What Is Headroom In Mastering?

15 what is headroom in mastering

In order to produce a good master, a mix needs proper headroom and dynamic range.

WHAT IS HEADROOM?
Headroom is the distance between an audio tracks peak level (when the meter is at its highest) and 0 level on the output meter.

As a song plays, the output meter on the stereo/main out bounces up and down with the music. You can see how high (loud) an audio track peaks by looking at this meter. Anything peaking over 0 level usually means distortion, so at all costs stay below 0 level.

How far is your peak loudness below 0 level? That's the simple definition of what headroom is. So, if your meter is peaking -3dbs below 0 level, you have 3dbs of headroom. If your meter is peaking right at 0 level, you have NO headroom.

Note - +3dbs to +6dbs of headroom is the standard recommended amount, but many times a song with more or a little less headroom can still be mastered with no problems. Although it really makes no sense to give a mastering engineer a mix with 0dbs of headroom and risk the chance that it's slightly distorted. There's no reason to do it because overall song volume is done in the mastering process, not in mixing.

WHAT IS DYNAMIC RANGE?
As a song plays, the output meter constantly goes up and down.

Dynamic range is the area between the peak level (when the meter is up) and the low level (when the meter is down). Roughly, 3dbs to 6dbs of movement between the high and low meter level is a typical amount of dynamic range, but this does depend on the genre of music.

Note - One problem you want to watch out for (if you're mixing your own music) is dynamic range between song sections. You don't want a +10db or more difference between the verses and choruses. This creates a mastering problem because the verses will never be loud enough compared to the rest of the song. Roughly a 6db difference is as high as you want to go.

Hello, my name is John Rogers owner of JR mastering and author of the current #1 Best Selling Audio Mastering Book on Amazon.com which is now available in a video course! Since 1999, I've mastered over 40,000 songs for over 7,500 clients. I've mastered music for grammy award winners, several songs I mastered charted #1 and top 10 in Europe, and my masters have been played by DJs in many major cities all over the world.

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Why am I telling you this? Because I know audio mastering, and I would like to teach you everything I've learned since 1999, in only 4 hours! It's not a $20,000 two year class, or a $3,500 6 month course (a total waste of money), I will teach you everything you need to know in audio mastering in only 4 hours! This course and the PDFs took me over 1.5 years to create. This is some serious stuff!

As an added BONUS - I will master one of your songs and provide free access to a video of the mastering session. Continue reading for more info....

video tutorials
Note - You can watch the videos on your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, whatever your device is you can watch the videos. Also, video courses are genre/style specific. Course times vary depending on your genre/style of music, but you will get over 3 hours of video in all courses.

1. Audio Master Laws, Tips, and Advice (46:36)
Several videos that fill in the missing pieces that are not in other parts of the course. Tips, advice and absolute LAWS that you cannot break. Break a few of these laws, and I will guarantee your CD project will be a disaster. 45 minutes of strong advice.

2. The 4 Bands In Audio Mastering (9:32)
In audio mastering, we work in Bands. Here's a quick overview.

3. Analyzing A .Wav File Before Mastering (11:58)
This is the first step in audio mastering (after importing the song).

4. How To Correctly Set Your Song Volumes (8:10)
How do I get all my songs the same volume? How loud is my song supposed to be? Is my song too loud? All these questions are answered in this quick 8 min video.

5. Compression Made Easy (19:49)
I've listen to over 1,000 clients attempts at mastering, and masters from other studios (some charging $100 a song). 75% of what I heard, they have NO CLUE how to compress a song. Usually, they don't apply any compression at all (they just make the song louder and call that mastering) and the song breaks up miserably when played back loud. Or the extreme, they compress it to death and it has no dynamic range and it's distorted.

In this video I explain what compression is, your goals, how to use compressors, everything you need to know about compression in audio mastering is in this 20 min video!

6. Understanding Equalization And Spectral Enhancement (27:05)
Which processors are used for EQ? Most people don't know a compressor is one of them. When do you use them, what are your goals, what's the difference between EQ and spectral enhancement? Almost a half hour of priceless information you want find anywhere else.

7. "Your Genre Of Music" Step by Step Mastering Sessions (3-4 songs) (between 1:00-1:30)
In this video I master 3-4 songs in a live mastering session. You'll see I always use the same simple steps with every song, to bring it up to commercial radio standards. I also include bonus tips and advice while going through my step progression. This video brings everything together, when you can actually see me doing what I've talked about earlier, and what you've read in the PDFs or in my book.

You Can Quickly Become An Audio Mastering Expert
I've worked with sooooo many clients and studios. I've heard their mastering attempts. I've read 1,000 blog posts and watched 100 hours of free youtube video made by guys with "very little" commercial mastering experience or they're a kid living in their mom's basement (usually both).

That all being said, if you read my PDFs (why not buy the full book too) and watch all of my videos, I can just about guarantee you will be better than 75% of the audio mastering engineers online! This includes some from major recording studios. I know this because I've heard their masters and 75% are clueless in several major areas, and you will know more than them.

Now, I can't exactly "guarantee" results. That's like someone selling exercise videos and guaranteeing you will lose weight. Yes, if you do the program, guaranteed you will. But if you never turn the video on, the weight loss program won't work for you. Same thing here.

MASTERING ISN'T A TEST!
Too many people think, oh well I got some advice from this kid, and three other guys, now I'm going to master the CD that took me A YEAR to write and record. Really? Here's why this doesn't work.

I'll be generous. 20% of the information from engineers who have never done anything (other than work on their own stuff) is absolutely WRONG. Sometimes even the opposite. They make up these odd ball theories based on nothing. I've even had a few hip hop engineers make mastering decisions based on what their grandma told them about their songs. I'm not joking here, they told me their grandma said the bass was too low, so they cranked it above distortion.

Well, so what if you get a few processes wrong? You'll get 80% of your CD mastering right. That's a grade B, right? WRONG! It's an "F."

If you get your loudness wrong, you get an "F." If you get your compression wrong, you get an "F." Maybe you don't know how to increase clarity, set your bass levels, get all your songs the same level, all "F."

You could get ONE critical area wrong, and be 90% right with the rest, and your CD will be a JOKE when played against commercial songs, at the club, even your family and friends will laugh at you after leave. Ha!

Let me give you information that is 100% correct! Based on the over 40,000 songs I've mastered that have actually been played on the radio, and in clubs around the world.

Get an "A+" on all of your projects! Why not? Isn't you music career worth this small investment?

90 pages pdfs You get 90 pages of PDFs from my current #1 Best Selling Audio Mastering Book on Amazon.com. From setting up your listening environment, my graph of solutions to common problems, how to master different genres, to how to correctly set your song volumes, this course is packed with valuable information. You can spend 100 hours on youtube looking for free videos and half the information in my course, you'll never find it anywhere! And, even better, you won't get any "wrong" information from my course either, that will ruin your project.

Note - This option available with the FULL course only.

I want you to succeed with your audio mastering, your music career or your sound engineering business!

What better way than for you to be able to watch a video of me mastering one of your songs? You'll also get the mastered song as a reference track for the rest of your project. Lastly, if there are any major errors in your mix, I will tell you how to fix them. So, we can get a great mastering result. This is a $250 value by itself alone!

Note - How it works is after ordering the course, you can email me a song (any genre/style regardless of the course you purchased) and within 7 business days I will email you a link with access to watch your song's mastering session. If there are any errors in your mix for you to correct, you will be notified prior to your video session being created.

So, how much is my course?

$2,500

$1,000

$500

SAVE AN ADDITIONAL 15% THIS WEEK ONLY!
COUPON CODE - 15apr (enter discount code middle right of first page, above total)

How about only $49* for the 3.5 hour course (no video of your song).
Or $151* (comes with the live video session of your song being mastered).
*Prices after using the 15% off coupon

Note - You can watch the videos on any device smart phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, whatever.

IMPORTANT - Also, you will be directed to Yondo website to create an account and make payment. You will be sent a verification email or you can just go to https://jrmastering.yondo.com/login to log in and start watching the videos and download the PDFs. The entire process is very simple and the video interface is AMAZING! Very easy to use, fast, and well organized.

If Your Genre/Style Of Music Isn't Available, It Will Be Soon
HARD ROCK - Will be available April 25th - Email me if you would like to be notified

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