All musicians today have a set hard limit that we cant go over: 0db. The crest factor is the dynamic range between the peaks and the RMS (or the headroom between the two).Īnyway, to make your music louder you need to understand what music does. RMS is more of an estimation of your general loudness, when you use a plugin to gauge RMS and loudness what it's really doing is showing you a value based on multiple readings, one being the crest factor. What's more important are the terms RMS and crest factor. Mastering to -0.2dBfs is done to make sure things stay safe as noted earlier. Everything in mixing and mastering can be looked at as a battle for headroom.
