GAIN STAGING when RECORDING? Get the Perfect RECORDING LEVELS

gain staging when recording is that actually a thing hey what's going on chris lim here from mixdown online thank you for watching now if you're new here on the channel feel free to subscribe to the channel and to click that notification bell so you don't miss anything and if you enjoyed the video go ahead and click that like button you know and feel free to share also okay now when we are talking about gain staging you know when recording we are basically talking about how to set up a recording level you know when recording music okay and this is something very important i get a lot of tracks you know that are well recorded you know by clients when i when i mix four clients but i also receive tracks once in a while that cause me a bit of problems sometimes they are way too hot which causes the signal to peak and some other times they will be a bit too low you know which is also going to create a problem maybe not as much as being recorded too loud but still you know because what happens when we record a signal too hot we risk on on peaking the transience of the signal and when that happens you know that part of the signal is kind of destroyed you know and there's no way back and when a signal is recorded way too low that can affect the signal to noise ratio which you end up not using the full bitrate that you have with your converters with today's audio interfaces we have access to 24-bit recording which is a lot of dynamic range so if we record our signal our audio way too low we don't take advantage of that full bitrate that is available for us to use you know so that is one of the biggest reason why i tend to look for the perfect sweet spot when it comes to recording so i don't record too loud so i don't end up peaking the transients and i don't record too quiet so i don't affect the signal to noise ratio and i take advantage of my 24 bit rate so how to find the perfect recording level when recording music now there's two types of levels when we record music there's the the average level and there's the peak level now the average level is also known as rms level and the peak level is what we see on in cubase on our mix console on all the single uh the single channels we have a peak level meter so the difference between the two is not that complicated you know the average level is going to measure how loud does the music feels and the peak level will measure how loud does the music actually is okay so this is the difference between the two one is how loud the music feels and the other one the peak level is how loud the music is actually is okay so this is the difference between the two and you know they're both important so i'm going to show you what i do on my side to to set up my recording levels and i'm also going to show you uh all sorts of different tools that you can use to set up your own recording levels in cubase okay and also you know that will work for other double dhw2s but we have like one feature in cubases that is actually very useful in this case and that feature is the input channel every time we uh and i talked about that last week every time we create an input bus that will create an input channel straight in cubase that is accessible on the mix console now before we move on i just want to talk about the sponsor of this video skillshare skillshare is an online learning community that offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people like most of us you'll find topics such as illustration music production web design photography video editing video production freelancing marketing productivity and much more on my side i've been using skillshare for several years now and lately i've been watching a class from greg mcewen who is the author of the bestseller the essentialism which is an amazing book and he teaches a class on productivity called simple productivity how to accomplish more with less which is an amazing class to follow for someone like me who runs a business who is a music producer and also a family man now the first thousands of my subscribers to click the link in the description down below will get a free trial of the premium skillshare membership so you can get a chance to explore your creativity thank you skillshare for sponsoring this video now let's get back to cubase so if we jump in cubase right away uh this is what i have on my mixed console i only have like one channel um that i have in this session and my microphone is plugged into straight into my my sound interface the one that i'm using at the moment that goes straight on an input bus in cubase so if i click on f4 i have my mono in one which has my microphone routed into and that actually created an input channel straight in cubase so if you want to access those input channels you need to go straight on the uh the mixed console and make sure that if you click on top here on the set channel type filter that input channels is checked on i talked about that on last week's video and what i'm going to do here is i'm going to use some plugins straight on the insert side of the the input channel so the peak level meter is what we have on any channels from the mixed console in cubase which again is going to measure the actual level of the signal you know at the exact moment so that's why it's kind of it's going very fast because you know it's going to it's gonna kind of detect all the peaks at the exact moment um and you know like a vocal is very dynamic so the level range is gonna be pretty wide um and so i need to figure out what is the perfect recording level so i don't peak and i don't get too quiet recording and what i usually do on my side when it comes to peak level and it's the same with regular gain staging that i talked about on one of my last videos i go with an average you know between minus 18 dbfs to minus 10 or even minus eight or six you know at the most when it comes to high peaks and i know that if i keep myself into these into that range i'm gonna have a very good level as far as the recording goes but there's another way you can measure that is by using an rms meter or an average level meter like a vu meter for example so let me check if i have the video meter inserted there you go so i have this vu meter um and there's also free alternatives if you want to like this one is a paid one it's the cheap ones like 20 bucks or something which works very well but there's also a free alternative that i talked about on my i think it was the uh the free mixing plugins video that i made maybe a couple months ago i'm going to leave the link on top and down below if you want to check it out and this is calibrated at the moment to minus 18 db okay so now there's like a big story behind you know the why we use minus 18 dbfs i don't want to get into this in this video but basically you know zero vu is going to be the equivalent of minus 18 dbfs so this is kind of the the kind of relation we're going to have with a vu average level meter and a dbfs level which stands for db full scale which zero on the dbfs meter is going to be like the maximum level and the minute you're going to go above that level your signal is going to peak so you want to keep yourself some headroom if we use an rms meter like supervision you know there's a very cool option supervision where where supervision is gonna is gonna show you the peak level and also the average level on the same meter uh you see we have the peak level right here that's it that is um that has like a lighter tone of blue and we have the average level okay which has a darker tone of blue and this is our rms reading that goes to minus 20 minus 18 minus 22 which is a very good level so uh when i'm talking about a level of -18 dbfs i'm always referring to an average level and you can actually see what i mean here so i have the peak level which can go as high as minus 6 depending on the instrument i'm recording but my average level is always going to be towards minus 18 minus 20 minus 22 you know in that kind of range you know i know that i'm good when i'm near this range okay so this is a very cool tool that you can use if you have cubase 11 you have access to supervision now if you're using supervision you just need to uh to make sure that you're using the level module and also just a quick a quick tip here just make sure that the rms aes 17 is on okay so this is going to give you that exact reading now the unfortunate thing with cubase is the metering that we have access to on the channels themselves we only have access you know as far as the channel goes we only have access to peak metering and it would be cool to have access to a meter that can show us the average level on top of the peak level like we have here with supervision but straight on the channel you know studio one has that pro tools also has this type of metering on their channels which is actually pretty useful so hopefully they will add this one up on the future version of cubase and i'm pretty sure they will at some point note that you can also use peak metering straight from your audio interfaces software and that is another way you can check your recording levels so what is the most important whether you're using a vu meter rms meter or only a peak meter is not to peak your signal and also to get a strong of enough signal so you take advantage of the full bitrate that your interface and converters offers you and also you get a strong signal to noise ratio now on my side i've been working only with peak level meters when recording and that worked well as far as i'm concerned anyways so what i usually do on my side is to keep my recording level between -18 dbfs to minus 10 dbfs by allowing some peaks that will go up to minus six depending on the signal i'm recording this way my average rms level will stay between minus 22 and minus 18 dbfs which is actually perfect so this way i have a strong loudest signal that doesn't peak if you have any questions or comments you can leave everything down below and don't forget to share and to like if you enjoyed this video and also subscribe to the channel if you're new here until next time take care and see you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 12,823

Keywords: Recording, home recording studio, home recording, GAIN STAGING when RECORDING, gain staging

Id: mUhE7C3kpCg

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021