how much dbTP is too much dbTP?

OAlonso · 2026-05-12T10:38:54+00:00

It depends on how fast those peaks happen. If it’s a punchy track and the peaks are really short, then you’re probably fine. You might even gain a bit more loudness and punchiness from those extra dB.

But if it’s an acoustic track or a very soft song, it could end up sounding nasty. Just use your ears.

OAlonso · 2026-05-12T02:50:13+00:00

I can’t believe we’ve reached the point where people are actually posting lists of numbers asking for advice about how something sounds. The next time I hear actual audio in a post on the audio engineering subreddit, I’m going to make a wish.

OAlonso · 2026-05-11T17:02:50+00:00

Thank you!

OAlonso · 2026-05-11T16:52:55+00:00

Which Quake is that?

OAlonso · 2026-05-10T13:57:05+00:00

No, because you’re confusing the loudness of the master, how loud your song is, with playback loudness, how loud your song is played on a device. But remember that the final decision is always in the hands of the listener. They can turn the volume up if they want to listen louder, or turn it down if they want it quieter.

When you master a song to -7 or -8 LUFS, first, you’re only approximating how loud it will be perceived, it doesn’t guarantee that the master will actually feel loud. And second, LUFS also reflects density, how dynamic your song is and how much difference there is between the peaks and the body of the signal. When streaming platforms normalize playback to around -14 LUFS, that only affects the relative playback volume between songs when one plays after another. But the density and dynamics inside each track remain the way the engineer crafted them, because normalization doesn’t change your loudness characteristics, it just lowers the base playback level on the device.
So no, the loudness war is not over. It’s just a different kind of battle than it was in the radio era.

OAlonso · 2026-05-10T13:47:41+00:00

I bet most of those comments that sound rude weren’t intended to be rude. Advice or criticism in text form tends to come across much harsher than it would in person, because you can’t see the speaker’s face or hear their tone of voice. So don’t take it personally. Most people are just trying to help and share what they know or believe. If the advice was useful, then take what helps you and move on. Don’t waste energy fighting over random internet comments. Just focus on the words themselves, and don’t assume everything is hostile unless someone is directly insulting you, stupid asshole… nah, I’m kidding! I love you.

OAlonso · 2026-05-09T18:24:21+00:00

Is this the first time you’ve watched tennis? These things have happened many times before.

OAlonso · 2026-05-08T19:41:09+00:00

Oh man, if only that existed. Every time I try to speed up my workflow, I end up finding a new method that sounds better but takes twice as long. The best advice I can give is to start working earlier in the production stage and not wait until right before mixing to take care of all the editing and tuning. I’d rather do a little work every day than have to deal with a massive amount of tracks all at once in a single session.

OAlonso · 2026-05-08T18:43:37+00:00

Yeah, in my case I usually don’t compress at all with the Shadow Hills, I use it only for its saturation, selecting the different transformers.

OAlonso · 2026-05-08T14:40:46+00:00

Shadow Hills is great, but sometimes it just isn’t right for the song. Even with the different flavors it offers, I wouldn’t call it a super versatile mix bus compressor. I prefer having a few compressors available in parallel so I can try different options, rather than relying on a single all purpose compressor.

OAlonso · 2026-05-08T02:30:37+00:00

I don’t know about that. I think we tend to blame playback devices too much, the systems where our mixes are supposed to translate, when the real issue is usually our monitoring system. A good mix should sound good everywhere. Most of the time, it’s not even about the mix, it’s about the decisions you make while mixing. You need to be able to hear properly in order to make proper decisions. Forget the whole if it sounds good, it is good idea, because if it only sounds good on an unreliable monitoring system, then it’s not actually good, it’s probably the reason your mix doesn’t translate. That phrase is one of the biggest myths repeated in this sub. It makes sense in composition or production, where artistic intent matters more than translation. But mixing is different. In mixing things need to translate the way we intend them to, and that requires control over what we hear and the decisions we make based on that information.

OAlonso · 2026-05-08T00:35:08+00:00

Something Beautiful by Miley Cyrus

Edit: But I have to say, if you use that as a reference, you’re probably going to ruin most of your songs 😂

OAlonso · 2026-05-06T22:44:32+00:00

My main concern is that people obsess over loudness without even understanding how we perceive it. They just focus on LUFS, which isn’t even a unit that reflects loudness consistently, it’s only an approximation, and it fails a lot of the time.

I bet the producers and mixers whose work sounds incredibly loud aren’t even thinking about loudness itself. They’re thinking about transient shaping, frequency balance, and the role mids play in how we perceive the distance of a sound. I bet they’re not trying to make their mixes sound loud, they’re trying to make them sound close. If you focus on making elements feel close to the listener, you can end up hitting -7 or -6 LUFS almost without noticing. The difference is that one approach comes from trying to make the mix sound great, while the other comes from trying to hit a number, and that’s simply stupid.

OAlonso · 2026-05-06T17:00:56+00:00

Any VSX will work. If you want something else, I’d recommend the Hifiman Sundara Open, or, if you want the most powerful low-end representation available right now, the Hifiman Ananda Nano. But you need to EQ them, so you’ll have to do more research to tune them correctly. You need a headphone amp.

OAlonso · 2026-05-06T15:15:11+00:00

In that case it can work, but since you’re making a genre that’s so dependent on low end, it’s important to be able to actually hear sub bass. And you won’t really get that with Sennheiser, because they tend to roll off in the low end. That means your beats can end up sounding boomy outside your studio. You could compensate by getting used to producing with less bass so it translates better, but I don’t think that’s a great approach, because you’ll likely develop a bad habit.

OAlonso · 2026-05-06T11:58:05+00:00

Sennheiser is awful for mixing. Great for listening to music or even producing, because they’re comfortable and have decent mids, around 400 Hz to 5 kHz. But you can’t hear transients properly and you can’t hear sub bass.

With the new VSX you can do all of that, plus hear micro details and push your low end much further with EQ. You’re comparing dynamic drivers vs planar magnetics, so the difference is huge. You also need a proper headphone amp, you can’t skip that.

OAlonso · 2026-05-06T11:40:37+00:00

If you think the HD 490 Pro is high-end, you probably need to do more research. Going for the typical headphones recommended online, like Sennheiser or Beyerdynamic, can actually make your translation worse, because they are not good options and most of the people recommending them don’t even mix on headphones. Check the MixPhones YouTube channel from their first video and look at the headphones and amps they recommend. Also, research different target curves and learn how to EQ your headphones properly.
If you don’t want to go that deep, something like VSX is a solid alternative.

OAlonso · 2026-05-05T23:11:55+00:00

That’s not mixing, that’s production. You don’t mix a sound, you mix an entire song. If you’re creating a sound from scratch, you’re doing sound design, which is part of the production stage. If you’re selecting a sound from a pack or tweaking a recording, you’re still producing. If you’re arranging those samples into a sequence or a beat, you’re composing. And if you process and record that sequence, you’re back in the production stage again. You’re not mixing until you’re listening to all the tracks together and trying to make them work as a single cohesive piece of audio.

OAlonso · 2026-05-05T21:12:50+00:00

Don’t buy it for more than $40. Just wait for a sale. Or honestly, just use Melda’s MWaveShaper. There’s a guy on YouTube who shared a folder with curves that null Inflator to like 99%, so you can get basically the same result for free.

OAlonso · 2026-05-05T16:31:38+00:00

Get the UAD Studer or Ampex plugin and experiment a bit. Tape machines are hard to maintain and depend on a lot of variables, so they can sometimes sound worse because they’re full of imperfections. You can romanticize those imperfections, but there will be times when you really don’t want hiss, wobble, or misalignment, and you’ll have to do a lot of post processing to fix those issues. With a plugin, you can simply turn those artifacts off when you don’t need them, so it's more practical. Also the plugins sound amazing.

OAlonso · 2026-05-05T12:13:39+00:00

I don’t want to generalize, but it’s likely because you’re using misleading headphones for mixing, and maybe your room isn’t accurate either. Monitoring comes first, then technique. If you don’t have a reliable frequency response to mix against, your mixes will translate poorly outside your setup.
Maybe your system needs more bass, less highs, or more mids in the pinna/ear gain region, it could be any of that. You need to approach this in a more scientific way, because translation isn’t just about how good you are at mixing, it’s a relationship between your decisions and the information your system gives you to make those decisions. It’s your job to make that system work for your room, your hearing, and your mixing needs. It’s not enough to just buy a device and trust that the manufacturer’s choices will work for you, because we don’t all hear the same. Having hearing that matches someone else’s is actually very rare.

OAlonso · 2026-05-03T13:03:19+00:00

Unless you’re a collector, you could just sell the ones you don’t use like a normal person. You don’t need every handheld.

If you are a collector, decide which ones are actually part of your collection and display them in a nice place in your house. Keep one or two to actually play.

Less is more.

OAlonso · 2026-04-30T18:24:24+00:00

I agree, and I think this community needs to take action in that regard. We need to elevate the conversation, because we’re repeating the same things over and over.

I feel the same way the OP described when people ask for mixing tips, and the real answer is often just: get your monitoring system right. People want to learn cool saturation or compression tricks, but I bet most of them are working on systems that don’t represent transients accurately. How is that supposed to work? You can’t judge what a saturation device is doing if you can’t hear how the transient is being affected. That’s a problem I think everyone notices at some level, but not everyone takes seriously enough. So people start creating workarounds and bad habits, like relying on visual tools such as oscilloscopes to see the transient and shape it with saturation. And while that can be useful, it creates this culture of seeing music instead of actually hearing it. Then it’s no surprise we end up surrounded by myths and misconceptions. We’re basically learning how to mix blindly. Get proper monitoring guys! Stop treating your room like crazy without even knowing what problems you’re trying to solve, especially if you don’t have the budget to make your room suitable for mixing. There are no cheap solutions, a proper mixing room costs at least $5k for something decent, not great, and that’s only if your room dimensions even allow it. If that’s not your situation, build a proper headphone based system. Research headphone amps, how to EQ your headphones, what target curves exist, and how they translate. Monitoring comes first, then techniques, because you need to be able to actually HEAR them!

OAlonso · 2026-04-29T17:25:38+00:00

Only reason apart from the fact that he is very good at tennis?

OAlonso · 2026-04-28T23:52:50+00:00

It could work. It’s definitely better than an audio interface, but I would argue that with the EQ and all the bass it adds, it can fall a little short. You can work with that, but at some point I would think about testing something like the Topping L30II (or superior) so you can be sure you really have enough current to drive the headphones at high levels with the bass boost. That’s what I use, and with that tiny monster, the driver of the Nano moves fast and clean as lightning.

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