Gain Staging in the Digital Domains

[ken]

Some tips from an article in Electronic Musician:

1. Record signals to peak at no higher than -6 dB on the meters.

2. Start you mix with your faders set to an average position of half to two-thirds of the fader level.

3. Use groups. Once you've gotten a good balance of elements within a group, using a group master won't mess with that balance.

4. Use master faders in your sessions. When a master-fader meter clips, simply lower the fader until the clipping stops.

5. Watch out for clipping in plug-ins. Lower the plug-in's input level if necessary.

6. If a track-level fader is inconveniently high or low, insert a gain plug-in to adjust the level.

[Mostess]

I came to Help and How To to start a new thread asking for help with levels. And lo and behold! Thanks ken.

The 5+ year history of Hostess Mostess is sprinkled with periods of retreat followed by bursts of submissions. We're using our current retreat to reflect on why all our post-digital recordings are so overcompressed, and how to let our sound breathe a little more.

Our Oversleeping entry was an experiment in not using any compression at all. Except on the vocals (it's like an addiction!). Even then, I think I panicked and ran a softknee on the final mix to get the RMS higher. The result is just messy and weak sounding. I have a compression problem.

I feel like the solution lies in getting better recordings and maybe better speakers for mixing. I'll take these points to heart and work more with levels instead of inserting compressors everywhere.

[jimtyrrell]

I've been following most of these points, but #3 is of particular interest to me. I don't think my setup has the capacity to 'group' tracks, but I could always bounce them to an open track once I'm satisfied with their sound. I'm looking forward to putting this method to test.

[Reist]

That's cool. There's too much compression in this world. I still like using it in moderation (mostly to get the typical snare sound that everyone wants), but this could help a lot.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Like Jim, #3 caught my eye also. I have been doing something similar if I understand it right. I have gotten to where I don't like touching the fader of a track once I found the sweet spot. BUT, as the song builds, say, 34 tracks later, I'm forced to start changing the first 10 track levels that were perfect together, so I just link the 10 tracks so that I move them together. I will quite often have groups of 8 to 12 tracks so that I only move 3 or 4 faders. Then when everything is recorded the way I like it, I unlock all the groups and regroup by instruments, then export them as wave files, IE: Drums = kick, snare, hat, toms, over head mics, room mics and separate crashes. Just the drums can be as many as 7 tracks, so it's nice to bounce them to one stereo track. Then I will export 1 or 2 copies of the snare and kick that will get EQd to bring out the sounds I like in each. Nothing worse than a song with the drums buried by the rest of the tracks.
My files are:
#1. Recording tracks = 32 to 34 tracks average
which are bounced down to:
#2. Mixing tracks = 10 to 12 tracks average
which again are grouped into instrumental tracks, vocal tracks, including back ups and ahhhs/ohhhs, lead guitar tracks and sound FX if there are any.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Also, 5. Watch out for clipping in plug-ins. Lower the plug-in's input level if necessary.
This is something that I've just started to notice. In the past I thought I peaked the meter while recording and Id rerecord the part. Then one day after rerecording a part about three times and lowering my levels each time, I noticed I was not peaking on the recording, so I dug deeper and found it was a VST plug. I can not count how many times I have rerecorded parts that may have just been my plug in peaking.

[fluffy]

#3 is something I keep meaning to try.

Many audio environments refer to them as "buses" rather than "groups," in case that's what's throwing people off. (Okay, technically buses and groups are different things but that's how you do group-mixing functionality in Logic or Cubase or whatever. Once you find a good mix within a group of tracks, you change their output to a particular bus, and from then on you can just change the mixing of the bus.)

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'm embarrassed to say, I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to use the buses. I'm sure when the need is there, I will. It's just as easy to just link the track once I get the levels the way I like them. But then again, I won't truly know what's easier until I start using buses.

Right know my over all concern is keeping my separation of the instruments in the final production. My wonderful little tid bits seem to be getting blended with other parts so much that the dynamics of the songs are being lost a bit.
So that's my next big step in the studio recording/mixing process.