The TRUTH About Proper Gain Staging in Your Mix (Gain Staging Simplified!)
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
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It seems like every audio channel out there wants you to believe that you can get better mixes simply by using proper "gain staging."
This is a total MYTH! It drives me crazy when I see all the hype around "gain staging" online, so I finally had to make this video.
Here's the truth behind some of the myths and misinformation about gain staging, PLUS a real-time demonstration of the dead simple way I handle gain staging in my mixes.
Watch this video to FREE YOURSELF from pointless time-wasting activities and start focusing on what actually makes your mixes better!
☛ Watch to the end of the video for your link to download my book for free! - Hudba
I feel like I can finally enjoy mixing and life in general after watching this video 😂 thanks!
Yes!! 👊
same
x3
Thanks I was beginning to wonder why they even made mix faders in daws ....thanks for putting us at ease....
Nah
☛ Grab your FREE mixing cheatsheet and get on my list for the best audio training on the web: www.mixcheatsheet.com
This just took away so much underlying stress in regards to leveling and gain staging you're the best J, truly, thank you for this (years of stress gone). Keeping being you, you're appreciated out here :)
This is so timely for me. I am diving in deeper in my transition from anolog mixing mindset to Daw mindset. This resonates well with me. Thanks for the clarity and transparency!
At last! A voice of reason! My background is from mixing with tape when it was all about signal to noise and getting the most out of gear with instabilities. I've been working with DAWs in the way that you describe in the video for many years but have recently doubted myself thanks to all of the gain staging videos out there. I can now go back to mixing with confidence.
You teach this way better than most mix engineers out there! taken me so long to get this properly understood. thankyou.
Hi Jordan, your content is AMAZING! one of the best youtube channels out there. Keep up the great work you're doing. Thanks for all the knowledge and kindness.
you are a doctor, curing my mixing diseases
thank you bro, i love your 'make it simple' way of mixing
Thanks for finally setting everything straight. I have never believed all that gain staging talk when I mixed.
What a breath of fresh air. You've confirmed myths I've expected for years on several vids. Really appreciated as a rock guy. Subscribed
I think the point that people are trying to make with the emphasis on gain staging, is that for people who are recording and mixing their own music. And if you have proper gain staging from the beginning it just streamlines the process, and save you a lot of time and headaches...
Riiiight, it really does
Yes
When the meter is going from green and just pushing into the yellow you're set. Exactly how I've always always recorded and mixed. Great vid.
You just saved me from so much worrying you can't possibly imagine. Got your book, I'll get to it today, thanks for helping us out with your knowledge.
Gain staging ITB actually does improve mix quality when going through plugins. I have tested this thoroughly and is especially true for eqing. If you are doing drastic boosts with EQ for creative sound design purposes, you get a much cleaner result if the incoming signal is quiet. My mixes sound more full when utilizing gain staging during the signal chain. If a signal is too hot and causing inharmonic distortion within the plugin, the sum of all the distortion will be great when the full mix hits the limiter to bring the volume back up.
I use a lot of Acustica Audio plugins and I can definitely say that there is a big difference in clarity and fullness of my mixes when I use gain staging mixing techniques especially going into these plugins.
I believe it is also genre dependent too. Do some experiments yourself and see if it A: improves your mix. B: improves your workflow
yeah, but it doesn't have to be exactly -18dB. Sometimes you may want less, and more, for different sound from plugin.
Thanks for the tip! I just watched a Dom Sigalas video about GS & he convinced me to take it easy going in to give my plug-ins plenty of headroom and especially freeing up headroom on the Master Bus. i come from tape recording, and recording hot trying to get a high signal-to-noise ratio is a hard habit to break. All the Best.
Fully agree with this. Granted, there's no "absolute" when it comes to gain staging, like the whole -18dB thing I see a lot of content creators mentioning, but pushing too much signal through plugins or busses does make the job of getting a clean mix more difficult.
Even still, I suggest for people who don't have the experience to know where they want to gain stage to have the kick peak somewhere around -9dB, and build everything else around it. Then just make sure the signal coming in to the master track is peaking no higher than -6dB for mastering and everything is good. How they choose to get to that number is up to them (faders, busses, etc.)
Hey Jordan, on my current journey in the world of recording I finally ran across a video that just makes since. It’s a million videos about how vital gain staging will make your mixes sound more professional. But after hearing some of your finished products I became more convinced that the gain staging rhetoric bs must be mythical after all. Actually I’ve been mixing this way since I got into the game and everyone thought I was doing this major gain staging thing. All I was really doing was the same method you’re doing in this video and the mixes turned out quite exciting. I’m not recording rock or metal but that doesn’t mean you can’t apply your teachings to other genres. Thanks for all you do for the recording community. Keep up the great work Jordan. As the late great movie critics Siskel and Ebert would say two thumbs up!!!!!
This is the most relavant, honest truth about Gain staging. What everyone else says doesn't not make sense. I'm subscribing and following you now! Good stuff!!👍🏽
Wow! You just freed me! You said everything that I learned through experience. Thought I'm alone on thinking this way.
You've probably saved me hours of wasting time fussing about hard rules with numbers. I intuitively knew this but it helps to hear it from others like you. Thanks Jordan!
I was actually starting to worry about this recently. Haven't paid attention to this so far, only made sure the input doesn't clip, but so many videos came out on this topic recently...Great video again!
Love this! Jordan you always make it simple. This is some of the best advice for ALL aspects of mixing. Thanks!
I wish I would have heard this before recording my band's EP. ugh...
Thank you for breaking that down :)
busy works beatsssssssssss.com
love that intro
hey whats this guy doing here lol........"Its BUSY-WORKSSS BEEEEAATTSS..............
I also like to 👀 that we as producers educate ourselves everyday. Busy keep doing your thing!
ok i dont expect to c you here.but now you have to tell us what plugging to use in FL STUDIO for gain staging .and well come.
Hajee Tech I agree!!
This is why your channel is so educating without all the can't do this don't do that bullshit. quiet as kept this is exactly the way I've been going about. I was getting so much push back that my music would suffer if I wasn't doing this exact scientific method that's all over the CZcamsrs channels. I thought engineering was a unique individual creating their own sound. Hardcore you're spitting the true gospel keep up the great work and thanks for all you do for the recording fam. I've been a scriber since I ran into this specific video. anyone searching for any other video dealing with gain staging just STOP IT!! this guy can't put it any simpler. Gain staging isn't a big deal afterwards.
Even after 4 years this video is still helping people like me. As I'm trying hard to focus only on Music composing not on Sound Engineering, gain staging is always like a headache for me. It takes time but well this is more about focus. This video made it so easy to me. Thank you for this. Lots of love from India
Love your whole philosophy on all of this. Helped me so much to just learn what sounds good without worrying that I’m breaking any of these “rules” you hear thrown around all the time.
The most encouraging video for the beginners. Love you
Holy crap!!! I just found your video! I have been one of those people getting confused about gain staging because how other channels pound it in your head but never clearly showing you what they mean. I feel better now that I dont have to really worry about it so much! Thank You!!
Excelente Jordan! Muchas Gracias por tus aportes y la transmisión clara de los conocimientos! y por el libro también! Saludos desde Argentina
I've been playing guitar and bass for more than three decades, with planty of live performance and professional studio time, but I'm new to home recording, so i needed this. Thanks!
You are clearing my confusion. Great vid bro
This was so helpful I was constantly thinking my stuff was distorted behind the scenes between plugins.
Thank-you for the mixing cheatsheet! I spend so much time learning the mind-numbing complexities of my DAW, shortcuts are ALWAYS Welcome!
Dude this was refreshing and freeing to hear you say all this
100% with you. When I'm setting my inputs, I just increase them until it sounds good and that's usually a good bit before clipping. If you start off reasonably, there's no reason not to just track things the way you want to hear them. Say you're laying down drums while everyone else is essentially laying down scratch tracks. When it comes time to track everything else, if you recorded the drums hot because that was the sweet spot on the pres, all you have to do is simply turn them down. What a concept. I definitely worried way too much about it for a couple years and am pretty sure it stunted my growth.
Makes sense to me - good clear explanation and takes away the worry. Well done and thanks.
Awesome! Just awesome and so needed! Thanks a lot for this!
Thank you Jordan, this was much needed info to clear up the confusion.
This is much more simple and logic.thanks man..this is the right way to enjoy mixing.its a relief.
Dude, this totally subsided my inherent second guessing and mixing anxiety in regards to digital. Having started in analog many many moons ago, and also recently transitioning DAWs? I always let my analog instincts screw with my workflow, and end up chasing faders and clip meters obsessively.
Definitely going to look into that mix bus trim plugin.
Thanks man!
Just smashed the subscribe and rang the bell!
Cheers!
Man! That's the best video ever! Thank you!!
All good info on gain staging. Only issue with using the 'all' selection to pull down the faders is this will effect the level going to sub groups and your mix buss. Therefore your compression/saturation/effects won't have the same relationship when you pull down the faders.
For sure, if you have to do this late in a mix you'll have to make adjustments to any busses. Again though, common sense.
@@hardcoremusicstudio It could be good to mention. You show the mixing part, that and the production is two separate topics. But many like me use hardware today. I hit as loud possible without noise on lowest volyme and not cliping when recorded. That works. And in my case gain make a difference wirh UAD. But if you dont feel or hear, that you analog gears at some level, adds a lot of noise you should perhaps do something else ;)
Groups
VCA groups if your DAW can do it!
Solid advice, as usual. Thank you so much, Jordan!
It's so funny that the moment I came to write the comment about analog modelled plugins, you started talking about it
I'm still a nerd about making sure signals are at -18 dbFS when the fader's at unity gain before doing any processing. Ended up making it a habit & I just haven't stopped
Great video and thank you for the free book!
I gotta thank you for this video. I've been using PT since day dot and absolutely everything you said and your workflow I completely relate to.
People need to trust theirs ears more than anything. Thanks again!!!
I'm just starting out and needed this entire video! Thanks.
Thank you for this great video! With my first CD, five years ago, I didn’t even know about the process of “gain staging”, and just mixed the tracks to what sounded right to my ears, and kept the signals out of the red. When I got the album mastered, I felt happy when the engineer told me that my mixes sounded correct.
This is the man! love your videos dude!
Time for some coffee at 4:23 :D Thank you Jordan, good & useful information as always!
I personally love having knowledge about gain staging, because it helps me build my sound (as a guitarist or bassist, drummer or vocalist). It helps me understand not to clip anything in my analogue chain. However, I am pretty chilled if I am in the box and a red light comes on, especially later in my mix. At the beginning I might try to keep things clean, but later, I want it to sound good. I believe the knowledge of gain staging is great, but I don't allow it to cripple me in my decision making (which seems to be the fear addressed in this video?). Love it, thanks for all the reminders that it is about MUSIC at the end of the day!
Awesome video! Well explained!
Thank you 🙏🏼 I will try it right now!! Gracias Amigo! 👊🏼
This is very liberating! Thanks! 😃
Simply adore your advice!!!!! Thank you so much!😊
Easy and right to the point.Thanx and congrats!
Never thought of turning down the master fader! Thanks for some great tips!
This was the best gain staging video Ive watched yet.
Never actually cared too much about levels in the digital domain. But still learned something 😊 Thank you for the great video!
Great to hear, that somebody has a different approach to this topic as most guys on YT. I agree on the recording part and your point on fader resolution is also a great opinion... but I realy disagree on the part that GS doesen't make any differents between a "amatuer" and a "pro" mix and is not that important.
Not saying that you have to gain all your tracks to -18dBVU or somthing is the key.. but allmost every time I've worked with "hobby-producers" mixing their own stuff, the problem was no understanding of GS.
The "just turn down the masterfader" approach often leads to a - turn everything on channels up, turn the master down and slap a limiter on thing. (Protools is a special thing there; Most other DAWs got prefader inserts on the masterfader!)
Example: most software synths put out a level near 0dBFS so one cant hear the bass and drums anymore - turn everything up past 0, masterfader down - but then it has to be louder to bounce it - limiter on... and the result is a wobbly bass mess.
I think it's your experience with GS (and floatingpoint calculation.. not everybody knows how to abuse it in a positive way) wherefore you don't need to think about it and get hot levels sounding right.. and tbh you said that you know the level just hitting the yellow is how you want it - that's the essence of every "pros" GS approach.. -> Gaining all tracks (or Group Inputs like eg Joey Sturgis) to a more or less fixed level with a sort of input gain, so your 2Bus isn't exploding and buscompression/limiting doesn't turn out into a basketball like sound. ..so I don't think you're busting any myths there..
Summarized I like your approach on this topic because it is mostly a convenience thing how you like your levels and faders with floatpoint DAWs nowadays and you're not telling that it's a must to gain to a strict level X/Y! But I find it necessary to understand what GS is about and not just leave it as nonsense. Then you can make your own thing out of it and thats the key, in my opinion.
When i learnt about gain staging,,it definitely made my mixes sound tighter,,not a hard concept to grasp really.
Same fr, I think it's the most important part
I feel compelled to comment and thank you as you've allowed me to stop stressing about what "most" youtubers out there are saying you should be doing if you want the best mix ever and allowed me to take it with a grain of salt and just do what sounds good to me. I still reference some of my favorite mixes but I allow myself to detach from that and just mix with my own ears.
Knowing the theory of gain staging in the analogue days, I always asked myself if it still applied in digital recording? At last you have answered my question. Thank you. I love the way you delivered your video, simply and clearly. Finally, someone who knows that we're not all professional sound engineers!
4:34 take the hint from the programmers! 0VU = (+4dBu or -10dBv) = 1kHz Sine wav @ ref voltage = -18dBFS = 85dbSPL(A) @ 1m unless you have a high end ADC which specificly declares a higher maximum input voltage and you can set the calibration voltage to -20dBFS or some other standardized reference level.
The correct way to think about gain structure is that all devices in your signal path should clip at the same time. To maximize the S/N ratio, the system designer should choose equipment which supports the same maximum input and output level with similar nominal operating level AND headroom. For example, a "Pro" preamp often has a max output level of +26dBu and outputs a balanced signal at +4dBu. If one drives the input of a converter which also has a maximum input level of +26dBu with a nominal operating level of +4dBu over a balanced line, the correct equipment has been selected. If the ADC only handles a max input level of +18dBu the additional output range of the preamp has to be attenuated and this compromises the dynamic range of the system. Now consider an ADC which supports a max input level of +26dBu with a nominal level of +4dBu. The nominal level is far below the maximum range which allows a much more precise level of measurement over the voltages than can be achieved when operating closer to the max limits. The same is true with a converter which accepts a max input level of +18dBu and this (and because of number of additional design improvements) is one large reason why more expensive converters typically sound better than cheap converters and its also exactly the same reason DAW engineers should record with more headroom, especially on cheaper digital gear. Anyone using a 24 bit converter has zero reason to record with less headroom than the manufacturer anticipated. Only people recording directly to 16bit mediums should even consider the effects of quantization distortion (when low voltages are inaccurately sampled due to a lack of resolution in the digtal scale). The best thing a novice engineer can get out of this is (in extremely general terms) that an audio system designer should always choose equipment with the same operating capabilities throughout the entire system and that the weakest link defines the system's capabilities.
So many numbers and so much bla bla... Who gives a rat's ass , this is about making music , not fucking rocket science
Very helpful info thanks!
@@sebastiandordoni2268 If you're going to put engineer in the title of your name you should know about the numbers. You better not be calling yourself an engineer if you can't figure this shit out. Or maybe you'll back pedal and say you're a musician so it doesn't matter and I'm just talking to a wall because you're going to take it personally.
sebastian dordoni but IS science. You’re the only one talking about rockets. Lol. All these letters and keys. Lol who cares about music theory. You must be a rapper. 🤣
@@wienerstein2817 and who said i present myself as an engineer? To call myself and engineer would be an insult to the real ones with decades of experience, i'm only saying people don't care what preamps or at what levels you recorded, if the mix sounds good that's all that matters, leave the ultra technical matters to the elistists and gatekeepers
This was very helpful, thank you!
I feel like shooting for -12 db. on the input has helped me get better mixes easier. I'm a complete beginner but when I started doing that I got much better results. But thanks for the knowledge brother!
I go for -12 to -8 depending on the sound element.
Awesome, big relief man. Thank you!
Very, very eye (ear?) opening. The ears have to decide. Great! Thank YoU!
For me personally I feel like my mix is improved at least 25 to 40% when I really started focus on gain staging.
Are you sure it doesn't have something to do with you being more conscious about overall balance in your mix?
I agree. Personally, I like the idea of gain-staging to at least get all the instruments outputing at the same level when all the mixer tracks are at "unity" so I can literally hear everything at once. In my projects, without gain staging, there can be so much going on as I layer things on top of other things that some sounds just get so lost and buried that I forget they're there because I can't hear them anymore. I was having trouble mixing my current project. I went back and just gain-staged everything and the transformation was like magic even with all the faders at zero. So I haven't even actually mixed it yet and it already sounds better than it did with a sans-gain-staging mixing attempt.
Additionally, I like being able to look at the mixer and know that if one slider is lower than another, then the sound coming out of it is actually lower. Without gain staging, I might have a mixing fader set at 25%, but it's louder than another fader that's at 90%! To me, that just makes the whole mixing process confusing and harder to manage.
In short, this video didn't convince at all to stop fussing over gain staging. Maybe it's not necessary, but for me, it's still useful. After all, there's certainly no harm in gain staging. If it works, just do it.
@@phaneserichthoneus8895 "I like being able to look at the mixer and know that if one slider is lower than another, then the sound coming out of it is actually lower" faders are not for that. That's what METERS are for. Feels like you're new to all this...
@@victorbicudo1374 No, I'm not new to it. But the nice part about a DAW is that there's nothing wrong with setting up your faders to work like that if you want to. It's hard to be super-exact due to the dynamics of each sound, but I'd rather have them set up so there's roughly the same level of sound coming out of each mixer track if all the faders are at the same level.
I agree.
It's about time someone said this out loud. Thanks!
Your content is very helpful. Thank you
been mixing an ep for 3 months and its due b4 Dec 1st and i still have work to do. I was loosing perspective (euphemism for my will to live lol) before watching this video and the one about not scooping too much in the low mids. thanks for your no bs approach! here we go again 😅
What a relief. Thanks a lot.
Great video, Jordan, thank you for dropping wisdom on this mystical topic, dead on! Although I'd have to kinda disagree with you (at 3:02 minutes) that there's no signal to noise ratio to worry about in the digital domain, because we still have to record in analog before converting to digital, and noise floor exists there. Yes of course, turning up a digital fader or boosting clip gain won't introduce any noise from the DAW itself, but noisy preamps, tubes, and other recording equipment still exists on the front end. I see this a lot when I get a track that has been recorded too quietly and when I boost the clip gain, I get a ton of noise floor along with it. This just happened to me on a track I got of a home recording and the acoustic guitar got really quiet on a finger picking down-chorus, and when I brought up the gain to a reasonable level, I got a ton of noise-hiss along with it. I still think recording a healthy signal on the way in is important for this reason, and not just record as loud or quiet as you want without clipping. There is still a possible noise floor depending on your gear and tracking environment, and you can't just always crank up the fader in pro tools if it was recorded too quiet. Maybe I just get shittier recordings more often than you do, but I definitely run into noise floor issues from time to time.
That's definitely true! I think/hope i said in the video to record with a solid signal into the DAW - not so low that it's barely showing up, but not so hot that you risk clipping. The main point of that section was to say that the converter itself and the DAW mixer isn't adding any additional noise the way older gear would.
Thanks a detailed explanation, some interesting points and some of it sunk in. Got to be replayed....
Great video! I must admit, I get finicky about gain staging but it’s mainly a workflow thing. Knowing that everything is roughly at the same level makes it easier to gauge when I’m balancing faders etc., but I don’t think it makes a huge difference to sound as such.
I think many aspiring mixers get into this side of audio because of how cerebral it can be. And while there are technicalities in mixing, it’s good to remember that it’s nothing precious and to approach the mix pragmatically vs theoretically
Thank you for this video. I am way down the rabbit hole and you helped pull me out! Now maybe I can finish my album! Sincerely;y... thanks 🙏
Well this made me feel so much betta. Thanks Jordan.
Yeah man, thanks for the hyper practical explanation. Super helpful!
Thanks for this, just discovered your channel. Subscribed.
Got this video recommended to me again, and I’m not mad. Ever since this video I stopped stressing about gain staging😂
Omg thank you so much, i needed this video !
Great video...I like your presentation! thank you
Great video! Old tape habits die hard.
Thank U and yes, back in the day when we used to record with analog stuff U recorded fairly hot to achieve the best signal to noise ratio. S/N. AND U looked at your equipment to look at things like S/N, THD, speaker efficiency, dynamic range, SPL, crosstalk, distortion, and your speaker "curve" and microphone "curve." What's interesting now is these things, which used to be regularly published and featured with the equipment can be more difficult to figure out. With digital it is less of a concern as far as "noise" is an issue but these other things can be a factor especially things like speaker efficiency, the curve, and the mics. I still use analog stuff sometimes so it is good to have this background. Moreover, it would help "newbies" to understand what these things are.
The best and simple way to tell what gain staging really is. Thanks man.
Thank you so much for this! You made my life a lot easier and gain more confident
this is how i do it too! so used to the way things look like in my DAW - always gets me in the right ballpark.
Thank you so much 🙏 this is the answer I have been waiting for a long time 🙏
I’ve been doing home recording for 20 years. Never started hearing about gain staging until now, after finally upgrading my gear and DAW. I know my old cool edit pro wasn’t the easiest to use but I never had issue with headroom or noisy signals. Still had decent mixed despite my software limitations for hating, reverb, lack of vst plugins, etc.
Glad I’ve found your channel. Just watching a few vids of yours and they’ve made me reassured that I don’t need to follow all or a lot of the things I’m hearing in other trends. E.g. loved your low end video. I felt like I was doing something wrong by not always separating frequencies. And now worried I wasn’t doing what I should to stage gate.
I’ll take that kinda advice with a grain of salt!
Precious information here. Thank you!
I like this method of not going into a major overwhelm about keeping the level perfect in the recording stage. The information knowing the DAW has plenty of headroom is definitely good to know and keeps my focus on playing the arrangement.
Thanks man Im a begginer and your video was suggested to me by a friend, you communicate clearly..! Thank yoU!
That's why I think every plugin should have an input knob with an indicator that tells the user if the input level is okay or too low or high, no matter what level the plugin expects. And usually I'll just make sure that the level doesn't change much when I bypass a plugin in order to not have to adjust input gain further down the line (assuming that plugins in general deal well with an RMS level of -18dfFS).
Well said!! I sent a track to my old engineer and he stated that my vocals were too loud! But it sounded good to me and many others. I tend to let others opinions mess with my head which I shouldn’t. If it sounds dope it sounds dope. But this info that you just gave me made me level up! Can’t wait to try this out.
Dude yes! Great vid!
Haha after watching loads of videos about gain staging following years of doing it ‘my way’ which was essentially the way this video describes! I would drop the input level using a limiter or Ozone on the master bus (on the way in) setting output to 0.1 and it was always perfect! Thank you so much for the freedom to believe my common sense worked - even as a semi-pro. Vindicated at last. Thanks man!🍻
Nicely and soothingly, this helps generation meflake not to worry about something else that isn't much to worry about (which is vital for any How-To video from how to video to how to music), and then does gainstaging anyway, which attains Irony Quotient unison.
Hey Jordan, thank you very much. This indeed was a relief
Thank you for bringing some sanity to all of this.