Gain Staging Structure: Waste of time?

[qa2pir]

most dist. and compressors have input gain control though.

[cron]

most dist. and compressors have input gain control though.

That's a fair point for distortion. You input levels kind of become a sound design element in themselves and control there is really useful. The rest of the time, why bother with an additional gain stage when you can just keep your levels low at source. Your main mixer stays calibrated (e.g. no forgetting about it and wondering why whatever channel is quieter than the rest even though the fader is set higher) and you never have to even think about the possibility of clipping.

Incidentally Syncretia, I'm totally with you on the questioning dogma thing. I had no idea individual channels in Live didn't clip per channel to be honest. There's also the days I spent juggling elements of my mixes, compromising them in an attempt to get as close to 0dB as possible instead of concentrating fully on the sound.

[Arglebargle]

Certain plugins can overload, I've noticed it from CamelPhat.

[Pulsah]

This thread has lots of professionals discussing this:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... tored.html

A great read, my mixes are night and day better as a result.

[Xenobt]

Pro Tools, (love it or hate it, still the industry standard), will clip and distort at the A/D conversion stage, the channel level stage, the plug-in input stage, and the final master fader stage. And I consider this a GOOD thing.

A talented analog design engineer told me that most hardware, (amps, preamps, compressors, eqs, external channel strips and mixing boards) ran best and cleanest at 50-60% of their range, not the top and bottom. At either extreme frequency response, distortion and signal to noise ratio are not optimum.

It's not conditioning or dogma to realize that we stand on the shoulders of giants who figured all this stuff out, so let's not have babies in the bathwater everywhere just because we might be able to.

I grew up with real analog gear and tape, that required proper gain staging to hit tape hot but not burnt. And you got clear, clean audio that you could mangle at any point later if you chose to.

Now WAY too often I get ITB tracks from young "producers" that are clearly(?!) distorted to the point where they're unusable in any real professional way. And sometimes land projects when younger artists are amazed at how "big", "deep" and "pro" sounding my tracks and mixes are.

But just because something doesn't "clip" or distort inside a DAW, VI or plug in doesn't mean it's well gain staged or even desirable.

I did some experiments with VIs that do internal foo to keep from going over digital 0, and as I pushed tracks into the hot zone, it started collapsing the stereo field, doing weird ducking of other tracks and causing strange pumping and phasing. No thanks! It wasn't distorted in the traditional sense, but it wasn't anything I'd put my name on either.

Like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, "You were too busy thinking about if you could, that you never stopped to think about if you should!" And we all know how that turned out!

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[rifftrax]

This thread has lots of professionals discussing this:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... tored.html

A great read, my mixes are night and day better as a result.

The OP in that thread has no f**king clue what he's on about. LOL.

Gearslutz is a funny place where a great deal of engineers who grew up in the "analog" era think their hardware experience entitles them to understand how a computer works. haha. Very cute but no.

[Xenobt]

Some people understand both.

[rifftrax]

Some people understand both.

It's few and far between sadly. I've read enough of those types of threads to see that very clearly. And there are some very "respected" engineers on that forum...

Same complex that apparently enables brilliant musicians to also simultaneously be political science masters.

[Xenobt]

What's your level of experience, rifftrax? Do you track full bands with giant drum kits, whisper to scream vocalists, barely there acapella choruses, or acoustic/ethnic instruments?

Because I've found that the recorder at the end of the signal chain really isn't that important. That's why all the gain stuff is. And why the famous engineers you read about think it still matters. Because it does!

I've been mixing solely in Pro Tools for the last fifteen years, and it hasn't made any difference in how I record anything, just what I hit at the end to capture the stuff. From analog, to tape-based digital 24 tracks, to ADATs and DA-88s, to PT or any other digital platform to come, it's all the same.

I think rather than focus on printing tracks as hot as possible, the reverse should be the norm. Now that we're at 24 bit and up, the old system of getting things hot to keep tape noise down or get good 16 bit resolution doesn't matter anymore.

Going from 16 to 24 bits (or more) didn't just give a third more resolution, it gives 256 times more, so low levels DON'T equate to lower fidelity. And as I mentioned earlier, there's a sonic price when you start slamming levels at every stage and expecting nothing to happen to the signal.

Maybe some folks like the sound of crushed everything in a track, I'm just not one of them. And they sure won't win any grammys for best engineered album of the year!

Super producer Ed Cherney said it best, "Digital tracked too hot is both harsh AND dull!"

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[padillac]

This thread has lots of professionals discussing this:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much- ... tored.html

A great read, my mixes are night and day better as a result.

The OP in that thread has no f**king clue what he's on about. LOL.

He doesn't? From my reading, the thread boils down to:

1. Good analog consoles can go several DB into the red before sounding like shit.
2. When digital goes into the red, it sounds like shit
3. Recording close to 0db in digital means that a bit of processing can easily send the signal into the red, making it sound like shit.

What's wrong with that?

As for me, I pay attention to gain staging bc it makes it easy to a/b effects without the levels jumping all over the place.

[qa2pir]

[quote="Xenobt"][/quote]

so your point is conservatism and the institutionalization of arbitrary limitations?

[metamorphosis]

The OP in that thread has no f**king clue what he's on about. LOL.

You might want to try it sometime....
lol

[Xenobt]

so your point is conservatism and the institutionalization of arbitrary limitations?

Nope. I just don't think that everyone who buys a DAW is automatically an engineer. There's a reason we're called that. There is real engineering and science at work here, that's why it's called the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

But do it however you like, if you want your DAW running your gain for you, go for it. But don't confuse it with good engineering technique. I can get any sound I want from my set-up, from whispery celtic to death metal, because I know the basic concepts on why things work.

And more knowledge never hurt anyone.

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[rifftrax]

What's your level of experience, rifftrax? Do you track full bands with giant drum kits, whisper to scream vocalists, barely there acapella choruses, or acoustic/ethnic instruments?

No, I don't track full bands with giant drum kits. I don't own a concert hall full of analog gear, which at the end of the day is totally ok with me because it really has nothing to do with how computers work past the point of DSP-intensive modeled plugins and similarly specific points of emulation that take into account relative i/o levels.

Because I've found that the recorder at the end of the signal chain really isn't that important. That's why all the gain stuff is. And why the famous engineers you read about think it still matters. Because it does!

It's really not but that doesn't stop people from talking about digitizing with mytek/prism/lucid/etc. converters and how that stuff is the "tits" vs. brand or model xyz or whatever. You know what famous engineers are using? Hardware. You know what really isn't "hardware"? A set of floating point instructions executed by a integrated circuit running via machine code stepped down from some high-level programming language.

I've been mixing solely in Pro Tools for the last fifteen years, and it hasn't made any difference in how I record anything, just what I hit at the end to capture the stuff. From analog, to tape-based digital 24 tracks, to ADATs and DA-88s, to PT or any other digital platform to come, it's all the same.

I think rather than focus on printing tracks as hot as possible, the reverse should be the norm. Now that we're at 24 bit and up, the old system of getting things hot to keep tape noise down or get good 16 bit resolution doesn't matter anymore.

Really great. I'm happy for you....? How is this an argument about anything I said?

Going from 16 to 24 bits (or more) didn't just give a third more resolution, it gives 256 times more, so low levels DON'T equate to lower fidelity. And as I mentioned earlier, there's a sonic price when you start slamming levels at every stage and expecting nothing to happen to the signal.

Not when you're working in floating point actually. So, that's how a computer works. Guess what's totally effing crazy? I can push 100+dbfs on a 32bit signal in my DAW and then lower the gain on the master bus by just as much and....

GUESS WHAT?

No loss of resolution! By golly it's magic. No. Actually it's a computer.

Maybe some folks like the sound of crushed everything in a track, I'm just not one of them. And they sure won't win any grammys for best engineered album of the year!

Super producer Ed Cherney said it best, "Digital tracked too hot is both harsh AND dull!"

KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

Argument by authority duly noted. I bet Ed Cherney has no f**king clue how a computer works. Doesn't mean he can't kick ass with analog gear though does it? Carry on then.

And more knowledge never hurt anyone.

Hey everyone! I'm on a search for something called "IRONY". Maybe you can spot it. Hey, tell you what! If you see it before I do be sure to let me know...!

What's wrong with that?

Oh, ummm. Well, let's see.

2. When digital goes into the red, it sounds like shit

Yeaaaaah, so that would be the wrong part. With a 32bit float signal path, until you actually output that stream to a converter/analog output stage, there is essentially no such thing as "headroom". You can clip 0dbfs all day long on any individual track and as long as you bring the master gain back down to where the actual output to the card doesn't see red there was effectively never any red.

Maybe Xenobt (and I'm sure this is the case) what's really going on here is that you've never actually touched another DAW in your life besides pro tools. Pro Tools HD is not floating point, it's 48bit int which means you do actually have to watch your per track/buss headroom, unlike a 32bit float signal path. Too bad for you I guess:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun10/a ... t_0610.htm

If we want to start waving "look how cool I am" e-penises around I guess I can just go ahead and mention the DAWs I've owned and used extensively.

Cubase, Nuendo, Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Sonar, Reason, FL Studio, Tracktion, Pro Tools, Reaper, Acid, Crystal, Audacity, Sound Forge, Cool Edit Pro, Power Tracks, Audition, and Samplitude.

[Gamma-UT]

And I just realised the fallacy in my argument...so I eated it.