simple question, seems to have gone a little off topic. hi sven24, you have been honored by some great replies.
myself.. i like a single volume class A 30 watts, set to about 6 or 7. and a drummer who can hit hard enough to keep up.
fak the neighbors

 

Yes, that VU topic again. It never stops...
I used the C algorithm in this case. With A it looks quite different and the waveform is already at -12dBFS no longer a sine tone.
Keep in mind: An average pre-processed kick drum at 0VU peaks at about -12dBFS. A snare at 0VU usually has a -6dBFS peak. A 0VU hihat is usually already above 0dB. So a drum bus with ~0VU is mostly at about -6dBFS.
Means: A drum bus with 0VU and Tape Model C would just get a kiss of saturation and some wavedistortion.

And yes, I say it again and again: Leveling everything to 0VU is stupid. But 0VU is a good guide.

 

I never said I don't do gain staging.

Err, right, but (see, there it is again ) the first harmonic to aliasing ratio is better with the higher input.

On purpose, so it doesn't mask the click sound. I'll try with drums later but (sorry ) for sure not at

+xdB??? I beg your pardon?

 

No it's not lol.

 

As long as we keep it friendly.

Ah, now we found the guilty. It's the tool.

Yep, that's why I don't set all audio files to 0VU. Useless, as you said.

And that's why I don't use it at all - in the digital domain.

 

@No Avenger
Here I can show you exactly what is meant by this.
I have set the sine tone and the reference level of the VU to -6dBFS to simulate the approximate peak of a drum bus at 0VU (Ref -18dBFS).
I can turn the amount knob of the plugin all the way up and still have a healthy amount of harmonics. That's exactly the threshold you said was just "ok". See what happens when I raise the input level with the VU by only 0.5-1.0dB.




Sure, you can level the whole thing by ear. And if you go in with a higher input level, you can also simply lower the Amount knob to get a lower harmonic content. However, 0VU (Ref -18dB) input will in most cases give you exactly the range of coloration the plugin was designed for.

Useless? No, I didn't say that. But setting everything to zero just doesn't make any sense. Even in the analog environment, I don't know anyone who sets all channels to 0VU on an old console.... Not if your signals stay on the console and are not prefader routed to other devices. At least that is the experience I've gained.

 

Last edited: Jun 20, 2021

Yeah, great, that's where the magic happens and all the nice harmonics are added.
Sadly, I found this plugin useless (for my purposes) because it adds onyl compression if you dial in a lot of level/amount and then it saturates way too much.

Right, right, sorry. Lemme think, was it useful but stupid?

Err, the channels, like in post fader? No. Only the input - and only as a starting point.

 

The context is missing. But yes, these were my words.

 

In recent versions of Studio One, input controls were added which provides a pre-insert trim. I personally like to do a quick gain stage using these because I hate having faders down at -30dBfs (like for hi hat samples which every sample pack maker normalizes). This also makes motorized faders more useable as they are most responsive around 0dBfs.

Before this, I would use the instrument master output and clip gain for audio events to get like a +/- 3dB mix. Although a trim plugin would be quicker, I prefer to not clutter up my mixer and take a more "fix it at the source" approach.

Now in doing this gain staging there are some sonic benefits from the processing done by plugins, but I think its minor.
Whats more of an issue is control ranges of plugins being out of wack. Some times you want to dial in a little saturation but just turning on the plugin at its minimum is already distorting the audio. Other times you want to dial in some compression and you have to set the threshold at +6dB which feels a bit ridiculous.

Then theres the benefit of being able to use pre-fader sends without having to turn them down by crazy amounts.

Finally, I like to chip away at mixes in stages where I can step back - like save checkpoints in a game. If I feel I'm going down the wrong path in a mix, I can just reset all the faders to 0 and have another go from a decent starting point.

Some other things ways I use this include adjusting the waveform zoom. If I have like a drone that just registers as a faint line, I can boost the clip gain 12dB and turn down the channel trim 12dB.

In my opinion, gain staging not only has technical benefits, but is also just good practice like naming channels, colouring them, stripping silence in audio etc. Its dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.

 

Care to enlighten me?

I ment -18dBfs sample peak, and by target i ment "around". Not that i use that, mostly i don't go for specific numbers, but i never had trouble with signals that move around -18dbfs, just saying it's a valid approach. As i said previously, i don't think -18dbfs is the secret recepy to make every plugin sound "the way they are supposed to sound", but it'll work.

Edit: felt the need to specify, i'm not saying keep around -18dBFS at all times, just that it works fine as a reference level to come back to when you don't need higher or lower ones.

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2021

I wish I could remember the thread where I alreay explained this and I hope @zven24 doesn't mind if I'm going a little off-topic now, but I'll try to keep it short.

• -18dBFS = 0VU is a calibration, not a 'law' or a mathematical conversion.
• It was choosen freely - for hardware - for broadcasting purposes - not for ITB productions.
• You can calibrate to whatever you want. -12, -14, even 0dB will work.
• -18dB was the peak of a sine wave but a VU meter can't measure a peak. Therefore (for this calibration) 0VU = -21dB RMS.
  The more the content is moving in level, which happens quite often in music , the less this 'equation', better equivalent, is valid. No drums sound with an RMS of -21dB FS has 0VU.
  Therefore setting all audiofiles to a peak (which wasn't meant anyways) or the RMS to -18 (or -21)dB FS has nothing to do with this calibration.

 

Only adding this in hope it may help some users.

Anyone who has worked professionally with Audio Hardware i think will already know this information. Either way it's always handy to have as a quick reference .

Hope it helps

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-db-volt.htm
​

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2021

Maybe - I'm not sure if there is one already - we should open an info thread that covers this topic comprehensively. If I remember correctly, your thread was only about the reference level, not about the topic itself.
I'm pretty sure that most people with some mixing experience understand and use gain staging and pre-fx level preparation and agree in the end - no matter what tool or reference (RMS, digital VU, LUFS-M, Peak, ears) they use for it. Because in the end it's always about the same reasons: Fader resolution, control range, headroom. We may use different tools and have different opinions about their general or situational usefulness, but in the end the results are usually very similar and differ only by taste- or workflow-related decisions.
I'm sure hardly anyone who knows what they're doing lets the kick puff around at -18dBFS - unless it's jazz. And very few have it close to 0dBFS, unless they don't care.

Edit:
As far as the way I would use it, it's all about pre-FX balance and dynamic.
Kick = -1VU, add bass guitar until kick goes to 0VU, snare between -5 and -3VU, vocal to 0VU and automate until dynamic settles between about -7 and 0VU, etc, etc. I would handle it exactly the same way as in the analog world, where I set the input gain so that I already have a roughly balanced mix before I touch a fader. With the exception of more dynamic signals like overheads and stuff like that, which I would set higher, because otherwise I might have a problem with the noise floor. And since we don't have that problem in the DAW, I would treat overheads the same as anything else.
I trust my ears, experience and a LUFS-M meter and actually use digital VU only now and then to automate dynamic tracks when my ears are tired, but what about those who have yet to acquire an experience? IMO it is a great help! It's a great way to learn how to pre-prepare with average levels. But people also need to understand that 0VU or -21RMS is not the answer to everything - they are references, not targets.

 

Last edited: Jun 21, 2021

I pretty much only gain stage, quickly in the beginning of a project, so I don't have to put the faders down below -20dB or so. The faders have a lot more precision around 0dB so it will be much easier to balance the mix in the end when you can have them around 0dB. There are also some plug-ins, without any input control, that I don't really trust how they behave when the input signal is too loud (aliasing). I usually don't use a VU-meter for this though, I just use JS Volume/pan and lower the volume until the peaks hit around -10 to -12 dBFS. Maybe a bit louder for percussion.

 

Well, yeah? Isn't that what i said in my own very special way? Anyway, i guess it's clearer now.
Just for the record, yes, i totally agree, there's no need to set all peaks around -18dBFS and never was. Just sayin' -18dBfs will work, maybe you'll need to add more gain at some point, maybe not, but it'll work fine as a floor (compared to say, getting as loud as you can all the time)

Also wow, this really went off topic, didn't it?

I'll shut up now.

 

you guys are like scientists.

I will continue using the Logic region gain (and not a plugin, where possible), the fade tool, or automation lanes that would probably work for 99% of what the OP asked about. but it's all good info