USE YOUR GAIN! The TRUTH about maximum gain setting (set preamp gain properly and minimize noise)

you shouldn't set the gain too high as you get noise in your recordings i would never max out the gain because the preamps get very noisy you don't ever want to set your gain to the maximum as this creates noise i guess it's time to debunk that myth hey julian krause here and how many times you have heard someone say that you should not use a high gain setting on your recording device as this leads to a higher amount of noise in your final recording i have certainly heard it many many times and this statement is even coming from professionals working in the music industry that's probably why this myth is still sticking around the problem with it is that it leads you to believe that increasing your gain leads to a worse signal to noise ratio which is simply not true and believe me after watching this video you will feel quite different about using the gain on your preamp i want to point out that i did already do a video where i go over what happens when you turn down your game and boost the audio in post and why this does not improve your signal-to-noise ratio in your final recording in this video i want to specifically focus on what happens when you turn your gain to a high level or even to the maximum because that's what most people seem to worry about but first let's talk about why you would think that preamps get noisier when you turn up the gain one thing i see quite often is that people don't plug anything into the input at all and turn up the gain all the way to the maximum then they listen to the recorded noise and come to the conclusion that this preamp is pretty damn noisy but there are already a few problems with this analysis first of all a preamp produces much more noise when there is no microphone plugged into it this results in an unrealistic noise floor that is not representative of the noise that you get when you plug in a microphone to record audio so not connecting anything to the preamp to evaluate its noise floor is a bad idea another thing i see quite often is that someone uses a condenser mic to evaluate the noise of a preamp but this does also not work as the noise of the condenser mic will nearly always be higher than the noise of the preamp so the only thing that they are unknowingly evaluating is the noise of the condenser mic and not the noise of the preamp but even if someone uses a dynamic microphone or even better a dummy load to evaluate the noise which by the way my buddy ray ortega made a video about on how to build one yourself even then there is a problem with how people evaluate the noise of a preamp typically they listen to the noise and slowly turn up the gain then they discover that the further they crank up the gain the higher the noise gets sometimes this is accompanied by an effect where the gain rises more strongly towards the maximum which gives the impression that the noise increases exponentially towards the maximum setting and this is where the wrong perception of noise performance of a preamp comes from increasing the gain also increases the noise the print puts out that's a fact so you would think that using a high gain setting is always bad but that's incorrect and couldn't be further from the truth the big problem is that just listening to the noise of a preamp doesn't tell you anything you actually want to evaluate how high the noise is in comparison to the signal that you want to record in other words the signal signal-to-noise ratio the noise flow on its own without any reference is meaningless here's a quick example listen to these two recordings clearly the first recording has much less noise than the second one or does it i'll let you listen to both recordings again but this time with the signal that i recorded which in this case was my voice this is the first recording check one two three this is the second recording check one two three as you can hear the second recording is much louder not only the noise but also the recorded signal let me amplify the first recording up to the level of the second one and then let's have a listen to both of the signals again this is the first recording check one two three this is the second recording check one two three now both recordings have the same amplitude because my voice is equally loud in both recordings i'll let you listen to the noise again who would have thought now the noise is exactly the same for both recordings so in the beginning you might have thought that the first recording has much less noise even though both recordings have the same signal to noise ratio this again goes to show that to properly evaluate the noise of a preamp you have to reference it to a known signal which oftentimes is the one you want to record and that's what the signal to noise ratio does it describes the difference between the recorded signal and the noise the bigger the snr the less noise you have in comparison to your recorded signal so when people talk about preamps getting noisier at high gain settings they pretty much always talk about their experience from simply listening to the noise of a preamp at the maximum gain setting but again this isn't meaningful in any way because they do not know how much gain the preamp applies and how strong the noise is in comparison to the signal they want to record what they should do is to take a look at the signal-to-noise ratio and now this is the real wtf moment you're ready for it the signal-to-noise ratio of a microphone pre-amplifier gets bigger when you increase the gain or you could say preamps get less noisy at higher gain settings i know this is completely counter-intuitive to what you might think about preamps but the best signal-to-noise ratio a preamplifier can achieve is always at its maximum gain setting but don't just take my word for it here you can see a graph where i measured the signal-to-noise ratio for several audio interfaces over the gain ranges and as you can see the snr always increases with an increase in gain approaching the maximum the change in snr gets increasingly smaller but regardless it is always the highest at the maximum setting and as crazy as that sounds you do not make your recording noisier with a high gain setting but actually lower the noise in comparison to the recorded signal but julian are you saying i should only record with the maximum gain setting from now on no if you use the maximum gain for a signal that is already quite strong the signal will clip because it is amplified even further and will reach the maximum the preamp and the analog to digital converter in the recording device can handle if that happens it will result in a horrible distortion so setting your gain too high increases the risk of clipping this is the real reason why you don't just max out your gain and in practice leave yourself some headroom so your audio can get a little bit louder without any clipping so it's always a balance purely from a noise perspective in a given recording setup you want to set the preamp to the highest gain possible to achieve the highest possible snr but from a headroom standpoint you want to use the lowest gain possible to achieve the highest amount of headroom to not clip any audio see setting your gain is always a compromise but there is a point where you get the highest possible snr and still have a nice amount of headroom how do you find this point well it's easy you simply set your gain so that your recording level peaks around -18 to -12 dbfs with this rule of thumb you ensure that you record a strong signal and still leave a decent amount of headroom setting your gain like this will always result in this optimum yes even if you have to max out the game to achieve a proper recording level now i can still hear a few of you shouting at the screen then why do i generally hear much more noise in recordings where i had to max out the game well the real reason is not that he used much gain but rather that the signal you're trying to record is very low when you whisper into a dynamic mic which is further away from you it puts out an incredibly low signal level without a doubt in this scenario you would need to max out the gain to achieve a proper recording level and it is very likely that you get some noise in your recording in contrast if you get the microphone very close to you and shout into it the signal from the microphone is going to be much stronger which allows you to use less gain to reach a proper recording level and in this case the noise will be very low wait didn't you just say that the preamp has its highest snr at its maximum setting and now you're telling me that the lower gain setting results in a lower noise recording you're kidding me no that a preamp has its highest snr at its maximum setting simply means that in a given recording setup where the signal strength from your microphone is already set you will want to use the highest gain you can get away with to result in the highest possible snr in other words set your game properly to get the best results with the given recording setup the important part here is the with a given recording setup because besides setting your gain properly there is another way to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of your recording and that's by increasing the signal coming from your microphone there are primarily two ways to do that you can either get the microphone closer to the sound source or if possible you can increase the volume of your source both actions will result in an increased sound pressure level at the mic capsule which in turn increases the signal level that the mic puts out i think you can easily see why this increases the signal to noise ratio if you increase the signals from your mic all the noise in your recording setup will become lower in comparison this means that if you want to optimize the snr in your recording setup you should try to get a stronger signal level out of your microphone i know this whole topic can be a bit confusing so what's the takeaway here contrary to what many people claim high gain settings are not the cause of noisy recordings recording a low level signal which needs a high amount of amplification is the real cause of noise that's a small but important difference and that's why you should always optimize the signal-to-noise ratio of your recording setup first by increasing the signal coming from your microphone which you can achieve by getting the microphone closer to your sound source or recording a louder source after you've done that use your gain don't worry so much about where the gain dial is physically set to and set it to where it needs to be to get a proper recording level doing this you can rest assured that this results in an optimal performance for the given recording setup even if that means that you sometimes have to max out your gain okay i hope i got the point across because so many people still get this wrong want to support more audio myth busting there's a link to my patreon account in the description below please give this video a thumbs up and consider subscribing and the next time somebody tells you to not max out your game you know the video to point them to i will see you all in the next one

Channel: Julian Krause

Views: 121,588

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Id: beXVfl1TSD0

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020