HOW TO lower the Volume of a project? LUFS are too high

[ramseysounds]

You have 8k+ posts and you're asking in effect what is gain staging?
Ignore anyone who says you must leave 6db headroom for mastering as well; in the digital age as long as you don’t go above 0db, you’re fine

[kritikon]

To be fair, people who have grown up in the digital DAW world with everything ITB have had no need or use for gain staging. It's more of a theoretical thing if you've never touched hw in your life (and many won't have). As old farts, it's easy to forget that the way we did it is quite definitely NOT how it has to be or is done today.

I've gone from hw to ITB and now back to predominantly hw, so obvs I gain stage, and for years habit made me gain stage in a DAW. But on the few occasions I go all sw, even I now throw gain staging out of the window. My faders are all over the place. My inputs are all over the place. Some of my FX faders are completely wrong as they look like the loudest channels in the desk, purely cos I set them up however I could care or not at the time, or how many glasses of wine I'd had. And tbh it doesn't matter as long as the end result sounds the same. Having a neat set of faders on a desk is purely personal choice and old fart obsessionalism.

[sqigls]

not really, if all faders are around 0, you have more resolution for volume nudges, if the faders are right down the slightest move can be a 1dB nudge. Also, while we're using analog modelled synths and effects, gain staging might prevent over saturation. Using mostly these kind of emulated plugins, running overcooked everywhere in the mix is basically going to leave you with a different sounding mix to something that is 'gain staged'.

[ramseysounds]

Personally I think you should gainstage analogue or digital. If the OP had, he wouldn’t need to ask such basic questions