Gain Staging

[Harry_HH]

yep, gain staging to -18dBFS isn't wrong, just unnecessary and way too quiet. as long as you're roughly hitting 0VU everything should be fine, so this is sound advice.

This isn't quite true. Although your DAW tolerates much higher volumes without distorting, especially plugins, which emulate analogue models, are typically optimized for - 18dBFS.

I put always a VU meter in my master channel, and check the db level before adding e.g. an analogue effect to the channel, behind the recorded track or an instrument. And remember, don't use channel faders to reduce the channel volume at this stage, save the faders for the mixing stage. There are other ways to do the volume adjustment at this stage, I prefer the sample playback slider (as its called in Live) or the Utility.

[ghostwhistler]

yep, gain staging to -18dBFS isn't wrong, just unnecessary and way too quiet. as long as you're roughly hitting 0VU everything should be fine, so this is sound advice.

This isn't quite true. Although your DAW tolerates much higher volumes without distorting, especially plugins, which emulate analogue models, are typically optimized for - 18dBFS.

I put always a VU meter in my master channel, and check the db level before adding e.g. an analogue effect to the channel, behind the recorded track or an instrument. And remember, don't use channel faders to reduce the channel volume at this stage, save the faders for the mixing stage. There are other ways to do the volume adjustment at this stage, I prefer the sample playback slider (as its called in Live) or the Utility.

wht about adding a VU meter to the individual channels?

[inkwarp]

this still confuses the hell out of me.
the only rule I go by now is: if it sounds good ( crazy I know, but sometimes it happens).
Make sure the channel meter on the master channel doesn't go into the red ( maybe flickers in and out for microseconds)...
I would like to know what I am doing because I can see the benefits of having a kind of a 'struck' mixer, i.e. nothing going over 0 db on each track...
i don't know why I find this stuff so hard.
maybe I am just really dense : /

ps. I stick an instance of VUMT meter on every channel but still don't understand how to read the vu meters....

[Harry_HH]

yep, gain staging to -18dBFS isn't wrong, just unnecessary and way too quiet. as long as you're roughly hitting 0VU everything should be fine, so this is sound advice.

This isn't quite true. Although your DAW tolerates much higher volumes without distorting, especially plugins, which emulate analogue models, are typically optimized for - 18dBFS.

I put always a VU meter in my master channel, and check the db level before adding e.g. an analogue effect to the channel, behind the recorded track or an instrument. And remember, don't use channel faders to reduce the channel volume at this stage, save the faders for the mixing stage. There are other ways to do the volume adjustment at this stage, I prefer the sample playback slider (as its called in Live) or the Utility.

wht about adding a VU meter to the individual channels?

My point was controlling individual channel/plugin gain, yes, you can put the VU meter in each channel, but why do that, when you can solo the desidered channel/sound source, and use the master channel VU meter.

BTW, I can't understand, is, why meters, such as the iZotope Insight2, the Waves or the IK meter boards, or any (?) of the many other "all included" metering pkugins, do not include VU meters.

(For the inkwarp: you first calibrate the VU, e. g. - 18dBFS = 0VU, then you try to avoid the constant red zone in you VU meter. What sounds good is good, that's correct, but metering helps. You can't always easily hear e. g. the sweet spot of an analogue plugin.)

[inkwarp]

hmm..
I think I am a bit dyslexic with numbers.
here is a screen grab of a vumt meter on a channel with some drums.
the track isn't distorting but the needle is always in the red. I don't understand the figures in the meter window. If I turn down the volume of the track to -18dbs I can hardly hear it anymore: https://i.gyazo.com/73c18c1f66d58663f2a ... 60eecc.png


sorry, i don't know how to embed an image either : /

[DMG68]

For drums, it’s different, lol. I generally use peak meters for the drums and try to keep them not really over -6 dbfs. And not driving the master channel much over that either. Everyone works differently though and this is not going to be solved for you in this thread. In the end, you have to find what works for you, unfortunately.

[jonalyn]

if i understand correctly [...]

No you did not understand correctly.

Adjust the gain only at points where it matters.

when should we adjust the gain ? in the first plugin loaded in the insert ? i don't really understand if i should let the plugin play loud (a lot ahead 0dbvu) and correct the gain in the end of fx chain ? or if i need to check the level between each plugin ?

[vurt]

between each plug in.
you are worried about the input for each stage.
so.. maximise at synth out put.
add fx. is input clipping? if so adjust.

set fx1 output to unity.
input fx 2. is input clipping? if so adjust...

and so on.

(it's not relevant for all plugs as mentioned previously, mainly those that emulate analogue gear)

[jonalyn]

between each plug in.
you are worried about the input for each stage.
so.. maximise at synth out put.
add fx. is input clipping? if so adjust.

set fx1 output to unity.
input fx 2. is input clipping? if so adjust...

and so on.

(it's not relevant for all plugs as mentioned previously, mainly those that emulate analogue gear)

thx for let me know , this is how i use to do , but when i read this thread i begin to doubt about what i was doing...

[Burillo]

yep, gain staging to -18dBFS isn't wrong, just unnecessary and way too quiet. as long as you're roughly hitting 0VU everything should be fine, so this is sound advice.

This isn't quite true. Although your DAW tolerates much higher volumes without distorting, especially plugins, which emulate analogue models, are typically optimized for - 18dBFS.

I put always a VU meter in my master channel, and check the db level before adding e.g. an analogue effect to the channel, behind the recorded track or an instrument. And remember, don't use channel faders to reduce the channel volume at this stage, save the faders for the mixing stage. There are other ways to do the volume adjustment at this stage, I prefer the sample playback slider (as its called in Live) or the Utility.

i did mention analog emulations in my very first post.

[wojf62902]

I use this gain stage plugin https://www.sonalksis.com/freeg.html
it's great for making very minor adjustments to a mix without having to touch the faders in the daw or if the plugin has little in the way of control over input and output. I think it's pretty low on cpu as well. I can have it on multiple tracks and sometimes multiple instances on multiple tracks and it doesn't hit the cpu too hard.

[inkwarp]

I use the Klanghelm VUMT plugin now. It's nice and got some extras like filters and eq'ing... If I am in Ableton I will use it's Utility plugin.

[billcarroll]

I feel like this can be a really confusing topic when you are starting out. It's true you'll need to develop your own workflow, finding what works best for you. I found it helpful when people would share specific examples with some detail, so in that spirit here you go.

Starting with individual channels, I always use "trim" or input gain to adjust the level down so I can just switch through samples, synth presets, and samples in samplers without needing to adjust the synth or sample every time. Some DAWs like Cubase and Studio One have trim (input gain), and others like Ableton you can use the Utility plugin as the first plugin in the chain with audio, and the first plugin after an instrument for an instrument track. This is to set the level at the beginning of the plugin chain.

Why do I do this? Almost all samples and synth presets are set at a high volume, with kicks often close to clipping. I don't want to be slowed down by adjusting level for each instrument or sample when I'm in that early creative phase just throwing things together. Setting my input trim to -14 for each new track solves that for me, and it sets a good starting level for each track.

I've just settled on -14 input gain or "trim" because it generally correlates with a sampled kick hitting at close to 0 VU. I then mix everything around the kick. I actually set my channels to -13.6 if I'm being real about it, but that's just a weird quirk of mine. None of this has to be perfect, just get yourself into the ballpark.

With electronic music it's pretty common to mix around the kick, starting with the bass somewhere around -2 db lower than the kick, but this can change depending on the genre and your taste. So find a good volume for the kick at around 0 VU ish and then mix around it.

My goal is to have my final mix already at a decent level like -6, while keeping the signal running through each channel at a reasonable level so I'm not distorting by clipping through any of my plugins that don't like a hot signal, like UAD plugins or others that emulate analog hardware..

However, I've also had good results when pushing a hot signal through some plugins and then trimming down the channel volume at the end using a mix tool or utility plugin. Don't be afraid to try different things to see what works best for you.

I usually use iZotope relay for the last plugin in the chain on each track to trim things down and use for volume automation. There isn't a wrong way, and there are no rules. I usually stick to the above setup because it seems to work for me.

I don't know if this make sense or helps, it's just the way I like to do things. Hopefully some of the detail is helpful.

[rj232]

Try Hornet VU Meter mk4. It will auto gain everything for you. It only costs a couple dollars too.

[Noumena]

seems like there is more than one kind of gainstaging.

i'm old and played in bands and worked in studios through the 80s and 90s. With outboard gear and pedals you needed to mind your "gainstaging" quite closely, especially with gear (rack stuff, mostly) that would have input and output level knobs. It was a mostrous pain in the ass, because usually those knobs were not well calibrated (ie if you set them both to 12 oclock the gain would be differnt between input and output, do that for a couple different units and you'll never be able to get things right....) So gainstaging was something to think about and... if you got into it with your gear (you know, back when you didn't have 400 effects plugins to mess with, just the 5-10 pieces of actual gear you paid a LOT of money for) you would begin to realize that if you fed each piece of kit your level just right, in a sweet spot, things sounded a lot better. Everything had very specific tolerances, especially anything distoring or overdriving and most especially amps and mixer inputs. So managing your gain through all the interconnects was part of the art.

And in my experience this completely carries over to DAW/plugin workflows. Anything that distorts, saturates, etc -- that pushes sines into square waves, will have better and worse ranges of gain to insert, and your input gain will have rammifications on how that plugin should be configured internally, too -- I have a buddy that is always running everything far, far too quiet and he ends up with a mix that sounds dead. Then he tries to fix it in the master stage by pushing the whole thing through iZotope super hot. It doesn't sound good.

I have all my go to plugins set up with volume attenuation going in and coming out with some automation set up (easy to do in Bitwig) that inversely controls the input and output with a trim for each. So I bring up a Silka compressor and I can push the input and have the output attenuated down at the same time with the same knob. So I am always doing that -- with my analog emulated comps and eqs, but also with delays and reverbs. Many things that process audio with an IR is going to respond differently to different gain levels as well.

And, of course, putting everything (and I mean everything) through emulated preamps is a great idea. At least for the music that I make -- I could see some EDM where you want that digital clean, but I like more chaos and funk than that. And if you're using preamps, then at the very least you want to make that gain stage ideal.

This other gainstaging discussion that is about mixing to a specifical level sounds like it is also very important, but I thing the effects-chain gain management is just as important.