Turn up the monitors and lower the instruments. For the reference, Omnisphere is crazy loud by default in my setup, so first thing I do after loading it is lower the level a bunch.

 

 

Last edited: Jan 31, 2020

i do jahlil beats / araabmuzik type music, my kick in the bus ALWAYS at -1 , i dont care about rules or conventions regarding creativity and getting somewhere . Im very aware that guys like Araabmuzik cant mix for shit , but thats not what its about . its about fun, vibes and feels 100

 

Can't you have fun, feels and vibe AND still make great mixes/masters? Win/win?

 

a random izotope Ozone preset does the trick xD

 

A sweet gain plugin is Airwindows Purest Gain which is super CLEAN, and you could use like 420 instances on your mix without pulling CPU. It is simple and effective, free (well, you could become a Patreon) and sounds like...pure gain.

http://www.airwindows.com/purestgain-vst/

 

Last edited: Jan 30, 2020

If you have all the tracks at -18db the faders will be up at the same optimum level when you start mixing.

Here are some videos about working ITB:

https://audiosex.pro/threads/in-the-box-tutorial.23103/

 

Last edited: Jan 30, 2020

Diva too, I always lock the volume!

 

I know that... I’m just Saying it’s unnecessary and tedious sometimes you just wanna put the plugin on and use ur fader. Sometimes I just wanna put it on the track and bounce. Using crimson the other day on a track I just slapped it on and tweaked till it sounded good. Tell me why it sounded good at at -14db...
If it sounds bad I will reduce input on plugin

 

It's just a habit for me, and it's not really tedious since I do it without thinking. When I start mixing the faders are always up in a straight line with maximum travel. I also find it easier to visualise the mix as I can see the volume levels from the positions of the faders.

 

Last edited: Jan 30, 2020

I mean the scale of your fader. The lower you pull down the fader, the more the volume lowers for the same path the fader travels.
So if you drag your fader down, cause the source is rediculous loud, the smallest change down there makes a huge difference in volume, so you wanna keep the faders at 0, where you can fine tune the volume, while the signal peaks at -18dB. Therefor you use Pre-Gain or Gain before fader.

 

the difference is not the biggest game changer and I bet things have changed with new plugs too, but keeping base levels at -18dB almost guarentess huge amounts of headroom for mastering.
You need a guideline in anyway or mixing stage becomes a pain in the grey cells.

 

so you wanna "type in" numbers when you try leveling your instruments and drums instead of simply moving a fader? :P

Just how stupid it looks on the mixer when all faders are fooling around down there is reason enough to use a pre-gain :P
And with a preset it's easiely set and you gonna use it for gain staging later on anyways

 

I've heard people freak out when the volume of their TV shows an uneven number...
As if Hats need to be -09.53dB instead of anything that sounds well between -09.50dB and -09.60dB

 

To keep it simple, I just default or template every new audio or midi track in my daw to instantiate at -10dB.

Could go lower I guess, I have done all the reading back when on the -18 optimal etc, and for some stuff, like the earlier waves stuff, i think that was pretty much the case... but whatnots...

Make it up on the 2 bus if you have to.

So many people work with laptops and just the internal sound card and headphones so gain staging is always a nightmare on that.... and so when I am sending stuff to people who i know are gonna do that at some point and drive everything into the red, I have everything down -10db, and the I put a +10db on the 2 bus to make it up... but they ignore that anyways and still turn it up lol...

Some plugins seem to react better to lower levels, some don't seem to care.... i'm not sure if the -18 feeding fx etc standard is still a thing or not, as I imagine they know most of their buying public is probably not doing that... and it was never "set" as a standard officially or anything, afaik it was just a good rule of thumb carry over from the old days.

With 24bit files and the internal summing engines on modern daws, there is no reason to be recording in the red or close to it... and really hurts in mastering or on deliverables... as it's gonna sound worse if you are giving a mastering engineer something that is normalized or -.1db etc. give them some room to work. or yourself. and when you export from your mastering, make sure that has -1db room as well, cause the second it hits bandcamp/spotify/youtube/itunes/ etc... its gonna be slaughtered and the end result will be so much LESS loud...