I hear much talk about gain staging and was just wondering if someone here can give a 101 style breakdown to a newbie. Just trying to push my sound and get better..

1) When is gain staging applied?
2) How/Why does it help?
3) What VST will help apply gain staging the best.. I have heard things like free G but maybe this is something completely different!

Thank you in advance I know time is precious

 

I really like this video, it's short and simple

 

Gain staging is fundamental to getting the best out your processing, be it hardware or plugins. There are a few things to bear in mind regarding gain:

0. Don't go into the red. The whole point is to avoid digital clipping, which basically means going over the top of the metering in your DAW. This results in harsh pops and clicks that you may not notice at first, but once you add up processing on top your sound starts to suffer. Additionally, too much gain in the different stages of your mix will yield to your mix being brittle or too harsh or anything of the sort.

1. Prevent your audio from being too hot from the recording stage. This is also true for audio loops. Often audio is recorded too hot or a commercial loop may be optimized to sound cool like a final, mastered track. As a rule of thumb, your audio peaks in your DAW should go up to 3/4 to 1/4 of your meter bar. Your consistent gain should be lower, about half of the meter bar or less.

2. Prevent EQs and compressors from throwing the gain balance you achieve in point 1. Whenever you add EQ or compression, gain is affected. You need to check your compression output or gain compensation feature to level things back to point one. Most EQs have output controls to lower the signal if you pump it up with a frequency bump.

3. Some plugins like saturators, tape emulations or console emulations work better with hot signal. Once you are done with them, you need to lower the gain back to normal with a gain plugin afterwards.

In a nutshell, gain staging keeps you in control of the ultimate sound of your track. If things start to sound unlike what you want in your mix, you could go back and revise the gain staging of various points in your mix and confirm that things are sounding the way they should, one of the many troubleshooting scenarios that can happen.

Your gain plugin is that humble freebie or bundled plugin in your favorite DAW, usually properly named "gain." It is unassuming and low profiled so that it consumes the least possible DSP resources and you add as many instances as you please in your signal chains all along your tracks.

I hope this helps.

 

Last edited: Jan 18, 2016

Yeah Graham's video is great. What I like to do is first record at a level that is NOT too hot. Then set my faders at unity gain. Then use some sort of plugin on each channel that has input control and a meter. Free G will work. Then play each track by itself and adjust the plugin's input to where the VU meter on the plugin is averaging -3 dB and never above 0. The goal is to avoid clipping the master when all of your tracks are playing. You can always get it louder later with other processing.

 

BTW, this is an awesome article from Sound On Sound magazine that explains briefly the reasons behind gain staging. It's worth a read:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep13/articles/level-headed.htm

 

Like mercurysoto said, to his #3 point, a lot of software that was modeled from hardware was designed to respond to certain levels. Hit ting the inputs at the correct levels will maximize the performance of the modeled plugin.

My LUCID 88192 ADDA converter input/output is rated at -26dbu. So, I'm hitting my A/D at around -16dbFS for recording external signals. That level seems low, but it's perfect. However, if your power situation is not 'clean', and you're recording a bunch of dirty hum, cycles, etc... then this option won't work for you, and you'll have to record a lot hotter because of your noise floor / sig to noise ratio.

 

Ok so gain and level are the same thing or different?

I use fruity loops does anyone know the exact tools I need to gain stage everything and make a template?

In fruity loops there are no number layouts next to my individual tracks for monitoring gain... Is gain just the RMS or DB ? Again sorry for the newb comments.

 

Some DAWs do not indicate measurements in their meter bars to avoid getting stuck to their relative readings and to change reading settings and use the same meter bars. Pro Tools is like that too. You'd have to consult FL's manual for its metering system. That's why I suggested a visual way to "feel" gain.

The way I understand it, gain and level are not quite the same. gain is usually set before processing and it affects the way the signal enters the next stage of mixing. Level has to do with balancing frequencies and it's the heart and soul of mixing. In other words, gain will get you to the sonic ballpark of your track and level will balance those sounds to taste.

 

well, this is where the theory falls short, fl studio works with 32 bit float. point so what you do inside the box shouldn't really matter.

It really starts at recording and setting the gain properly on your interface, this isn't a one size fits all and needs to be adjusted for every different signal or environment

 

Agreed. It all seems to come down to the art of (not-too-hot) recording. Unfortunately, uneducated instinct tells us to crank the heck out the gain control at the audio interface. The SOS article takes care of that bad habit.

 

Since there is no rules in Mixing even with gain staging you will have some debate on what is the "Sweet spot" for what your target should be. You could go on youtube and find 10 videos about gain staging and all 10 will do it differently and to different levels. This his where you need to apply some of your own common sense to it.

Some people will say the sweet spot is -9 to -12 other will say -15 to -18 while some will say -3 to -6 is good. There are some who will say "just don't clip. It's about not clipping and leaving headroom. Some people don't give a crap about headroom they just want to slam it as hard as they can from the jump.

What's important is getting yourself a starting point with everything being balanced. Then from there you can start doing levels and panning.

Some people also do this.

-9 dB for Kick, Snare, Bass, Vocals
-12 dB for everything else

or

-15 dB for Kick, Snare, Bass, Vocals
-18 dB or everything else

with the idea from the start you want those elements to stick out more. There is no right or wrong in how you get there.

 

Last edited: Jan 18, 2016

i watched this video recently, hope it is of use

 

I forgot too stress that knowledge of proper gain staging can come in quite handy.
with all this emulation plugin lurking around it is good too know where you 'emulated' noise floor is.

Also when your music is actually going anywhere to be worked on. you need proper levels, for above stated reasons by other audiosexers.

 

The "In The Box" series of videos from Paul Draper provide some excellent in-depth info on the subject.

 

Also take into consideration that analog, 16-bit, and 24-bit hardware all require (or are best with) different approaches to gain staging.

Most analog excelled at pushing into the red, 16-bit was best at the threshold of clipping, and 24-bit is best with a moderate approach.

 

Actually the problem is not the DAW's routing (which is capable of running uber hot signals), is the plugins: in the the analog world, signals over -18 dBFS are "hot". 0 dbFS is that zero that we are seeing on any DAW meters. Analog emulations (Waves etc.) run pretty much at the same levels. Obviously, they will not start distorting when a signal over -18 dBFS hit them, but some "analog artefacts" will slightly fade in as the incoming signal gets hotter. Most of the time, the artefacts are quite pleasant so it's common to hit any analog plugin with hot signal. Sum your multitrack project to 6-8 buses (sends, auxes) then sum these buses further to main stereo output. That will generally suffice for a proper gain staging. Cheers!

 

I tried to write a less technical and more practical approach here (last comment):

https://audiosex.pro/threads/gain-stagging-before-mixing.14867/

and I hope it helps to practice gain staging instantly
without being forced to think about historical context and technical background.

Appendum,
by experience one soon will find (as a rule of thumb) similarities on different meters:

-18dbfs/0dbu = -12dbfs channelpeak/masterpeak = 0 on K20 etc.

and by the time one can quickly double-check proper VU meter read out
(not every VU meter plugin has an accurate needle fall/rise calibration).

 

People above have been mentioning about 'some FX operate better a a certain level below clipping'.

I'm going to detail about hidden clipping.

Zo most FX SHOULD DSP in 32+bit floating point where if you go over 0dB, it doesn't clip. But, are you SURE that ALL YOUR FX are in 32b.flp? Even ALL YOUR 3d pty ones???

Probably not. Which is why you try to have a lil headroom always.

I know I have one regular VST that exports 24bit fx.p It clips @0dB and changes the phase. Which is why I usually gain -6dB before it.