A guide to home "Mastering" of your own tunes

[Careland]

In relation to the pre processed mix...
Let me rephrase. What effect does "home mastering" as you describe generally have on the dynamic range of the mix?

[Lost to the Void]

Did you read the guide on page 1?

Right, to get your final level you want a limiter.
If you are in digital domain then you can use a lookahead, which is always a nice option.
If you can adjust the attack and release then you want to essentially follow the rules above for comp, really pay attention to tuning the attack, you don`t want to kill all the transients, something like 1100 ms on dance music will do the trick.
Again you don`t want to be ramming your gain reduction here. I try to never let a limiter go beyond 2db of gain reduction. All limiters are different, but I`ve never heard one that goes much beyond 2db without getting gacky.

Obviously at this stage dither down to 16 bit is fine.

that should do ya, as a rough guide.

With say 1-2 db GR with your first comp, another say, 1-2 db with the second and then another 2 on the limiter you`ve got 6db of gain reduction there, and if you have done it right and used your ears, it should be a relatively clean 6db of reduction.

With a peak of -0.5db you should be able to get your RMS to around -8 which is loud enough to use in the club.