Intelligence is first learning how stupid you are in order to change your behavior to be less stupid. You can quote me on that.

I'm coming to understand how important gain staging is to get the right sound out of your plugins, and after watching a Paul Third educational video on YouTube (1:36 - 2:51 approx.) with respect to the issue, I realized how much aliasing and crap I was adding to my mixes because of improperly setting the levels going into my plugins.

I had great success in a 24-hour span fixing multiple tracks and ended up with a cleaner, clearer, more studio professional sounding mix that even my wife, who due to being a preemie baby has some high frequency hearing loss issues, could even remark on!

Advice followed, for the most part, was this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RhNhrfIUxK8 (short but informative!)

MY WAVES VOCAL RIDER QUESTION

I tried to gain stage before putting anything through Waves Vocal Rider and it failed miserably to do what it's supposed to do. I think I may have come to the realization that Vocal Rider is doing the work of a trimmer for gain and it's just the VR plug's output I really have to worry about for the most part in terms of its use. Would this be a correct assertion? I will feed in a good signal or vocal of course, with a little bit of headroom to spare, but I don't think dragging my DAW's gain down would help Vocal Rider do its job.

Could I have confirmation on this from all you guys? Thanks in advance!

ps: ALSO a great all-encompassing 'why you do this' video is from the Produce Like A Pro guy

 

Last edited: Sep 14, 2022

what year is this? 2000? gain staging is a non issue. worth to know what it is and that is that,
32-bit floating point plugin processing make it 100% mathematical the same on every sort of (gained) input. check your plugin manual on this, if it specifies a certain input range it's on them and their processing. it should have its own input gain knobs to set option to attenuate. don't stress to much about going into the red until you need to render it.

And on the second question, there is a place and a time to use vocal riding.
But Waves vocal rider always gives me a feeling of operating on mice with a butchers knife.

 

Last edited: Sep 14, 2022

Dragging your DAW's gain/s DOWN to unity? You have more to worry about than this one plugin.

 

Check out the PAUL THIRD video. Guy knows and SHOWS what he's talking about. I agree I should have attenuated my plugin's inputs from the get-go though.

 

Love it!

 

You only may need 0VU for analogue emulation plugins (not even necessary for all of them) and only a -18 calibration if the plugin is calibrated to this (not the case for all analogue emu pluggies). However, Waves Vocal Rider is a digital plugin which doesn't need this at all.

 

You be right! Just called WAVES tech support and the guy on the other end of the line seemed to agree that the V.R. plugin is doing the job of attenuating the incoming signal and that aliasing wouldn't factor in - no adjustments (such as to the gain levels of your vocal track as recorded) are needed.

We're done! Thanks boss and everyone else!