How do you get the right volume when mastering?

[DMP]

When mastering, keeping to below the red is too quiet, so I up the volume by a few db. However I find that listening for audible distortion is alot more difficult and time consuming than seeing if peaks hit a graphical level. So is there any way of viewing volume levels to check for distortion?

Dan

[Bastiaan]

an occasional dip in the red isnt that bad. Protools has some headroom build in.

Alternitavly you could throw for example a digirack compressor on the masterfader and set it to bypass. It will give you a bigger meter

Bastiaan

[DMP]

I already put a compressor on it to get the larger meter, but the compressor goes into the red as well - as expected - and doesnt distort untill it is way into the red. So is there no other way of viewing when distortion will occur?

Dan

[Bastiaan]

Do you have a dat-recorder? Or anything else you can connect to the digital output of the digi (or AMIII) i think that will give you a good reading. The professional RTW-meters would be great too, but wayyyyyy to expensive......


Bastiaan

[Nashville Bass]

You may try putting a limiter at the end of your processing chain set at -2db.

[Mark_Knecht]

Hi,
Waves L1+UltraMaximizer as the last plug on my Master Fader, using the 'Mastering' preset, whatever that's called I can't remember, but you'll find it immediately in the list of preset options. It sets the output to -0.2dB, I think, and I don't think I've ever seen a clip on the output when using this plug in.

Mark

[DMP]

Thanks guys. Much appreciated.

Dan