How to Set the Microphones Input Gain Levels

for anybody working with microphones it's important that you know how to set the input level so that you can get the best out of your recordings what's up youtube welcome back to the channel i'm wavy wayne from wavywayne.com and this channel is to help you jump and leap over the hurdles of recording and mixing in your home and project studios whether you're a brand new beginner or a seasoned professional there's always something to learn so if you come in here for the first time go ahead and hit that subscribe button this video is definitely going to be aimed toward my beginners and recording but there's always something new to learn about setting your microphone's input gain the input level while you are recording because there's so many varying different opinions online and everywhere else that you go about what the proper input level should be now to keep this short if you just here for something real quick and you want to get back to doing what you was doing and recording when you are recording you should aim for an average input level of about negative 12 db full scale so when you're looking on your input meter you want to kind of see that your peaks are hidden at about negative 12 db now if you want to learn more let's continue watching this video because i'm gonna break it down and give you the nitty gritty and all the science behind that topic so let's start off with the basics what even is mic gain microphone gain is the level that you are amplifying your microphone signal to get it up to a line level that's going to be proper for recording the reason we need to set my gain is because microphones are inherently low with their output and we just can't use those signals on to make a decent recording so we must set the mic gain using a preamp now most of us will have preamps that are built into our audio interfaces kind of like the preamp that is built right into this uad apollo twin but you may also find standalone preamps in other studios a question i always get asked is what is the best game setting wayne where how should i set my game for recording now this definitely depends on a few things first thing is the source how loud is the source that you are recording are you recording a drum set a super loud singer a very soft singer a rapper a trumpet all of that will determine on where you will set that mic game another thing to take into consideration is the distance that the microphone is from the source so right now i'm really close to this microphone but if i back up you'll see that the level gets a little bit quieter and the closer that i get the louder i seem to get so the closer the mic is to the source the lower you need to set that mic gain mic sensitivity also plays a big part in how you should set your mic gain level if you're using a dynamic mic like the one i'm speaking into now then the mic game will need to be a little bit hotter especially if you're using something like this sm58 then your mic game will definitely need to be a little hotter versus let's say you're using a condenser or two mic where the signal is a little bit louder already so wavy how do we set our gain that's a good question one thing to consider when setting your gain is headroom versus noise floor headroom is making sure that you set the gain low enough to where if your singer or performer or whatever the source is that you're recording gets excited and a little louder the signal doesn't risk clipping or hitting zero db you always want to avoid that so for example if i set my gain at negative 10 db that means that i have 10 db of headroom or 10 db of space or extra you know room there for my performer or the source to get a little bit louder during the dynamic parts of the performance on the other hand if you set the preamp too low especially if you're working with a more budget preamp they tend to have a little bit more noisy components so if you have the signal set too low on your mic gain then your signal will be very close to that noise floor and then whenever you have to turn it up you will also be bringing up that noise from your preamp some interfaces and preamps that you use to set your microphone gain will have a meter on them but all of the daw software that you're going to be using to record will definitely have an input meter so let's take a look at the meters in this session as i'm talking to you right now and we can see this is my peak indicator so that is what i mean by you want your average level to be about negative 12 db on the peak and if you notice my peak is right at 11.9 right when i'm talking but sometimes i get a little more excited and it gets a little louder but that's why we set that gain to where we set it so that the average level is right around that negative 12 db on the input and it gives me enough headroom in case i do get a little excited and some peaks start to get through that recording now let's go ahead and adjust this preamp i'm just going to reach over here when i turn my pre-amp down you can see that we're not getting much level at all right so the signal now is pretty low with this preamp being low and the more that i turn it up we're getting a stronger and stronger signal it's also getting louder and louder so this is what i would do as i am setting my preamp when i have let me turn that down a little bit we're getting a little too loud all right all right so the best way to actually set your game is to actually have your source perform as they normally would during the recording it's not good enough to just say yeah let's get a mic check and have them go one two one two one two because most of the time artists are gonna get louder or even softer once they start the actual performance so typically what i'll tell my clients is hey i'm gonna set your gain your preamp level your mic level the first pass through and then we'll take a second pass so i'll just let them go ahead and deliver the performance as they normally would and i'll be closely watching my meter and adjusting the preamp as needed to get that about negative 12 db input on average now of course that's just the average some of the peaks will go a little bit higher and some will be a little bit lower but it's just a good starting point for you besides for adjusting your preamp there's a couple other ways to change the signal input level and it doesn't have anything to do with these faders in pro tools actually the only other two ways that you can change the signal input level is a change the source level so if i'm recording a keyboard player or something i can change the output level on that or i can move the microphone further or closer away to the source so again there's only three ways we got the preamp we have the source level and then we also have microphone placement which would be another way to adjust your gain the two main problems with having your game either too high or too low include distortion and introducing too much noise from a noisy or cheap preamp that you may be using now the main thing is definitely going to be distortion let me go ahead and let's turn this up a little bit so you can hear what a distorted signal sounds like so right now i'm really cranking this up and if you notice um i am clipping over 0 db and we are really getting a crunchy signal now it probably doesn't sound too good at all now let's see if i go too low now that i'm too low whenever i have to turn this up to make it match you're probably going to start to hear more noise from the preamp come into my signal even though i do have some exceptionally clean preamps in my uad so all in all try to aim for about a negative 12 db input level on average for your input signal when adjusting your mic gain and during the session or during your recording process always keep an eye on your meter and be mindful that you can make adjustments if the signal gets a little bit loud or too quiet and i would also dare to say it's best to record a little bit too quiet than to be a little too loud and rich clipping and destroying your signal because you just can't go back from that i hope you found this video helpful i'm wavy wayne from wavywayne.com make sure you thumbs up and comment down in this comment section below if you have any other questions about this topic i'll talk to y'all later be dope

Channel: Wayne.wav

Views: 144,147

Keywords: Wavy Wayne, recording levels, gain staging, recording vocals, microphone level, what level should i record at, noise floor, recording levels in logic pro x, gain staging vocals, how to mix vocals, logic pro x, pro tools, vocal recording, home studio, recording levels in pro tools, how to record vocals, recording levels for vocals, recording levels in audacity, how to record vocals in fl studio 20, pro tools 2020, home studio setup 2020, vocal recording hacks

Id: 0kI2n6m_qaM

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021