Gain Question

Nola

Well-known member
I think I've asked this before, but for some reason it's not sinking in. Could be the sleep deprivation!

But, say my individual track faders are all real low like -15db in the mix session. When I say low I mean physically, like the fader is pulled way down. I have no idea how they wound up there....I think when I brought in fake drums the instrument tracks sounded loud relative to that, but I'm not sure. The bottom line is they're all that low (physically on the board). So say on the master fader I then bump the final output +15db of gain to make up for that. Does that degrade quality compared to having the faders up from the get go?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a repeat question.
 
Nope...it just might be more efficient for mixing if most of your track faders are way low, to grab them as a group, and raise to an acceptable level, while leaving the master at "0".
I think if you have one or two odd tracks that are real low...you might work on boosting them up...instead of lowering a whole lot of other tracks, to get your balance.

Just watch the main bus level so it's not in the red...and you can put those track faders wherever you want...of course, you also don't want them in the red, as you may get clips on the individual tracks.

Also...your faders have finer adjustment travel higher up than way down low...down low, small moves=bigger level changes. Of course, if you just type in the numbers for the fader levels, it's not a problem.
 
In analog, it's not best from an S/N standpoint. You usually don't want to turn things down just to turn them up again. In (floating point) digital, it doesn't matter either way.
 
Not necessarily.
It's all about signal to noise ratio and avoiding clipping.

If what you're doing results in a healthy output with both of those things in mind, there's no problem. :)

It is probably considered good practice to keep the master at unity and all the other tracks should be healthy with the fader at unity then tweaked to taste,
but you can deviate for whatever reasons, as long as you're not hissing or distorting. ;)
 
I don't think it should matter much. But when I run into issues like that, like specific tracks that are too quiet or too hot, I adjust the clip gain right at the source. It helps to keep my faders as close as possible to unity at all times. Keeps for a smoother workflow, for me anyways. I also prefer clip gain automation over track automation, just works better for me. In Pro Tools it's pretty easy (not sure which DAW you use).
 
I don't think it should matter much. But when I run into issues like that, like specific tracks that are too quiet or too hot, I adjust the clip gain right at the source. It helps to keep my faders as close as possible to unity at all times. Keeps for a smoother workflow, for me anyways. I also prefer clip gain automation over track automation, just works better for me. In Pro Tools it's pretty easy (not sure which DAW you use).

Thanks, all!

Glad to hear it doesn't matter because the tracks have automation on them so I didn't want to mess with raising each one, etc, but I was worried I might be introducing more noise with this method.

Johnny, yeah I'm not sure why it happened because I started some of these mixes a while back. Maybe I just didn't know better at the time or maybe one plugin or instrument was loud or soft and I built the mix around that. I'm really not sure. I use Cubase Pro 9.5.
 
I think I've asked this before, but for some reason it's not sinking in. Could be the sleep deprivation!

But, say my individual track faders are all real low like -15db in the mix session. When I say low I mean physically, like the fader is pulled way down. I have no idea how they wound up there....I think when I brought in fake drums the instrument tracks sounded loud relative to that, but I'm not sure. The bottom line is they're all that low (physically on the board). So say on the master fader I then bump the final output +15db of gain to make up for that. Does that degrade quality compared to having the faders up from the get go?

Thanks, and sorry if this is a repeat question.
you want them hitting in the yellow slightly above the green on your meters. Just use a limiter on your 2 bus.
 
Back
Top