TedEH
Cromulent
I would think that if you're eating up all of your headroom, there's already a mistake being made somewhere. Reminds me of a conversation I had this weekend with someone I ran into. They're recording something and are convinced that something is wrong because they can't hear their recorded vocals over the instruments. Maybe there is actually something wrong, but it's also very possible that none of them know the first thing about mixing and they've just got a raw vocal track buried under a partly-mixed, likely compressed, instrumental, and nobody involved has the know-how to work with it. So they're trying out each daw one by one to see which one will make their vocals audible. Which is almost certainly not the solution to the problem.
Any time I've had to contribute to live sound, I go in the opposite order, because I'd want to go from the item you have the least control over to the item you have the most control over. In lots of small rooms, your drum mics are basically only doing a bit of reinforcement, and you're stuck at a minimum because you can't exactly turn a drum kit down. So that establishes the baseline and you go from there. Otherwise, how would you know how loud the vocals should be with no reference to anything around it?
It like when someone "checks the monitor" with just the guitar or vocal on it's own. What's the point? Sure, I can hear it now, but that tells me nothing about what I'll be able to hear once everyone else starts playing.
Any time I've had to contribute to live sound, I go in the opposite order, because I'd want to go from the item you have the least control over to the item you have the most control over. In lots of small rooms, your drum mics are basically only doing a bit of reinforcement, and you're stuck at a minimum because you can't exactly turn a drum kit down. So that establishes the baseline and you go from there. Otherwise, how would you know how loud the vocals should be with no reference to anything around it?
It like when someone "checks the monitor" with just the guitar or vocal on it's own. What's the point? Sure, I can hear it now, but that tells me nothing about what I'll be able to hear once everyone else starts playing.