Thank you to share your article,
there are some good ideas, I liked many explanations and your articles are useful.
There are also questionable ideas about gain staging…To put a limiter on the master bus while mixing is pretty odd. And you suggest -0.3dB, but most authors say that the correct limit is -1dB for the best sound quality. The limiter is used usually in mastering. In mixing it is used in the master track only the compressor to glue the mix instead
You suggest that anything should be under -3 dB. Most contemporary authors suggest that single tracks don’t go above -6dB (some say also less!) in order then when the many tracks are summing up in the master track the overall level should never exceed -1dB and it is very good if the peaks on the master tracks are under-6dB. This produces a better sound quality and help to judge better the song. You miss to explain that 0db digital = -24dB analog. There is not need of a limiter on the master track but only the use of proper gain staging, compression of the tracks and master bus compression. In order to master and give to a mastering engineer the best would be to give him the mix with the maximum peaks no more then -6dB in order there is enough headroom to master. They say that the tracks should have a gain between -24 and -12dB with peaks that don’t exceed -6dB.
It is very questionable also the rule of the need to set the master fader to 0dB. Because internal clipping occurs if the single tracks are clipping, and if peaks of the single tracks of the projects are under -6dB and peaks of the master bus are under 0, then the master fader can be up or down…The dynamic range doesn’t change so much in the digital domain.
This misconceptions leads to the errors to try to reach the O dB while recording tracks on digital systems, with the aim to have more dynamyc range, which is totally wrong. And a mix that on the master bus is always close to 0db, which is not good at all for sound clarity.
Thank anyway for your job which was useful
I am not such an expert but these guys know what they say: