How To Set Your Microphone's Gain / Level for Beginners (FAQ Series)

greetings earthlings welcome back to another episode of the FAQ series today we're going to be discussing one of the most important aspects of your recording how to set your microphones gain or level okay so I'm gonna try to keep this video as shortened to the point as possible so if you just want a very short answer go ahead and set your gain so you're hitting around negative 12 to negative 6 decibels but if you want to know more go ahead and keep watching the video and I'll break it into three separate parts what is gain how do you set your gain and how does gain affect your sound and I'll also go ahead and throw some additional reading down below if you want to read more about microphone and preamp gain part 1 what is gain well gain is basically how much you are amplifying or increasing the level of your microphones output signal and you do this because microphones output signals are insanely quiet ranging from negative 30 down to negative 70 decibels and that needs to be increased to get it to a level that you can actually work with and that's exactly why we have pre amplifiers and just to clarify this preamps can come as standalone units like this guy right here or they can be built into USB audio interfaces like this guy so for example if you have a preamp that has a gain range of +6 all the way up to plus 66 decibels that means the least amount that you can amplify your signal is +6 and the greatest amount that you can amplify your microphones output is 66 decibels and that pretty much covers what gain is and what it does I know it wasn't an exhaustive explanation but it gives you a general gist part two how do you set your gain and actually before I answer that I want to address a question that I get all the time and that question is what is the best gain setting on this preamp or this USB microphone and it put it simply there's no absolute answer here because there are multiple variables that you have to consider when you're setting your preamps gain and of course we're gonna cover those right now the first factor is the loudness of the sound source and in this case my voice is the sound source so if I was talking really quietly I would have to increase the gain on the preamp or if you're recording a really loud guitar amp you would have to set your gain significantly lower the second factor is the distance between the sound source and the microphone so right now I'm at a decent distance but if I was far away I would be much quieter and would have to increase the gain on the preamp if I was a lot closer I may have to consider bringing down the gain on the preamp so depending on the distance between the sound source and the microphone you'll have to adjust your gain accordingly and the third factor is the sensitivity or output level of a microphone so if you have a quieter microphone like a dynamic or a ribbon you will need significantly more gain but if you're using a standard condenser microphone typically those have higher outputs so you need a less gain so now that you know what factors impact the amount of gain that you need what level should you be shooting for on your meter and honestly I've heard a lot of different opinions on this topic I've heard some people say you need to record at negative 18 DB and then others say you need to record at negative 6 DB and when I say you're recording at negative 18 or negative 12 or negative 6 that is where your Peaks will be the loudest part of what you're recording should be hitting that level and the reason you to record using this method is to gain Headroom and what that is it's the difference between the loudest part of your recording and 0 decibels where you begin to clip so for example if I'm recording spoken word and I set my preamp gain so I'm hitting around negative 10 decibels on my meter my speaking voice can get 10 decibels louder before I start hitting zero decibels and start clipping distorting and ultimately ruining the recording but on the other hand if I were to set my gain too high so I'm hitting around negative 1 decibel I would have to be very consistent with my tone in my speaking volume to avoid any peaks in level and avoid clipping and distorting the recording I think what it really comes down to is how dynamic the sound source your recording is and what I mean by that is how much variability and volume does a sound source actually have so with all that being said now I'm gonna go ahead and actually show you how to set your gain I'm currently running the BP 40 direct into the - I - 2nd gen and up on screen right here you can see that I got Logic Pro X running so since the Focusrite doesn't have a decent meter I'm gonna go ahead and just use the meter on Logic Pro and as you can see with just a normal speaking volume I'm hitting negative 14 negative 11 decibels and in case you don't know where to find a meter pretty much every piece of recording software or DAW that have come across over the last decade or so has had one built in but if it does have a volume fader is this slider right here make sure it's set to unity gain or zero decibels so it doesn't affect the reading that you're getting now we'll go ahead and decrease the gain of the preamp to zero and just slowly increase it while I'm speaking into it to show you what I would look for when setting my gain increasing it as you can see on my meter negative twenty nine decibels negative twenty five negative 20 negative 20 negative 17 negative 14 there we peaked a negative seven point seven so we'll go ahead and roll it back a little bit and let's go ahead and clear the meter so we can see what we're actually hitting now and when I get a little bit excited I'm hitting around negative eleven and that gives me a lot of Headroom to go from if I do get even more excited and scream into the microphone lots of headroom to play around with and that's how I set my game part three how does gain affect your sound and I'm not gonna sit here in wax poetic about this settle coloration added to your recording by driving your preamp tube man I'm not gonna do that I'm just gonna talk about the measurable and really noticeable impact on your sound so the first and the most prominent impactor that I've come across on line stems from people setting their gain too high and that will ultimately lead to you clipping and if you are recording digitally that is just terrible and it will ruin your recording so here's an example where I set my gain too high so I'm hitting around negative one decibel which is fine when I'm speaking normally but then if I get excited it starts clipping and distorting and sounds terrible and once that's recorded into your audio there's almost nothing you could do to salvage that so either you will have to come to terms with a terrible sounding recording or you'll just have to go ahead and rerecord it and the second impact which I come across much less stems from people setting their preamp gain too low and what that does is if you have a subpar preamp the sound source that you're recording can now get mixed up or lost in the noise floor of that preamp so here's an example where I recorded the signal to low and my Peaks are hitting around negative 30 decibels so that means that in post I'll have to go ahead and boost this 30 decibels to make it a decent listening level and the problem with that is I'm not only boosting the microphone or the sound source that it's recording but I'm also boosting the noise floor that's inherent to the preamp and to show you the real flaw here I'm gonna shut up so you can hear the noise and a really drive home the point now I have my gain set appropriately so I'm hitting around negative 12 negative 9 decibels on my meter I know this personally gives me plenty of room to play with in terms of Headroom and it gives me a pretty good signal to noise ratio and to illustrate that I'll go ahead and shut up so you can hear the noise floor well I think that's gonna do it for today I hope you guys found this video helpful and I hope to hear a lot less clipping and a lot less noise any recordings also let me know in the comments down below if there are any topics that you want me to cover like this in the future if you did find it helpful go ahead and give me a thumbs up if you hated it thumbs down if you want more videos like this go ahead and click the logo beneath me also check out the discord server link in the description and I will see you all later thanks for watching bye [Music]

Channel: Podcastage

Views: 664,721

Keywords: podcastage, podcast, bandrew, scott, microphone, review, audio, sound, test, demo, How To Set Your Gain, How to set your microphone gain, How to set your preamp gain, What's the best gain setting, What level should I record at, -12dB vs -6dB, Clipping, Noise Floor

Id: 1l86SOlxyps

Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Fri May 04 2018