Tricking yourself is just not a good long-term strategy. Look here, you do you, but my students keep asking me, and now for the third time today, Iâve seen this 6 dB trick. I do not believe this is good advice.
The premise is if you put a gain plugin set to minus 6 dB on every single one of your tracks, youâre gonna get some headroom back at the end. Itâs a little bit like setting your clock 15 minutes ahead so that youâre never late, and if that works for you, great. But what most people discover is they start budgeting an extra 15 minutes, and they still show up late everywhere.
The problem isnât that you donât know what time it is, itâs that youâre not budgeting your time well. Sticking a plugin on each and every one of these channels is a crutch, and now youâve gotta figure out whether or not to include the buses, when effectively, this is what your master fader is meant to do. Proponents of this technique like to mention mixing into a limiter, but if youâre not managing or busing the levels going into a limiter, you probably shouldnât be mixing into one.
Just do your best to manage your gain sensibly so itâs not clipping at the end, and if it is, the internal headroom in your DAW is more than enough to accommodate that extra level, turn it down, and youâll get it back when you change your output. Nah, crap, Iâm late.
