Gain Staging

[Burillo]

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.

As per usual, way to completely miss the point

[BONES]

As per usual, way to completely miss the point, which is why make extra work for yourself when there are plenty of alternatives that will make your life easier without compromising your work?

[Burillo]

As per usual, way to completely miss the point, which is why make extra work for yourself when there are plenty of alternatives that will make your life easier without compromising your work?

do you read anything at all that other people say, or do you just push your singular One And Only Way To Do Things on others without any regard for any amount of experience others may have?

the key point was "newbie". you know which plugins require adjusting input gain and which don't. a newbie won't have that knowledge. you seem to have been doing this for so long you completely forgot (or never knew) what it's like to be a newbie, especially in today's oversaturated market and insane amount of choice and marketing gimmicks you're bombarded with.

like i said, gain staging can be either really simple (gain stage), or really complicated (adjust input gain on plugins that require it, leave it be if they don't, with a thousand caveats). the latter requires a lot of prior knowledge. you have that knowledge, so it works for you. others may not.

also, i'll decide on my own which plugins to use, thank you very much.

[excuse me please]

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"

Well, my carpenter only used their eyes and a carpet knife

[BONES]

do you read anything at all that other people say, or do you just push your singular One And Only Way To Do Things on others without any regard for any amount of experience others may have?

I read everything but I agree with very little of what I read around here. I am completely open to other ways of working, if they make sense. In fact, I bother reading anything at all here in the hope of learning, in order to improve my processes. And, of course, I am more than happy to share my own experiences.

you know which plugins require adjusting input gain and which don't. a newbie won't have that knowledge.

Bit condescending, don't you think? Anyone who looks at the GUI of any plugin with input and output controls will understand what they are for, newbie or otherwise, unless maybe somebody fills their head with irrelevant bullshit.

you seem to have been doing this for so long you completely forgot (or never knew) what it's like to be a newbie, especially in today's oversaturated market and insane amount of choice and marketing gimmicks you're bombarded with.

What, and you think you're helping by filling their heads with krap that hasn't been relevant for 25 years? Don't make me laugh.

[moknamara]

Completely agree with you.

[legendCNCD]

There are plugins which will sound bloated / distorted if you have hottish (like -3dB) signal coming to them, also some may internally break up badly in chain where volume rises.
I like the way Ableton shows the signal level from plugin to plugin in the chain.

[Burillo]

Bit condescending, don't you think? Anyone who looks at the GUI of any plugin with input and output controls will understand what they are for, newbie or otherwise, unless maybe somebody fills their head with irrelevant bullshit.

no, that's not quite how being a newbie works. you already assume a lot of prior knowledge - that 1) a newbie would know that such a thing even could happen and cause problems, and 2) they know that input levels is how you fix it. it's not about "filling head with irrelevant bullshit", it's about the fact that a newbie will not have accumulated prior knowledge that someone like you or me would have.

What, and you think you're helping by filling their heads with krap that hasn't been relevant for 25 years? Don't make me laugh.

it's not about "filling their heads with krap [sic]", it's more about keeping things simple while building good habits to avoid pitfalls they might not know even exist. would you go straight into minutia of compressor attack shapes when explaining someone what a compressor is?

[Spring Goose]

FFS all they have to do is lower or raise the volume (increase or decrease the amount of signal). What part of it does a newbie not understand?

[Burillo]

FFS all they have to do is lower or raise the volume (increase or decrease the amount of signal). What part of it does a newbie not understand?

Exactly. With gain staging, this is easy - you try to hit a certain level using a meter, and you're good.

Contrast it to "I will only gain stage if I need it (which I first need to know if I need it) and will not use plugins that need gain staging in the first place (which I first need to know which plugins need gain staging)" that BONES seems to be advocating for.

[BONES]

What I'm advocating is keeping everything simple, not using bullshit pseudo-technical terms like "gain staging" just to make myself feel like I know what I'm doing. Seriously, if ever there was a made-up bullshit term to describe a simple, intuitive process, it's "gain staging". I'm sure it's made generations of kids who've spent a fortune on an audio engineering course feel like they were getting good value for their parent's money but, honestly, it's really not a thing. So rather than confusing newbies with meaningless jargon, I prefer to tell them not to worry about things that aren't relevant and do what feels right.

it's not about "filling their heads with krap [sic]", it's more about keeping things simple while building good habits to avoid pitfalls they might not know even exist.[/quot]
Except it's not simple. Quite the opposite, it's making a simple process more complicated than it needs to be for no good reason.

would you go straight into minutia of compressor attack shapes when explaining someone what a compressor is?

No, I'd tell them not to use them unless they really have to, and then I'd tell them to play around and work it out for themselves, because they aren't complicated and they don't need to know any of that minutiae. I sure as shit have no idea about attack shapes in compressors (and no interest in learning about them, either).

[Spring Goose]

So we're all agreed.

[viveka]

Sorry to necro bump this thread, but it’s been five years and many more since the transition of most music making to digital (I assume), but I’m hoping theres enough clarity on this topic that someone might be able to chime in with a step by step guide on how to manage gain, especially when handling VSTs and other processors.

What I didn’t see mention or perhaps missed, was calibrated monitoring. I’d love to simply rely on my ears, but more often than not I’m grappling with quiet instruments (textural strings, a nylon acoustic), vs an Omnisphere patch which is always louder than required — and balancing all this against a monitoring level that I have to constantly adjust. I’m obviously going about it the wrong way.

Could anyone that has now done both — figure out managing gain inside the DAW and calibrate their monitors - basically, has had their “penny drop” moment — kindly share with us all, these steps and methods so we can learn and move on from this topic? I know we’d all be super grateful.