@Tom Baldwin Re: the deliver that hot. In the Mastering Intensive, we were taught to mix it at a mastered volume but deliver to the mastering engineer without the limiter, but also deliver the one with the limiter to convey the mixing engineer's vision. I am interested to see the Mastering.com mentor's analysis of whether it's delivery ready, and if not, why not. All new to me, but fun.

@Tom Baldwin Thanks for your generous time. I do appreciate it. I acknowledge I'm a beginner--at everything! Songwriting, production the whole nine yards. I would say I certainly have learned a lot over the last several years and I'm a ridiculously high percentile listener on Spotify. But I have a long way to go and this is all helpful. And, nice to see the Tull references. I was a great Tull fan in the day. I was at their concert in Red Rocks in Denver where we all got tear gassed, and that was the last rock concert at Red Rocks for a few years. The following year, they showed up in Denver coming on stage in gas masks. Fun times.

@Vance Tenort when I cross CD Baby’s $25 minimum roayalty for payout I’ll give you bus fare. And a latte too!

I find it challenging to get both values (0 VU and -5dBfs) simultaneously challenging. But I'm getting better at it. Practice, practice, practice.

@Phillip Winters I did look back at that and it was super helpful. I think I need to look at them all again! :)

Two comments: I think I had the same question in the Mixing Intensive and the answer was that after adding the Bass, you didn't need to be at 0VU. You do want to preserve headroom, however. And in one of the videos, I think Kevin took some of the RMS energy out of the low end with EQ. Second comment, I think maybe adding distortion/saturation can help as this effectively moves some energy out of the low end as well and ultimately I think helps translating to smaller speakers. Hope I'm right on all of this. :)

@Adex Felicia Apparently I need to be at level 4 to message you. Maybe you can message me?

Hello. I'm Tom. I've been writing and producing music to a point it needs to be finished, so I'm finishing up the Mixing Intensive and intend to take the Mastering Intensive as well. I've got a collection of 7 - 11 partially produced songs I really want to finish. I've done some ear training and have focused on listening to a bunch of music. I think I probably qualify as an advanced beginner. :) I'm proud of the songs (and the conceptual album) I'm working on. When finished, who knows, maybe I'll find somebody here who would like to collaborate on co-writing and co-producing. We'll see. But I do believe Mastering.com has a winning formula here.