Confused? You won't Be.
So your best friend has a band, your client has recorded his band, and they've sent you the stems (wave audio files of every track) for you to put your, producer/mixer impresario hat on, and turn their mediocre recording into a professional (whatever that is) mix.
But you drag the files into a new session in Studio One (or the DAW of your choice) and when you hit the playback the main bus is clipping like crazy. Yes you've guessed it they where so busy laying down the greatest rock song ever made no-one was paying any attention to the fact that drums/bass/guitars/vocals levels where clipping (being recorded too high). So you scratch your head and think how can I fix this now, they won't/can't record it again cos they've went their separate ways.
Gain staging is so little thought of because its too basic and unexciting we just want to bypass it and get to the good stuff like using 100's of plugins and tricking ourselves into believing we're creating the best mix ever produced. But unless we get this right at the start and maintain a vigil all the way through the mix process our mix will all be for nothing. In the analogue world we got away with the needles slamming the meter there was so much more to play with, but in the digital realm, clipping your meter is pure distortion and is nothing more than disastrous.
Gain staging can seem easy to understand, well the principles of it anyway, but so many find it hard to implement a good system of working out how best to go about it.
Now there are two main thoughts of play as to how best to go about gain staging, using a trim plugin in, or reducing clip gain, so the volume level is lower before it hits the faders. But I would like to throw a third method into the mix. It does involve a little expense but I feel it's honestly worth it.
For this I will be exclusively using the most excellent, and I should add, most accurate, VU meter plugin that can be used in any DAW, the Klanghelm VUMT .
I would state that coming from the old school way of analogue recording, using a VU meter to work on, rather than the digital meters of your Daw, is more natural to me and I find it far easier to use and gain stage with.
So without further adieu lets dig right in:-
Gain staging is so little thought of because its too basic and unexciting we just want to bypass it and get to the good stuff like using 100's of plugins and tricking ourselves into believing we're creating the best mix ever produced. But unless we get this right at the start and maintain a vigil all the way through the mix process our mix will all be for nothing. In the analogue world we got away with the needles slamming the meter there was so much more to play with, but in the digital realm, clipping your meter is pure distortion and is nothing more than disastrous.
Gain staging can seem easy to understand, well the principles of it anyway, but so many find it hard to implement a good system of working out how best to go about it.
Now there are two main thoughts of play as to how best to go about gain staging, using a trim plugin in, or reducing clip gain, so the volume level is lower before it hits the faders. But I would like to throw a third method into the mix. It does involve a little expense but I feel it's honestly worth it.
For this I will be exclusively using the most excellent, and I should add, most accurate, VU meter plugin that can be used in any DAW, the Klanghelm VUMT .
I would state that coming from the old school way of analogue recording, using a VU meter to work on, rather than the digital meters of your Daw, is more natural to me and I find it far easier to use and gain stage with.
So without further adieu lets dig right in:-
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