Giovanni CordovaThe Mastering Limiter Handoff: What Mix Engineers Need to Leave Alone
Mixing for mastering requires understanding mastering headroom and mix-master handoff protocols. Learn what mastering engineer requirements mean for limiter on mix bus decisions.
The Space Between Stages
Your mix feels finished. Everything sits where it belongs. The balance serves the song. And it's quieter than the references your client sent.
This quietness creates discomfort. The limiter sitting on your mix bus could solve it instantly. Three decibels of gain reduction and suddenly the mix feels competitive, finished, ready.
The question is whether that finish serves what comes next.
What Limiters Do to Possibility
A limiter makes decisions. It chooses which transients to reduce, which frequencies to prioritize, how the envelope responds to peaks. These are musical choices disguised as technical ones, shaping the character and movement of your mix.
When a mastering engineer receives limited material, they inherit those decisions. They can work with them, around them, or against them. But they can't unmake them. The flexibility that existed in your dynamic mix has been converted into fixed relationships.
Some mixes need that conversion at the mixing stage. The limiter becomes part of the creative intent, shaping the sound in ways essential to the vision. Other times, the limiter is just making things louder to ease the discomfort of comparison.
When the Limiter Belongs
If the limiting creates a sound you can't achieve any other way, it belongs in your mix. Heavy drum compression that pumps in a specific rhythm. Distortion characteristics that emerge only when your particular limiter hits hard. A glued quality that defines the production aesthetic.
In these cases, the limiter is an instrument, playing its part in the arrangement. Removing it would remove something essential. The mastering engineer needs to hear this result, understand your intent, and work with it as a creative choice rather than a technical error.
Consider sending two versions: one with your creative limiting intact, one without. This gives the mastering engineer options while preserving your vision.
When It's Just Loudness
If the limiter is there because the mix felt too quiet, because you wanted it to match references, because leaving headroom felt uncomfortable—that's a different situation. The limiting isn't creating something necessary. It's solving a temporary perceptual problem. This connects to how rough mixes now compete with final masters in the streaming era.
Mastering exists specifically to address loudness, competitive level, and final polish. Limiting prematurely trades the mastering engineer's full toolkit for your immediate comfort with the level.
The Headroom Question
Peaks sitting between -6dB and -3dB create space for mastering decisions. This isn't a rule requiring precision—it's an invitation to possibility. Lower peaks give more room to work. Higher peaks still allow mastering, just with less flexibility.
The specific number matters less than the principle: preserve dynamic range where possible, create space for the final stage to do what it does best.
Mixing With Reference, Delivering Without
Many engineers mix with a limiter engaged for reference, then bypass it for the final bounce. This approach lets you hear how limiting will affect your mix, revealing problems before they reach mastering. Harsh frequencies that become aggressive under limiting. Balance issues that emerge when dynamics compress. Masking that appears when everything gets louder.
You make better mixing decisions when you understand how the mix will respond to limiting. Then you deliver the dynamic version and let mastering make those decisions with full awareness of the entire project.
Communication Shapes Results
Tell the mastering engineer what matters to you. If your mix has specific dynamic movement you want preserved, say so. If you mixed with heavy limiting for creative reasons, explain why. If you're unsure whether the limiting serves the work, ask for their perspective.
The handoff works best as conversation, not transaction. Their expertise includes understanding what your mix needs and what serves the final listening experience.
Trust the Process
Your mix doesn't need to sound finished at the mixing stage. It needs to sound ready for what comes next. Mastering will bring the level, the final polish, the competitive loudness. Your work is creating the foundation that mastering can build upon. When that foundation is solid, mastering follows the three-hour timeline naturally.
The space you leave is where possibility lives.
Giovanni Cordova is an audio engineer specializing in podcast production and mixing. If this perspective on creative handoffs resonates with your work, explore how collaborative process might serve your project.