Dumbass questions about gainstaging - help or point me where to go!

C

Chrisulrich

Member
Dear Anyone.

So mixwise - gainstaging wise - my pieces come in 3 flavours.

1.) Pieces that sound the same as anyone elses volume-wise - till you drop them into something like Audacity and see they're clipping like a hairdresser on steroids!

2.) Pieces that sound too quiet - till you do the Audacity thing and see they're ALMOST clipping like the above, any louder and they WOULD be clipping.

3.) The rare ones. They're not clipping or anywhere near it - but their waveforms are TINY! Like wiggles in cotton. But they SOUND as loud as anyone else's - thinking New Age-wise, not Heavy Metal wise - and aren't doing the clipping thing that the number 1 lot do. They're the ones I put online because at least there's no clipping going on!

Then I download someone else's piece, chuck it in Audacity and see a solid blue brick! And it's not clipping!

Please, I'm not saying I WANT my pieces to look like solid blue bricks - but types 1, 2 and 3, above, happen at random and I dunno what I'm doing to get any one of them, just they all end up as one of those types! I'd love to know enough, technically, to know HOW they do the solid-brick-with-no-clipping trick and, from that, to know how to get to any desired loudness without clipping - the Type Ones are the ones that really annoy me because they sound so right till you realise they're actually clipping without sounding too loud. Just don't get that.

Can anyone explain what's going on to me, carefully, I'm not very techie! Can do screenshots of the three types if anyone asks for them.

Yours hopefully

Chris.
 
"Pieces" -- like, mixed and mastered finished product songs? or individual stems?

Yes, please post screen shots! Also, it might be helpful to know what genre we're dealing with?
 
They're probably using a Compressor/Limiter. They get their track as loud as possible without clipping by Brickwalling it (hence the solid blue brick... it chops the peaks off the transients). I'd probably ask first about what "pieces" are you talking about? Mixed Tracks? You mention dropping them in Audacity, but what are you using to Record them? Are you using a DAW? Lots of questions...
 
That's not gainstaging though - that's when you have loads of bits of gear in a daisychain and need to ensure the best signal to noise, end to end - so getting it wrong means item 1 has too little gain set, so you recover it on item 2 by turning the gain right up, bringing in noise, but then having to turn down item 3 because the signal's too hot. Gainstaging tries to get all 3 working at their optimum, but with each one not overloading the next?
 
It's probably a combination of using compression in the mix and a limiter in mastering. A limiter specifically designed for mastering generally works best.
 
There could be a number of reasons why. Do you have a consistent method to begin the mixdown process? Many people have different methods but here is my process. First, you should have individual tracks you are ready to commit to the mixdown. As long as the individual track is not clipping, you should be good to go. A digital mixer (like the Audacity mixer board) can adjust relative volumes without introducing any signal to noise issues. At this point, you can do the GAINSTAGING. I struggled with gain staging as well. After seeking out some direction, I found the method makes the mixing process much simpler for me. Most DAWs have mixers with gain trim adjustments, I am not sure Audacity does this but there is a workaround. In Audacity, you can take all the individual track waveforms and NORMALIZE them to a consistent DB (I use -18). Now put the normalized tracks into the Audacity mixer and adjust to your liking. Once you have several track playing you will notice the master channel is much higher than any individual channel but should not be clipping (and that is good). Don't worry about your output volume (that is a separate process). Once the individual tracks are mixed to your liking, you can render the mix to a stereo file. That is your non-clipping, non-crappy, non problematic MIX, protect it, save it, back it up. Now for the final part.... Mastering. Mastering will be where the mix is elevated to the correct output volume. This process can be as simple or a complicated as you would like. There are professional mastering services and online mastering services, as well as at home mastering suites by T-racks, Ozone etc. Hope this answers your concerns. I apologize if this misses the mark. Cheers.
 
Chrisulrich said:
So mixwise - gainstaging wise - my pieces come in 3 flavours. Can anyone explain what's going on to me, carefully, I'm not very techie! Can do screenshots of the three types if anyone asks for them.
Click to expand...
Drop all the tracks in to Audacity - then Normalize them all - you will have balanced tracks - the tracks that are too quiet have to be to quiet in the first place - so whatever you are recording on you have to get the gain up.
 
If someone's track (stereo song, or piece of music) is a "blue brick" once you've got it in Audacity, somebody is doing something wrong--either you, with something going on in Audacity, or the person responsible for the original song or "piece," as you put it. In Samplitude, my DAW, there is a way to increase the size of the waveform shown in the arranger. (I'm sure other DAWS do this too.) It's global, so waveforms that are "normal" will get very large, and waveforms that are the result of a quieter recording will now be much more visible, for editing purposes (volume automation). This does not effect the volume of the tracks. I don't normalize; sometimes for whatever reason the recording is quiet, as when a certain singer I record is downright whispering (so it seems), and this results in a tiny waveform of course. (When things are in Normal View in the arranger I've had tracks where the waveform was not there compared to most of the other ones, so relatively quiet was the recording.) I massage it with plugins, specifically one of a number of Slate's amp plugins. The waveform is still small, but it's at a decent volume after it runs through the plugs.
I've always got Slate's Virtual Mixbuss (that's how they spell it) first in line. If that thing is clipping (rarely happens anymore), then I go back and pull down the faders, either submix busses or individual tracks, depending. Nothing should ever be remotely close to clipping.
And: Any finished tracks (stereo songs that is) you load into Audacity should be just that--no plugins anywhere, either on the track itself, or the Main mix bus. From what I've read over the years, either here or anywhere, a common problem with folks new to the recording game is walloping the piss out of individual tracks with too much or mis-applied gain, via EQ, compressors, or other trick plugs. Same goes for the Main mix Stereo bus. Anyway. let's see the screenshots.
 
I would say that -0.3 dBFS peak level is sufficient for a file being exported as a wave and which will stay that way, but a bit more headroom may be needed if the audio is going to be exported as or later converted to a compressed format such as mp3.

[Edit] I give it a full 1 dB of headroom these days.
 
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