The #1 GAIN STAGING Mistake

and here's the number one mistake that a lot of people are gonna do when game staging is session let's talk about gain staging i'm gonna share with you some common gain staging mistakes you need to avoid what's going on the chris limb here from mixdown online i hope you are safe and well before we jump in don't forget to download my free training on how to build the perfect mix template that also includes some free multitracks for you to download and also some mixing cheat sheets okay so the link is down below okay now to the topic of the video which is gain staging you've heard about gain staging before i actually made a video years ago talking about that topic now gain staging if you're not familiar with that term or what that is or if you're new to mixing gain staging is like the right way to start a mix okay so it's just a way to balance the level of a recording before you start mixing a session now to make a long story short we gain stage a session to give us headroom while mixing so there are several reasons why i do love to gain stage a session before starting a mix headroom is one of them so if we go here in cubase when i'm talking about headroom for example let's look at the uh the stereo bus that i have right here now at the moment the stereo bus is at a minus five minus you know minus four dbfs level which is perfect and the reason why is because my session has been gain stage properly so that gives me some headroom on my mix bus i also gain stage to avoid picking my channels and to keep my faders near unity point which is the zero point on a channel and the reason why i like to leave everything at unity point is a matter of resolution for example if i bring down the level of the channel by 10 db the distance between those two db points is gonna be larger opposed to if i have my fader down the channel where the distance between the same db points is gonna be way tighter okay so the resolution is way better when my faders are near unity point this is a personal preference i love to work this way way better for automation in my opinion and you know i just avoid getting all of my channels super low in this in the mixing session that doesn't mean that i'm not going to end up with a few channels that are going to be low i don't mind that if that happens but for the most part for the most of the channels i like to have them close to unity point and same for my my mix bus my mix bus i love it to to stay at zero and i usually don't touch it and same for instrument buses i'm gonna leave them at unity point unless i need to automate them for some reason uh then i don't have a problem to do so and another reason why i love to uh to gain stage a session is not to pick the plugins and this is something important in my opinion especially plugins that are modeled after analog gear if that process is well done the plugin is going to behave the same way as an analog gear does so in the analog world the level measurement is done in vu so you probably know what a vu meter looks like and this is the main level measurement meter of an analog gear now in the digital world we're talking about dbfs which is db full scale and when we go above 0 db we are peaking and when we pick a digital signal the result is not very good opposed to going above 0 vu on an analog gear this is not going to destroy the signal it's actually going to add some tone to the signal at some point depending on what analog gear you work with so plugins that are modeled after an analog gear like a compressor or a console emulation plug-in and that kept that zero vu analog calibration now those plugins can end up peaking if you're uh if the initial signal is way too loud okay so this is something to pay attention to so that's a reason why i do gain stage also but if you're just dealing with some digital plugins that are not analog gear emulation those will not be the same as far as you don't go above zero dbfs you're good but even with that i'm still gonna gain stage my session for all the other reasons so what is the perfect gain staging level you probably heard about the sweet spot of -18 dbfs i actually talked about that before more than once and this is actually yes a sort of sweet spot the reason is very simple if we go back to analog gear again and we look at the zero vu point that mark point is going to be the equivalent of -18 dbfs so that's why we tend to use that number as the sweet spot and here's the number one mistake that a lot of people are going to do when gain staging a session they're going to focus way too much on the number they're going to take that minus 18 dbfs and they're only going to focus on that and they're going to take ages to gain stage recession that is a big problem and this is something that i receive all the time by email from students from people watching my videos on youtube a lot of them are going to have the same questions over and over again about that -18 sweet spot do i really need to be against staging at that level what if i gain stage at -15 is that you know is that so bad and they're just freaking way too much on that number only and they actually lose track of what gain staging is to begin with and this is something that is very important to understand when it comes to that minus 18 sweet spots you don't have to freak out about this you know you don't have to focus too much about that level on my side i will look at the minus 18 point for sure but i'm going to keep my signal between -18 to -10 and that's it if i'm within that range i'm good on then moving on with your mix okay so just don't focus too much on that number take that number to your advantage as a guideline you know that's it that's all you need to do when i do some recording same thing i'm going to aim for a recording level of minus 18 to minus 10 when it comes to peaks and i can even sometimes speak at minus 8 and i'm still going to be good and when i'm going to start mixing my levels are going to be okay in my session i might have to gain stage a few tracks but that's going to be it you know because i did it from the start from the recording stage and this is the way i like to work but if i need to bring some channels down i just do so in a very simple way and that's it and i just move on now in cubase the way i like to gain stage stuff there's two ways first i can use the gain level here okay that i have here on the mix console and doing it from the mix console actually speeds up my workflow i just bring all of my channels to unity point and i just bring down the gain of the loud channels and that's it or just bring up the quieter channels because this is something that happens as well you know a a track that was recorded way too quiet i'm going to need to bring it up so in that case i'm going to bring the gain of the channel hotter you know so higher so if you don't see that pre-gain section what you need to do is to click on tracks on the top of the mix console and make sure that pre-filter gain phase is checked on and you will see the pre tab right here on your mix console and gain is going to be available for you there's also clip gain that you can work with straight from the project window you just select the the tracks that are too loud and you just bring them down that's another way you can do it both are good it's a matter of preference i will do both i'm mainly going to work with pre-gain but you know sometimes uh just bringing a channel that is way too allowed with clip gain is going to do the job pretty well also now i just want to point something out before i end this video and this is going to be a very useful tip for you and this is something again that is another mistake that a lot of people are going to tend to do now when we're looking at the gain that we have here on top when we're playing with the gain of the channel in cubase we have to realize that this process whether it's a clip gain or working with the gain itself from the channel settings window right here or from the mix console like we have right here it's the same same thing this is going to be done pre-answer you're bringing the signal up or down before the signal hits the the insert plugins okay so this is something that you need to understand so before the signal goes through the channel strip and the plugins you know the insert plugins and sends and so on it's going to go through the gain section first so that's why we do gain staging before we start playing with the faders and before we start adding plugins on okay once this is done you're gonna be good to go however you just need to realize that the more plugins you add the more it will affect the gain of the channel you know like the main volume of the channel itself for example if you're adding an eq an eq will affect the level of the channel because if you're adding some frequencies on your eq you're going to gain way more level on your channel and if you're you're cutting a bunch of frequencies the level of the channel is going to end up quieter okay so this is uh what eq does and it's the same for a compressor sometimes it's going to compress a signal the output level is going to be too loud and you're going to end up with a loud signal even if you gain stage your your signal before um okay so you need to be careful with that and what i do on my side is i gain stage as i go so i play with the output level of a plug-in if i need to you know so if i'm working with a plug-in that will add a lot of gain to my channel i'm going to bring down the output so i can keep that same that same level relation so for example let's take this synth base where i have the name brainy psa1000 inserted this is a saturation distortion plug-in uh it's kind of a stanza emulation so if i bypass it first and let's bring it on now it's way louder so if i keep that as is and i continue mixing my session and i bring down my fader because the level is way too loud that's one way to do it and that's okay you know if you're not picking your your channel it's going to be fine if you're picking your channel though and you you kind of catch that up later on into the mix and your level your channel level is super low you're picking the channel or a plugin and you want to gain stage that back what you need to do is to avoid playing with the gain of the channel because this is going to mess around with the signal going into your plug-in in my case the distortion plug-in that i have so i hope you follow this let me give you an example i'm going to bring that back up so let's say i'm bringing back my channel to unity point and i want to bring down the level of this channel so let's use the pre-gain and gain stage my session or my channel now i'm probably at the same level as i was before now the problem i have right now is that my sound is not the same okay so that's why playing with the pre-gain option in cubase after you have some plugins on is a no-go if you want to gain stage a channel later on into the mix okay so i'm gonna just bring that back to the level it was and what i need to do in that case is to bring the output level of the plug-in lower now the gain staging level my initial gain stage level of this channel stays the same okay so the output level of a plug-in is going to be your best friend throughout a mix so as you insert plugins if you balance that out with the output level of a plug-in you're going to be fine so there you go my friend this is my take on gain staging if you have any questions or comments so you can leave everything down below don't forget to share to like if you enjoyed the video and to subscribe to the channel if you're new here until next time take care and see you

Channel: Chris Selim - Mixdown Online

Views: 37,135

Rating: 4.9469142 out of 5

Keywords: mixing, GAIN STAGING, GAIN STAGING Mistake, Cubase, cubase 11 pro, cubase 11, how to gain stage, gain structure, gain staging in cubase 11, gain staging in cubase 10.5, gain staging in cubase 10, gain staging in Cubase

Id: Vboo3N3x1vU

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021