Gain Staging Structure: Waste of time?

[Syncretia]

OK. Lots of people are going to chime in now and tell me how wrong I am for even suggesting such a thing. Most of you out there will be saying to yourself "Of course you want to have good gain staging. Otherwise you could get clipping somewhere". I'm not sure about all DAWs but I made a discovery in Ableton two nights ago that completely changed the way I think about gain. Rather than repeat myself, I recommend reading this:

http://www.syncretia.com/Ableton/Clipping.html

The basic gist of this is that if the signals inside Ableton go in to the red, that doesn't mean clipping has occurred. Infact you have 60db of headroom inside Ableton. The most likely place for clipping to occur is after the gain from the master volume fader has been applied because this is the point at which the signal is sent to the sound card. I'd really like to hear from some people about how this works in other DAWs.

When I first discovered this, I thought to myself "well, I'll still keep solid gain staging practice, and I'll still leave the master fader at 0db so I can see how much headroom there is for mastering". But, then even that came in to question. Even if you turn the master fader down a few db, you can still always see what the master track is peaking at.

So, I'm left asking myself the question: why even bother with good gain structure? Why do people get so worked up about this? I've had it drilled in to my head never to let anything go in to the red. It was like "Red is bad m'kay". But, at the end of the day it's just as easy to get a tune sounding good to the ears and turn the track down at the master level to avoid clipping. Can someone please give me a justification for doing gain structuring properly?

[MrMagneto]

I'm working with ableton for 6 years now. Never wasted my time with that. As long as the master is not in red while exporting, everything is absolutely fine.

[VibraSound]

FL Studio, as long as the master is not in red while exporting, everything is absolutely fine.

[Tijl]

well, one of the reasons I (try to) do it is because if your track is recorded too hot at the input stage, and you insert e.g. a compressor (or any other pre-fader insert that responds to the input level) might act in a nasty way... also some plugins tend to work best at lower input levels ... at least if the manual isnt lying

so in short, i guess, its not because your host has that much headroom, it doenst mean your processing does

thats what i make of it

[Syncretia]

might act in a nasty way... also some plugins tend to work best at lower input levels

Tiji is right to a certain extent. As I posted in my writeup in point 3) some plugins will clip at 0db.

However, the thing that has been really striking for me is the power of dogma. I completely believed that when something was in the red, it was clipping. This was to the point where I actually believed that I could hear clipping when something was in the red. It turned out that dogma had actually messed with my head. When there's digital clipping on a track, you know about it!

Technically, all you need to do to avoid what Tiji mentioned is to not send signals at 0db or above to external effect plugins, and not turn the volume up on plugins to the point where they reaching a volume level of 0db or above. However, if clipping did occur, you'd know about it anyway because digital clipping sounds like shit.

[qa2pir]

As long as the master is not in red while exporting, everything is absolutely fine.

yep.

this reminds me of the old dogm "leave some headroom for the mastering engineer". seriously, does that make any valid sense other than being one more axiom/heuristic that people can substitute talent and experience with when feeling an urge to be superior and condescending?

[Syncretia]

"leave some headroom for the mastering engineer"

Please! Don't let this thread veer off in that direction. I understand that there are people who will argue for/against mastering headroom. But, this thread is about the volumes within the DAW for mixing before we worry about the mastering stage.

But, yes I understand your point about dogma. Music production is rife with dogma. Sometimes, I wonder if the electronic music production community behaves any differently than a religion. I always like to think that I'm a critical thinker, but what gets me is that I even catch myself out sometimes and I find that I'd based all my knowledge on a certain assumption that turns out to be false.

Be a scientist! Don't be a priest or a sheep.

[Syncretia]

Sorry, I have a philosophy degree so I can't resist saying this. Socrates should probably be our best friend when approaching the discipline of audio production. Although there have been plenty of people after Socrates that said the same thing (and probably people before him), what he said was very important! Always take time to challenge your own beliefs! Especially the most fundamental ones. Wars and the most unimaginable cruelty are almost always caused by people who don't take enough time to question whether or not their own fundamental beliefs are based on anything over and above dogma.

[ouroboros]

Is a belief in Socratic reasoning a fundamental belief worth challenging, then? I would wager wars and cruelty have lots of reasons besides too little self reflection. (money/fear, etc., all well reasoned). I kid.

But as for gain staging - I still do it for consistency and because as Tiji noted - it makes a big difference how hot the signal coming into the compressor is, esp. analog modeled ones. Try it with some of Bootsie's plugs and see.

But there is no need to be religious about it if you are happy with the sound in the end.

[Syncretia]

it makes a big difference how hot the signal coming into the compressor

I'm really careful with the word "hot" now. I thought I knew what it meant but clearly I didn't really know. Does hot mean above 0db? And does "how hot" mean how far above 0db?

I'd say what that what you said it probably true of some compressors, but in theory the input volume level should only be relevant to the threshold. I.e. the compressor should only compress the signal above the threshold. So, if you set the threshold to be 5db lower than the incoming signal, it should compress 5db of signal regardless of how "hot" that signal is.

But, this is just a theoretical statement. Some compressors probably make mistakes, and some compressors probably try to emulate the kind of analogue clipping that would occur to a signal if it were fed in to an actual analogue compressor at too high a volume.

Is a belief in Socratic reasoning a fundamental belief worth challenging, then?

I think Socrates would say yes.

[gl_jw]

You've named a very specific example where gain staging isn't important (entirely in-the-box, 32-bit floating point).

However, as soon as you've got plugins involved that respond in a non-linear manner to input level (saturation/distortion plugins and many compressors - in fact anything designed to emulate analogue gear), then gain staging absolutely does matter.

Gain staging is also important when going from analogue to digital or vice versa.

I generally find it's easier to practice good gain staging principles as force of habit so that you're fine in any situation.

[Mercado_Negro]

You've named a very specific example where gain staging isn't important (entirely in-the-box, 32-bit floating point).

However, as soon as you've got plugins involved that respond in a non-linear manner to input level (saturation/distortion plugins and many compressors - in fact anything designed to emulate analogue gear), then gain staging absolutely does matter.

Gain staging is also important when going from analogue to digital or vice versa.

I generally find it's easier to practice good gain staging principles as force of habit so that you're fine in any situation.

I was going to reply but this pretty much covers what I wanted to say.

Good gain staging prior processing = better results, inside or outside a computer.

[cron]

You've named a very specific example where gain staging isn't important (entirely in-the-box, 32-bit floating point).

However, as soon as you've got plugins involved that respond in a non-linear manner to input level (saturation/distortion plugins and many compressors - in fact anything designed to emulate analogue gear), then gain staging absolutely does matter.

Gain staging is also important when going from analogue to digital or vice versa.

I generally find it's easier to practice good gain staging principles as force of habit so that you're fine in any situation.

I was going to reply but this pretty much covers what I wanted to say.

Good gain staging prior processing = better results, inside or outside a computer.

Same feelings here, particularly with plug-ins responding to certain input levels. Seems this kind of analog modelling is becoming more widespread. Channel strip emulations and all that...

I'd say what that what you said it probably true of some compressors, but in theory the input volume level should only be relevant to the threshold. I.e. the compressor should only compress the signal above the threshold. So, if you set the threshold to be 5db lower than the incoming signal, it should compress 5db of signal regardless of how "hot" that signal is.

Here's an example of where keeping things low gives me more flexibility with my processing choices. I quite like hard, soft-knee compression with the threshold set higher than the peaks.

I like bouncing out and using external (but still software) standalone processing packages too. Helps if I know how much headroom I have.

I guess I don't really see the point of taking the risk and trusting your entire signal chain can handle it. My mixes tend to peak at around -10dB to -5dB. I keep it this low so I NEVER have to worry about clipping and I can just concentrate fully on making my music and mixing my track. There's plenty of headroom in a -10dB 24 bit export to boost it up to a -0dB 16 bit final version without losing resolution. Ignoring your meters and turning the master down just seems like a counter-intuitive way of doing things to me, especially since there's not really any reason to bother the 0dB line on any channel when you don't have a noise floor to worry about.

[koalaboy]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/6016102-post259.html

and then all of this

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

[Burillo]

Host doesn't care if you clip or not. Some plugins do (esp. modeled). Nuff said.