Gain Staging

[PieBerger]

but really, as Bones points out, if the mixes sound good now, there's really no need to go through all of the above just for the sake of it. Unless you are really bored or looking for a good excuse not to see anyone for the rest of the year

[excuse me please]

Also with BONES here. I do everything by ear. Listening is 95% of the deal. When there is a problem, I try to figure out what causes it. So now and then I consult SPAN. When I listen to my old mixes the main trouble is bad EQ, badly applied fx or elements which simply don't work together.

[d-s-m]

You could use something like Hornet VU Meter or TheNormalizer as these both have auto gain features; add to the channel, set your reference level (typically 0VU=-18dbfs) and a max peak level if you want (I set mine to -6db YMMV) hit play and have it analyse the entire stem and it will set the gain appropriately.

It gets more complicated if the channels already have processing on them, especially analog modelled stuff that is level dependent. Ideally what you should do here, is disable the plugins, gain stage before you go in, then reactivate each plugin, checking the VU meter as you go.

This is what I do anyway. For older projects I simply don't bother or I just bounce out stems with whatever processing on them, import them into a new session and just auto gain stage them as a batch. I'll add a Hornet VU to every channel, set them all to Auto, loop the arrangement then press play and go make a cup of tea while it plays out a couple of times to set the levels. If I want to do any further processing with non-linear plugins then I check the levels in and out as I go, from there on out.

Thanks for your reply. I bought the Hornet VU meter plugin and placed it on every track with all other plugins turned off, ran it and now everything is completely out of whack, even after turning all plugins back on....is this supposed to happen? And at this point should I be adjusting the levels with a gain plugin? And should I be setting the volume faders at 0db? And should Hornet VU meter be disabled at some point, or keep it on all the time?

Sorry for all the questions! Just really confused about this

Is there anything wrong with those mixes? If not, then don't touch them. Gain staging prevents problems, it doesn't improve mixes.

but really, as Bones points out, if the mixes sound good now, there's really no need to go through all of the above just for the sake of it. Unless you are really bored or looking for a good excuse not to see anyone for the rest of the year

Also with BONES here. I do everything by ear. Listening is 95% of the deal. When there is a problem, I try to figure out what causes it. So now and then I consult SPAN. When I listen to my old mixes the main trouble is bad EQ, badly applied fx or elements which simply don't work together.

While my mixes sound 'good', they don't ever sound 'great'. I used to think it was just because I haven't had them professionally mastered, but now I believe it's because I'm losing clarity and/or resolution due to having to have some of my fader levels too low in order to get those particular sounds to sit in the mix where I want them.

[Burillo]

people saying "i do everything by ear" is like a carpenter saying "i just watch out for all the bricks falling out of the sky". like, sure, you could always be careful not to stand under falling bricks, but the easier thing to do is just to take precautionary measures (such as the plastic hat) as a matter of habit, and forget about falling bricks altogether.

[PieBerger]

Thanks for your reply. I bought the Hornet VU meter plugin and placed it on every track with all other plugins turned off, ran it and now everything is completely out of whack, even after turning all plugins back on....is this supposed to happen? And at this point should I be adjusting the levels with a gain plugin? And should I be setting the volume faders at 0db? And should Hornet VU meter be disabled at some point, or keep it on all the time?

Sorry for all the questions! Just really confused about this

If of all of the levels going in were 0VU, then in theory the mix balance should have remained the same, the fact that everything is out of whack, indicates some or all of the levels going into the channel were above or below 0VU and Hornet VU has therefore adjusted them. If you were under or over driving any non-linear plugins for example, console emulation or saturation, analog modelled EQ etc, it's like the timbre/character of the mix may have changed as well, since the input level determines the strength of the harmonics these plugins generate; the additional harmonics are what create their "vibe" in most cases.

At this point, you can just rebalance the mix using the faders. All that Hornet VU has done here is made sure that the audio passed to the channel was normalised to 0VU (approximately). What you have experience is quite expected really. Moving forward, if you gain stage as you go, you likely won't experience such drastic changes if you were to ever return to a project or work with exported stems from such projects.

In terms of what to do with Hornet VU. You can either adjust the gain of the audio clip to match the automatic adjustment each instance has made, e.g. if track 1 was adjusted by -6db, you should adjust the gain of the audio clip down by -6db and then either disable Hornet VU or reset the gain value to 0db. Or you can just leave them on with the calculated gain adjustment active. It's a very CPU-light plugin, you should be able to have dozens active without issue.

[vurt]

people saying "i do everything by ear" is like a carpenter saying "i just watch out for all the bricks falling out of the sky". like, sure, you could always be careful not to stand under falling bricks, but the easier thing to do is just to take precautionary measures (such as the plastic hat) as a matter of habit, and forget about falling bricks altogether.

well, it's not like accidentally adding too much gain is going to leave you with brain damage.
unless you really push it

but i do agree, while my ears are my primary tool, i do like to keep an eye on various measurement devices too.
in carpenter speak "measure twice, cut once"

[kingozrecords]

You know, I just remembered I made a great free limiter for this called the esquire, it pretty much makes mastering levels easy, but anything free is easy to overlook.

[BONES]

people saying "i do everything by ear" is like a carpenter saying "i just watch out for all the bricks falling out of the sky".

You do understand that carpenters work with timber, not masonry, right? And hard hats are mandated, builders don't really have a choice but to wear them.

The reality is that you don't have to actively gain stage your mixes, it's something that 99.9% of the time just happens by itself because of the way you work. And, as I said, it is largely irrelevant when working ITB.

[arjr77]

Do not use the master fader to gain stage - Master fader is the volume AFTER all the fx. Either use the volume fader from the VST itself or add a gain/utility plugin as your first plugin in your fx rack and the gain stage it..

I'm a bit confused by how to do this. I'm using vst synths (no live instruments).

Do i set the fader to zero and then adjust the volume in the vst to get to, eg, -18db?

I'm confused because there are several different volume sources to work with: fader, master, vst audio.

Thanks

[kritikon]

I have to do a bit of gainstaging now I'm using more and more h/w, but while I was mostly doing everything ITB for a while, TBH it was a thing of the past. There's not much gainstaging you NEED to do digitally. Bones is on the money here...there's a lot of myth flying around that's simply a hangover from h/w days. If you run a physical studio, yeah you have to level everything if you don't want noise and clips. For ITB stuff, you can gainstage all you like but all you're doing is making pretty symmetrical patterns on your mixer. Sure it can get confusing if some channels are up and down all over the place, but it's not actually destroying the mix.

The master channel's about the only one I worry about nowadays. Gainstage your hw inputs, but don't waste time with your DAW stuff....there are infinite ways of losing yourself in a DAW and gainstaging doesn't need to be one of them.

[Burillo]

For ITB stuff, you can gainstage all you like but all you're doing is making pretty symmetrical patterns on your mixer. Sure it can get confusing if some channels are up and down all over the place, but it's not actually destroying the mix.

...unless you're using analog emulated plugins, or any kind of plugin with a defined "reference level".

those of us advocating for gain staging do not advocate for it because it's "required" - i know full well that i can compensate for this and that, and lower levels here and raise them here, and which plugins benefit from gain staging and which plugins can be used without any regard for it... but all of this gets really complicated to explain to a newbie.

which is why "just shut up and gain stage" is best advice. it's simple, and it's guaranteed to at least not make things worse, if not improve them. once you actually know what you're doing, you get use it only where it's necessary, but you can't do that before you have a good understanding of what "necessary" means in this context.

[BONES]

I've got better advice - if you have a plugin that forces you to gain stage to make it work, get rid of it. You don't need it and it won't make your life any easier or your music any better. It's all bullshit and/or snake oil.

[Unaspected]

I've got better advice - if you have a plugin that forces you to gain stage to make it work, get rid of it. You don't need it and it won't make your life any easier or your music any better. It's all bullshit and/or snake oil.

You don't use distortion?

[BONES]

Yes but the distortion plugins I use have input and output controls that let me boost the signal in the plugin itself, without it going out the other side too hot.

[Unaspected]

Yes but the distortion plugins I use have input and output controls that let me boost the signal in the plugin itself, without it going out the other side too hot.

Ah. I see. You are gain staging but using plugins that allow you to do it internally, rather than having to load up additional plugins just to control gain. Yeah. I can see that making sense now.