Thanks, guys!
I enrolled in that Coursera course on Music Production. After reading/watching the intro, I think simply from my experience I will know much of the material covered (I’ved used both Cubase and ProTools and other audio tools for years), but I’m sure there will be pointers or explanations to things that I simply didn’t know because I lack the formal education. Thanks very much for suggesting this! I will also check out those books.
I think this is a possibility for what happened to my iPad speakers. There are parts in a particular game I’m working on where multiple sfx can be triggered at once, so those combined with the background music (all of which are pretty high level just under clipping line) likely pushed the mixbus one too many times recently. I guess in general it’s best to leave some headroom for all the sfx and music so that combinations aren’t deadly, because it’s kinda difficult to preview all dynamic audio scenarios that could happen in the game.
No one else working on this game has blown speakers on their devices, so it could just be product wear… but just in case I’ve backed levels down a bit across the board.
In conclusion, is there a typcial level that I should shoot for? Like -2.0 or something? Or does it not matter at all? I only remember -2.0 because of some mastering tutorial I have that trims it to that, but I have no idea if that level is significant in some way.
Thanks again!