Drum bus level starting point

[James Ford]

On a drum bus, what peak dB should I set it to in my DAW? Assume I’m mixing metal and I want to allow enough headroom for mastering plugins to actually work. I know there are a lot of factors to consider, but realistically we all set the drums first and then mix to that. I’m just looking for a good starting point.

EZdrummer version: 3.0.6
Operating system: macOS Sonoma (14)

Topic

[Mick Avoidant]

You want to set well below 0Db; -12 is the number I found in my researching. The mixdowns should be -12, to give mastering lots of room for boosting the EQ.

 

One thing to watch out for is mixing the singing right. If we know the words, we can hear them even if they’re too low in the mix for anyone else to hear. I put the guitars and bass at the right level to hear the snare clearly and bring the singing up to match the snare. Listen to commercial recordings of the same kind of music that you do. It’s surprising how low the guitars are.

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Thanked by: James Ford

[Bear-Faced Cow]

With any type of music, I am usually trying to achieve  6 to 10 dB of headroom on the output bus. This is not only for mastering purposes, but is also to ensure that transients don’t get completely rounded off by certain analogue modelled plug-ins that I use on the output bus. This usually requires that all instruments and not just the drums be set at a pretty moderate level. The output bus sums all of your tracks and the decibels add up quickly.

Another other reason that I’m trying to maintain that specific headroom is because I am usually mixing through a bus compressor and ensure I never exceed 2 dB of gain reduction. It also forces me to keep the music balanced since any single instrument can change the entire balance of the mix when using a bus compressor. And no using the bus compressor is not mastering.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Author]

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