal recordings with vocal overdubs. The first thing I did was get together with the drummer and spent an hour experimenting with mic placement. I then did about the same with my bass. The guitarist doesn't have the patience to really do that, so I did a bit of it on my own. The mics now live in those positions, which are marked for repeatability.

 

[BrianVengeance]

I feel like I've got the drums down pretty well, but I'll tell you how they're set and maybe you'll have some suggestions as to how I could do it better. I was honestly pretty happy with the drum sounds other than the kick to which I added a little EQ, compression, and a gate. Anyway I have my e602 set into the cutout on the front to where the capsule is about 2/3 of the way inside. I've got beta57's facing directly up under both the snare and hi hat, both about 2-3" away and I reversed the phase on the hi hat, I just thought it sounded better that way. Both overheads are maybe 3.5' feet above the drums on either side facing directly downward. I've got a PG56 that covers both of this top two toms that's on a stand with the capsule centered on the middle of where the rims are closest together and this is maybe 4" away from the drums. Both floor toms also have a PG56 but on a rim clip and aimed about half way between the rim and center.

You're using your ears, so that's the majority of the battle there.

The room we practice in has pretty high ceilings at least 20' feet. It's a section of my warehouse where we keep all of our line array so it's a pretty open space. I'll look into that roxul board and I've got plenty of burlap at my disposal. What exactly is a cloud and how do I go about building one?

In full disclosure, I haven't listened to the recordings on anything other than a phone at this point, and there was some presumption involved with the recording environment - small rooms have different challenges than big rooms.

A cloud is basically an absorptive or diffusive panel that you can hang from the ceiling to treat early reflections. If you think of sound as a beam like light (generally true), its easy to imagine it reflecting off of surfaces... so imagine sound reaching your mic directly at one point in time (say guitar cabinet to mic), then shortly after all of the sounds that bounced once (cabinet -> wall/ceiling/floor -> mic), then the ones that bounced twice (cabinet -> ceiling/floor/wall -> ceiling/floor/wall -> micl), and so on. The net result is that you get a bit of smearing on the capture of a single event since the information arrives at different times. This can cause a host of issues (phasing, coherency, etc)... but is also be used as effect to define the characteristics of a space - halls, chambers, etc. In other words, reverb.

With 20 foot ceilings I'd be less concerned about cloud to control early reflections from a low ceiling, and more about defining the space within what is probably a hugely echoey warehouse. In this event gobos can help, which is a bit of absorptive material that is freestanding (gobo = go between) and can be positioned around the source and mic to create that definition. Not a whole lot need to go into them. Roxul Safe n' Sound is 48x15x4", so a simple frame with burlap to hold it in will suffice. You can use any cloth so long as air can pass through - hold it up to your hand and blow gently. If you feel air moving, you won't be reflecting sound. No real need to overthink it, and there are plenty of resources available if you google "DIY sound treatment".

I'm definitely going to experiment with the mics on the guitars as far where they go. Right now both guitar cabs have an SM57 about an 1.5"-2" away half way between the outer edge and the center cap. When you say roll back the gain, do you mean going into the board or on their amp itself? None of their signal is feeding our PA so if it's just gained down going into my console I don't see them complaining too much. If you mean on their amp then I might get some flack.

I'm meaning at the amp itself, though it doesn't hurt to keep your board peaking at least 8-12dB under full scale, but that's a different can of worms.

Back to the guitar amp, I do suspect you'll get a bit of flack for it. Fight with math. The basic physics is that distortion is signal clipping... peaks are chopped off and made even across the top, and without any softer playing mixed in, you'll end up with a small army of drunken bees finding their way into the recording party and barfing all over Yngwie Darrel's shredtastic sweep arpeggiated riffery and making them sizzly and indistinct. Failing the math argument, if the guitarist wants to capture HIS tone, and this is what he dialed in, then a mic isn't going to protect his ego. Cameras work very similar to microphones in this regard... they basically have one job, which is to capture what is already there. For bonus points, take a picture of him coming to grips with this.

So, rolling back the gain lets more of the dynamics get through before clipping, which will make the playing sound much tighter and punchier over all... which is part of the goal of sweet tone, right? If you want thickness, layer in 2 or 3 over dubs of the same riffs. It will get heavier sounding, and your guitarist should be able to play the same riff twice anyways.

Also make sure that enough mids are dialed in. I think I heard once that a smile in your graph (eq) puts a frown in your mix. It's true.

I did spend a lot of time but not all of it on this track specifically and a good amount of that was just learning the ins and outs of the software. Either way as far as it maybe being a bad recording getting another one shouldn't be a big deal especially if it'll be easier to edit if I get better recordings from messing with gain and mic placement. We practice every week and I record the entirety of it so getting more takes will be really easy. It sounds like I just need to experiment with my setup some. I'll check out those youtube channels and see if I can learn some tricks.

There's definitely something to be said for learning the software, and you're on the right track for learning by actually recording. Sometimes its easy to think of a DAW like you would Photoshop... you can touch things up, but nothing you can do will will turn a Polaroid of a PT Cruiser into a HD picture of a Ferrari. Someone else nailed it when they said that most of the production work is actually done well before you hit record.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

Seriously, read the link I posted earlier, evendors if you only reat Yep's posts. It answers every question you've asked.

Will do. I have it saved. I've just been busy with work and it's been easier to read a few responses here than it is to sit and read a full thread but I'll spend some time on it this weekend.

In this event gobos can help, which is a bit of absorptive material that is freestanding (gobo = go between) and can be positioned around the source and mic to create that definition. Not a whole lot need to go into them. Roxul Safe n' Sound is 48x15x4", so a simple frame with burlap to hold it in will suffice. You can use any cloth so long as air can pass through - hold it up to your hand and blow gently. If you feel air moving, you won't be reflecting sound. No real need to overthink it, and there are plenty of resources available if you google "DIY sound treatment".

Thanks for expanding on this. I'd only heard the word gobo in the context of lighting and it's not really the same although I guess it is still technically a go between. I may look into making a couple of these for the drums as it sounds pretty simple and cheap.

Back to the guitar amp, I do suspect you'll get a bit of flack for it. Fight with math. The basic physics is that distortion is signal clipping... peaks are chopped off and made even across the top, and without any softer playing mixed in, you'll end up with a small army of drunken bees finding their way into the recording party and barfing all over Yngwie Darrel's shredtastic sweep arpeggiated riffery and making them sizzly and indistinct. Failing the math argument, if the guitarist wants to capture HIS tone, and this is what he dialed in, then a mic isn't going to protect his ego. Cameras work very similar to microphones in this regard... they basically have one job, which is to capture what is already there. For bonus points, take a picture of him coming to grips with this.

This made me laugh. I know it'll definitely be a challenge but I can probably convince them. It can only make us sound better to each other while playing as well. However it was a pretty big pain in the ass just to get everyone to turn down a few weeks ago. Our singer had been complaining about not being able to hear himself during rehearsal mainly due to the guitars being so loud. I finally had to pretty much make them do it. The sound got better. Our lead is also using an amp with no clean channel so when he got that pedal I mentioned before I had to explain how gaining down and bringing up the master was the best way to make the pedals sound better.

 

[lakefx]

Will do. I have it saved. I've just been busy with work and it's been easier to read a few responses here than it is to sit and read a full thread but I'll spend some time on it this weekend.

This was the way I approached that thread for a while too. I've been toying with DAWs sine the late 90s and had a live sound background before that. When I finally sat down and read that thread, it revolutionized my approach to the whole process and now I get far better results with half as much effort.

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

I've already picked up a little from one of the youtube channels that someone else posted. I'm going to for sure spend some time on that link over the weekend though. You weren't the only once that recommended it. I picked up some tips from one of those videos and changed the way both guitars were EQ'd and they sound way better. high pass at 80hz and low pass around 7.5-10k hz. It made a world of difference in the guitar sound. It's starting to really seem like getting things right while recording is most important and once you get to editing like many other things less is more. I think I've been overthinking things a bit from the start.

 

[BrianVengeance]

It's starting to really seem like getting things right while recording is most important and once you get to editing like many other things less is more. I think I've been overthinking things a bit from the start.

I'm so proud... *sniffle*

Start with something that sounds good, capture it faithfully and don't muck it up out the door. Looking forward to hearing the second round!

 

[Omega Monkey]

You've gotten some good advice and some horrible advice in this thread. I won't go through and list which is which since that would take forever, but I will add something things that either need to be corrected or repeated or just mentioned in the first place.

Your problem before with the vocals is they were just too loud so they stuck out of the mix like a sore thumb. You seem to have figured that out, but I'm not sure why that wasn't the first thing you tried because I heard it instantly. The vocals were like half the mix when they should have been more like 1/4. Basically you want to push the vocals back down in the mix a db or 2 at a time until just when they start being too quiet/not defined enough.

Also, tell your damn singer to stop moving around. It's practice, he doesn't need to look "cool", especially not when trying to record. So unless he's changing his distance from the mic on quieter/louder notes purposely, his physical relationship to the mic shouldn't change.

As far as adding more low end like the drummer wanted, that's the last thing you should do. The low end is already really exaggerated. That's also causing problems with your mix because the instruments are really quiet, while the vocals are really loud which makes everything disconnected as you were hearing. if you reign in the low EQ boosts that you surely have on a lot of the tracks, that will give you a lot more headroom, and your mix will actually sound punchier.

I will also say from experience that while reaper is acceptable and usable for tracking, it's built in plugins largely aren't great. My band just tracked our whole album in reaper, and along the way we would do various rough mixes that weren't bad, but when we moved to Logic for mixing (which was the plan all along, actually we were going to track in logic, but the interface was too old to work with the current Mac OS), we were able to make progress a lot faster. So I would go out and look for some of the highest rated free plugins in various categories like EQ, compression, reverb, etc... and start using those instead of the reaper ones and that should also improve your mix.

And finally, gain staging is important. Don't listen to the people that say that now that we work in digital, you can record at any level you want. You still want to get the highest signal to noise ratio you can. That doesn't mean turning every knob all the way up. You just have to experiment and find out where in the signal chain adds the most noise, and reduce there while making it up at other points (if necessary). So if you track with your peaks averaging around 5-10db down from 0, you should be good. Things like kick and snare I would go even a little higher than that.

So things to look at in gain staging (using guitar as an example)...

Your amp has gain (this is where a lot of noise comes from)
Your amp has volume (your effects may also have gain or volume controls, it's important to get these all working well together)
The mic has a diaphragm, which just like a speaker has a limit to how far it can move linearly (without distortion). You usually want to get as much as you can out of the mic WITHOUT pushing it into non-linearity (distortion). So this might mean either changing the volume of your source or the distance of the mic to the cab.
You may have an outboard preamp (like those little dbx tube pres for instance) or other processing (a compressor maybe). These have their own gain stages/controls
Finally you have your interface with its own level control for each input.
And these all have to get into the DAW like I said, in the -5 to -10 range.

Some people will probably say to track quieter, but from a practical standpoint, the faders on most DAWs (just like physical mixers) only go to about +10 or 15, but they go down to -infinity (ie silence). So you can always pull something DOWN. But if you have a weak signal to start with, you're going to have the push the fader maybe farther than it can actually go, and probably add a ton of compression on top of that. So it's just better to start with (maybe) too much, you just have to always keep in mind that you'll probably be carving away what you don't need (which applies to volume and EQ).

 

[BonesawMcgraw13]

Your problem before with the vocals is they were just too loud so they stuck out of the mix like a sore thumb. You seem to have figured that out, but I'm not sure why that wasn't the first thing you tried because I heard it instantly. The vocals were like half the mix when they should have been more like 1/4. Basically you want to push the vocals back down in the mix a db or 2 at a time until just when they start being too quiet/not defined enough.

Oh I noticed they were too loud but when they first started they were waaaay too quiet and it sounded perfect in my project. I probably boosted them a bit too much after that. Maybe I need another to try other DAWs because I swear there is a huge variation in what I'm hearing in the project and what gets rendered. I don't know why it only seems to be the vocal track but it has caused me a lot of grief while trying to get the vocals right.

unless he's changing his distance from the mic on quieter/louder notes purposely, his physical relationship to the mic shouldn't change.

This is what he's doing more so than jumping around or anything like that. I just think he may be moving the mic away at times he shouldn't and vice versa. We've talked about it and he knows he should work on it.

As far as adding more low end like the drummer wanted, that's the last thing you should do. The low end is already really exaggerated.

if you reign in the low EQ boosts that you surely have on a lot of the tracks, that will give you a lot more headroom, and your mix will actually sound punchier.

Totally agree. After looking into some of the videos and reading other people have posted I started playing with the EQ's on the guitars and was able to come up with something that sounded much cleaner with a lot less. I'll be the first to admit I boosted the lows like crazy which is why I disagreed with him to begin with. I need to get a better grasp on frequencies do what depending on the instrument. I didn't get a good kick sound until I finally googled kick drum eq and found a good starting point for what frequencies to use and which ones I didn't need. I need to do the same with some of the other tracks.

I will also say from experience that while reaper is acceptable and usable for tracking, it's built in plugins largely aren't great.

I've been trying to find better plugins I just haven't found very many good free ones so far so I'm totally open to suggestion. I actually tracked this in waves tracks live and then exported to to reaper. I didn't like track live very much at all it just seemed very counter-intuitive. That was why I downloaded reaper to begin with. Before tracks live I was using presonus capture for tracking which I liked a lot more but it was definitely very basic and just for tracking. It also didn't like my behringer console which is why I got tracks live. Any good plugins you know of for EQ and compression would be greatly appreciated.

Some people will probably say to track quieter, but from a practical standpoint, the faders on most DAWs (just like physical mixers) only go to about +10 or 15, but they go down to -infinity (ie silence). So you can always pull something DOWN. But if you have a weak signal to start with, you're going to have the push the fader maybe farther than it can actually go, and probably add a ton of compression on top of that. So it's just better to start with (maybe) too much, you just have to always keep in mind that you'll probably be carving away what you don't need (which applies to volume and EQ).

I think this was my problem with the vocals. It just seemed really weak compared to everything else once I got into the daw. I may need to retrack those altogether and i'm thinking I need to move the mics away from the guitar cabs just a touch as well.

 

[silky smoove]

And finally, gain staging is important. Don't listen to the people that say that now that we work in digital, you can record at any level you want. You still want to get the highest signal to noise ratio you can. That doesn't mean turning every knob all the way up. You just have to experiment and find out where in the signal chain adds the most noise, and reduce there while making it up at other points (if necessary). So if you track with your peaks averaging around 5-10db down from 0, you should be good. Things like kick and snare I would go even a little higher than that.

Yes, signal to noise ratio is important, but when all modern interfaces of even modest quality have a noise floor that is WAY below even the most conservative levels of gain staging you really can track at any level (effectively) in the modern digital world. You suggested -5 to -10db of headroom, which in my experience is far too little unless you're going for an extremely light-handed approach during mixing. Track at -12 to -20 and you'll be in good shape with zero noise floor issues. Track at -24 to -30 if you want, but that's excessive in the other direction. When the noise floor on (again: even modest) modern interfaces is typically 60db or more down from full scale there's absolutely no reason to create the potential for headroom issues further along in the mixing process.

Here's an excellent primer on the topic written by Skip Burrows, an excellent engineer with far more experience than anyone in this thread:
Invalid Link Removed

 

[Omega Monkey]

I've heard that theory before, although I'm not sure I entirely buy it's usefulness. I'll probably try it at some point just to see if it makes a difference.

But if you want a modern sounding mix, at some point you are going to have to add that gain back in. I did the math once, and I think it worked out if every track is around -6, you can have up to 48 tracks going before hitting unity on the master. So if your tracks at at -20 and you have 20-30 tracks like the average project full band project probably does, you would end up WAY below that and just have to compress the hell out of things to get that volume back (which adds more noise). You can always turn a track down, and that will reduce noise, but turning it up once it's in the computer can only add noise.

So yeah, I would always rather have a track be too loud (without clipping) and have to turn it down so I'm reducing noise during mixing instead of adding it. Because if you get your gain staging straight when it's loud during tracking, it can only get better from there, and vice versa.

 

[silky smoove]

If every track is peaking at -6dbfs and you can have 48 of them before hitting 0dbfs on your 2buss... What happens when you add some low end EQ to beef up a bass drum? What about when you send all of the drums to a buss where you apply parallel compression? Do any of the typical mixing tasks and you've now blown it on your 2buss.

I realize that 48 tracks far exceeds what most people, especially at the "home recording" level will ever see in a session, but why paint yourself into a headroom corner for literally zero benefit with a modern interface? The added gain on the front end does not improve the sound, the noise floor is effectively a non-issue, the increased risk of clipping while tracking can't be fixed in post without buying something like Izotope RX, and the loss of headroom during the mix phase will either pigeon-hole you into operating in a way you don't want, or you'll have to apply gain reduction pre-fader in which case you should have gone in lower to begin with.

The ONLY time it's worth tracking hot for noise floor issues is if you're on a vintage system, or have a vintage piece in-line and there is a high noise floor issue. At 60db down from full scale on even modest (read: cheap) modern interfaces there simply isn't a noise floor problem. There just isn't. Track hot all you want, but it won't make a difference to the noise floor as far as you can detect in a mix.

The ONLY time it's worth tracking hot for tone is if you're using a preamp that changes character based on input gain. Anything built into a consumer or prosumer interface will not be of this variety. If you're using something like a UA 6176 as your front end into a converter then by all means push the thing. It will sound different. If you can add a clean gain stage before the converter to trim things back down to -12 to -20 you'll get all of the benefits of a pushed character front end along with proper digital gain staging.

 

[Omega Monkey]

You're creating a problem where there isn't one. You can ALWAYS turn a track down. If it's too hot, YOU TURN IT DOWN and move on to the next task. If it's too quiet, you may or may not have enough signal there to really get it where you need it (with or without having too much noise).

The thing about having 48 tracks to use if you record everything 6db down is a theoretical number if you're talking about identical sine waves. In practice it's typically a lot MORE tracks than that, while most people probably HAVE a lot LESS tracks than that. So EQ'ing and all that shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, that's pretty much how my band just did our album (completely DIY in a basically untreated basement with mostly cheap-ish mics but good instruments/amps), and it sounds awesome. So we must've done something right. I feel like we were able to use minimal amounts of compression instead of having to squash the hell out of everything and then add a ton of makeup gain. And so we got a pretty organic sound overall. And I listen to similar style albums recorded in pro studios (but by "local" bands) and often they just don't seem to sound as good.

 

[silky smoove]

You're creating a problem where there isn't one.

Flat out wrong. This is a highly common problem in the world of amateur, home, hobby, etc. mixing. You get get to mixing and are left wondering now why you're getting distortion on the 2buss, meanwhile after adding even a little EQ there are several tracks trying to exceed 0dbfs. The number of mixes I've gotten from people or consulted on where this was the problem would shock you. Not only is it a solution to a common problem, I would say it's the MOST common problem that people incur. Everyone tries to do the "turn the gain up to clipping and then knock it down a little." Even the ones that leave 5db or headroom like you're suggesting will have a note or two that goes over. Bury the kick beater, stab a chord too hard, dig in too hard on a bass note, etc. and you're screwed. That last part is in addition to the overall mix headroom issue.

Instead why not leave ample headroom so none of head problems will exist? If you need to add gain, even 20db (which would be preposterous), your noise floor is still 40+ db down from full scale. Your over exaggeration of the presence of the noise floor is the real "solving a problem that doesn't exist." The math just doesn't add up.

 

[Omega Monkey]

I'm pretty sure I said peaking between -10 and -5. That's why when you're checking levels you have the player give you a typical range and a high range (and what you learn if you ever do live sound is that a guy just hitting a kick by itself is not going to give as hot a signal as the full kit all together, and certainly not with other instruments in the room, so you compensate for that as well) and adjust from there. Having a kick peak 6-10 db higher when you presumably already had the guy hit it about as hard as possible during setup would be highly unusual.

On the flip side of the coin of what I mentioned before where your tracks are all different so they don't actually sum +3db every time you double track count, your interface noise IS the same on each track and DOES sum +3db every time you double the track count. So if you go from 1 to 2 tracks, that's +3. Ok, if you're noise floor is say 60db down, probably no big deal. But by the time you get up to 32 tracks, you have about 15db more noise. That's not insignificant, and that's not to mention whatever background noise might be in the source (mic self noise, room noise, bleed through, pedal/processor noise, amp noise, etc...). But if you record 10db hotter on each track, you have a 10db head start on the noise floor creeping up, which means your noise is no essentially half as loud. You still add the same 15db, but you start it much lower. Personally, I want to introduce as little noise as possible in the actual input and mixing stages, because I already know there's going to be noise in the source, there's going to be noise in the processing, and there's going to be noise in the playback. So the further down you can push that noise floor below your signal on each track, the better off you'll be with the final product.

And obviously you have to find that balance between getting as high as possible above the noise floor and adding so much gain that you start getting excessive noise from that. That's why one of the first things I said is you need proper gain staging all along the way. Really you should be able to plug your headphones into your interface, with the monitor level pretty much cranked, with nothing in the inputs, and then turn up your gain knobs, and you should be able to figure out where they start making a lot more noise. So then you'll know "oh, I should really keep the gain below about 2 o clock (as an example) and if I still need more signal, I should just make the source louder, either by turning up the amp, moving the mic closer, etc...".

 

[silky smoove]

We're going in circles at this point. Your overexaggeration of the noise floor and its audibility are what are directing your decisions. If that works for you, great, keep doing it. As a thing to direct someone to do who is, presumably, new to tracking and mixing I think it's a really bad choice.

To the OP: Read the thread I linked earlier and look at the math involved. The numbers simply don't lie. There's a reason most professional engineers track the way I'm describing. To be fair, also give what @Omega Monkey is suggesting a try as well. If that method works for you then by all means use it. There's no perfect solution (as our back and forth exchange has illustrated).

 

[Omega Monkey]

I'm not sure "most" professional engineers record the way you're saying. And even if they do, just like in the bass world, in the engineering world there's a lot of popular myths that people follow without really understanding because "that's how everyone else does it". Not to mention, if you're in a pro studio and interfacing with actual analog gear than perhaps it does make some difference. But "in the box" I'm not seeing how it could make much if any real difference, and even if it does, you can ALWAYS bring your tracks down if necessary, but once they're recorded quietly, that's it. Anything you do to make them louder is going to introduce noise, at whatever level. The only thing you CAN'T come back from is actual clipping, but even the occasional few samples of clipping is PROBABLY not going to be audible. Bottom line, if your goal is to have your final mix/master peaking at or very close to 0db, it seems silly to start with levels that are going to require excessive compression, adding gain, pushing faders up, etc... to achieve that, unless something heavily compressed is what you're going for.

Anyway, I think the results speak for themselves. This is my band's album that we put out a few months ago. Despite very limited resources, I think it came out pretty damn good.

 

[silky smoove]

I'm not sure "most" professional engineers record the way you're saying.

The ones who have an online presence and talk about gain staging ITB certainly do. You can find plenty of articles describing it from the pros. The Skip Burrows link I posted was just the most thoroughly written that I've found. Bob Katz for instance is very outspoken about treating -14dbfs as 0db.

 

[Omega Monkey]

To me it sounds kind of like the various fad diets du jour. "Oh, I lost 50 pounds on the South Atkins Gluten Free Raw Liquid Bacon Diet!". Yet, every last one of those diets gets the same results reported. And the primary reason is not because they're all so great, but because people go on these diets with weird and specific restrictions and it causes them to be more cognizant and consistent with what they eat instead of just shoveling food in their faces, just like the concept you're talking about causes people to be more cognizant and consistent with their gain staging, which I think is what accounts for probably all or most of any improvement people might report. But people aiming for -10 to -5 is also going to get them paying attention and should get similar results. Just attribute it to Roger Nichols or somebody as if it's some epiphany and it will get plenty of people great results. Because they'll be paying attention.

 

[silky smoove]

You've been attributing it to an album you did that turned out okay...

It's really simple math. One way makes sense, the other does not when you understand just how low the noise floor is, and the importance of leaving yourself headroom to mix. I can't explain it any further as you're obviously not listening. I understand your position, but it's based on an over exaggeration. If it works for you, fine, keep doing it.

 

[Omega Monkey]

Except what I'm talking about is an actual thing that is a known sound concept going back decades and applies regardless of what specific gear you're using. What you're talking about is something esoteric which may or may not have any effect and it hasn't even been justified except in vague terms that mainly apply to mixed digital/analog setups, while giving plugin developers way too much credit for having some kind of magical secret sauce that's entirely dependent on the inherent level of a wav or aiff file. But that's why compressors, etc... have things like threshold controls. And sorry, but I can't really believe there's an appreciable difference in a stock compressor plugin between a track at -10 with a threshold at -15, and a track at -20 with a threshold at -25, except that in the first one, you should end up with less noise once you apply the compression and makeup gain. That noise may or may not be negligible, but why introduce it if you don't have to? So don't try to talk to me like I'm some ignorant hayseed when it's you who really have a lot more work to do to defend your position. "These 2 pros said it" doesn't make it true, just like Victor Wooten peddling $500 speaker cable made of unicorn dust. Your point is probably a little more plausible than that at least, but I'm not sure by much. Anyway, headroom is only useful if you use it. You don't get any points for your album peaking at -10 instead of -.1.