what is
Headroom?

Last Updated: May 26th, 2025

Read time: 4-Min

What is headroom?

When it comes to getting your music mastered, there's not much that's required of you as the artist/producer/composer/etc. In fact, one of the only things we ask, is that you provide headroom with your mixes.

This terminology can be a little confusing to some, but put quite simply: Headroom refers to the space between the loudest part of your track and the digital clipping point (0.00dB).

How do I check if I have headroom?

There's two super easy ways of checking whether your mix has headroom. The first, is to export your mix and drop the file into your chosen DAW, you'll be able to see if your mix has headroom by simply looking at the waveform.

Below are two example of the same audio file, one with headroom, and the other without.

this is a mix with headroom

this is a mix without headroom

The second way to check whether you mix has headroom, and crucially, how much headroom is to look at your stereo output channel in your chosen DAW. To do this successfully, loop through the loudest part of your track and keep an eye on the stereo output readings. If your stereo output is reading -0.2dB (for example) during the loudest part of your track, then you have 0.2dB of headroom.

(Most DAWs signify clipping by making the stereo output reading red.)

Here we can see the peak level of our stereo output is around -4dB, signifying that this mix has 4dB of headroom.

This offers plenty of room for the mastering engineer to work their magic, before creating a final competitive level.

After I export the track, my headroom disappears

If you have checked your levels before exporting and they have shown a negative value, but when you check after export you're clipping or close to clipping there's one key thing you need to check.

Ensure that 'Normalization' is turned off during export (some DAWs have this turned on as standard). Normalization will overwrite your headroom in an effort to make the track as loud as possible, turning it off is best.

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