This is just another video confusing gain staging with mix balancing. I really don't see why a quite complicated method involving clip gain and limiters would be more practical way to do mix balancing than just using the tool that is designed for this job: the track's mixer fader. Real gain staging, on the other hand, is the process of adjusting the input signal level for every single plugin in a track's processing chain to make sure that plugins get fed with an optimal signal level to work with.
I understand what your saying. However, this video was meant for anyone from absolute beginner to pro, and a beginner may not know what their favorite plugins and routing are yet. They may not even have a template yet. For those people, I didn’t want to take them through an intricate template with tons of plugins and routing, I wanted them to be able to create a very simple template with basic routing that they could build on over time. Balancing is a core fundamental of mixing and plays a big part in gain staging, because if your balancing is out of whack your gain staging will be too. I believe I even said in the video that they were closely related In the video, I explained why I chose to do it this way with the clip gain and limiters. The clip gain comes before everything else and determines the levels going into your template and plugins, so if it’s too low or too high you will be hitting your plugins wrong Thats why I have a target level I aim for, and it’s simple because you can visually adjust the levels of your track which in turn is adjusting the level at which everything within your template is being hit If you clip gain to that level every time and have your template set up in a way thats based around your tracks coming in at that level then you pretty much always guarantee that your plugins and signal chain will be getting hit at the same level, or nearly the same level, every time. It takes out the guess work The limiters are a preference for me that I also explained in the video. It allows all my faders to stay at unity making automation much easier, and it also allows my session to look less messy, because I personally don’t like to have faders all over the place, but if you want to use faders you can. Lastly, at the end of the video I show what it looks like when you do this exact same method using a template complete with plugins and complex routing, and show just by clip gaining at the level I said how I’m able to hit everything at the exact level I want, or close, and have the song sounding 80% mixed before I even start mixing
@@AndrewAurora The point is, by using the tern "Gain Staging" and don't explain the whole concept of it, you just confuse the beginners even more. It is okay if your personal preference is to keep the mix faders at unity and use other ways to level your tracks, but again, recommending that to beginners would add even more confusion to them. There is a big advantage of using the mixer faders for leveling, especially if you did proper gain staging so every track's signal is at roughly the same level before it hits the mixer fader: By just looking at the mixer, you instantly see which elements are loud and which ones are not. This is crucial information you take away from yourself when every single fader in the mixer sits at 0 dB. Also keep in mind that limiters react to volume changes of a signal, while faders don't. So they are not interchangeable when it comes to adjusting the overall volume of a track. I'm also not a fan of doing volume automation on the mixer faders, because it complicates mixing adjustments once automation is used. I'd rather use a gain plugin for volume automation instead.
@@markuskopter Thats where you and I approach it differently. You prefer to use a gain plugin for automation and I don’t prefer that, I prefer the fader. I don’t think cubase has a gain plugin, but a gain plugin would work too to balance instead of a limiter. I know Pro tools has one called trim. The difference between balancing and gain staging, which is what I covered in this video, is that to gain stage you need to have a defined volume goal and a defined volume starting point Balancing alone is just balancing the volumes in relation to each other, regardless of the actual levels Gain staging is actually having a target level and properly controlling your levels throughout your chain to achieve said level, which is much easier when you have a defined level starting point, and a defined level target. However, balancing is a big part of that, because who cares if your goal is to hit -6 on the master and you achieve that, but your drums are 4 db too loud and your vocals are 3db too quiet and you can’t even hear the bass. See what I mean? As for the limiters and mixers, the mixer levels change when you change the volume on the limiter, so you don’t lose any information, and for me personally I almost never use the mixer window in my workflow, so that wouldn’t effect how I mixed anyway. The limiters don’t react to the volume changes at all unless they are limiting. But again, i’m not limiting with them unless I want to. At the end of the day, you can use any plugin that you can control gain with to do this, I just use limiters because they are simple and designed like faders, don’t add color, and if I want to do any limiting to control the volumes, I can The limiters seem to be the biggest point of contingency with people here. I suppose I should have been more clear about the fact that you don’t need to use limiters if you don’t want to. You can use anything you want to, I just like using limiters
Pretty cool Idea. It seems a few are worried about coloration from inserting a limiter on the buses. If anyone is really that concerned about coloration then just use a 'Gain' plugin rather than using a limiter for this purpose.
Exactly. I’m not sure if Cubase has a regular gain plugin. I know Pro tools does. The limiter i’m using in this video doesn’t add color just by being on the bus, certainly nothing that is audible if it does, so it doesn’t matter
I'm sure you mean well, but I don't think this simplifies things for beginners. It's a non-standard approach that seems inefficient in terms of how long it takes, and will likely confuse newbies into making mistakes that could be detrimental to their education or even the quality of their work. They will all have to learn a "better" way at some point, so I'd recommend they watch some other videos that show more common working practices.
Everyone has their own approach, and I’m not saying mine is the best, but for me this is the approach that produces the most consistent results. After watching some other gain staging videos on RUclips, I personally think mine is the most simple and easiest to understand and duplicate. I’m not sure how this would confuse anyone. It’s literally just using clip gain and limiters as faders. Once people start developing their templates they will have to adjust accordingly, but it’s quite simple
Normalization will work too! Just structure your template around your tracks being at that -10~-12db level. If you are dealing with very dynamic tracks where one section is much louder than another section then I recommend splitting those sections and normalizing them separately, because normalization is going off of the loudest point on that track
I just want to make sure you're aware that simply using a limiter on a bus can add specific character to the audio tracks even if it's not actually doing any gain reduction. Not that the limiter is a bad idea on a bus per se, but just make sure you're aware of that. Also, you don't need to gain stage everything to the level that you did and then turn them back down with the ceiling on a limiter. You can just set your kick's gain to a good level with headroom then gain stage everything around the kick to make a quick pre-mix, then start fine tuning. (for this genre of music)
That limiter doesn’t add any color just by being on the bus, but I do understand what you’re saying. In my experience most limiters I have used don’t add any color unless you actually start limiting. The reason I don’t clip gain the kick to that level and then gain everything differently around it to get a good pre mix is because I know when I have everything clip gained to the 50/50 level I talk about in the video that it will always be hitting where I want it to or close to where I want it to based off how I have my template set up. Individually gaining each track to different levels every time would take more time, but also change how my plugins within my template are getting hit every time. I’m always open to learning better ways, but this way consistently works for me
Lol well I am turning down the gain on whole groups of elements using limiters as faders on busses. I know when clip gained to that 50/50 level I talk about in the video that my tracks will always be hitting where I want them to, or close to it. If an individual element is too quiet or too loud I will adjust the clip gain on that element, but if all the guitars (for example) are too quiet or too loud in relation to everything else, I’ll use my limiter as a fader and I will adjust the volume of all the guitars. That prevents me from having to use the actual fader, which I prefer to leave at unity. All of this allows me to get consistent and properly gain staged mixes every time
@AndrewAurora i would just put a vu meter and adjust the level and that's it,every limiter changes the sound of a instrument or a vocal so i use them only when i need them,i do the automation by hand where i need it...i don't say u r wrong but i don't know if it's necessary to put a limiter on all those channels...these days i don't even think about it,after all the processing,parallel compression,saturation and stuff i have enough clean and coloured signal,that never gets deep in the yellow zone and it's powerful more than enough...so i don't see the point in gain staging,to tell u the truth,i never gain stage,cause it makes the songs boring and frigid,i don't like a perfect mix,maybe it's just me
@@Mio-fu1sr The point of the limiter is just to be used as a fader on my busses. It’s my personal preference, but if someone wanted to use the faders they could. The limiters and the vast majority of plugins don’t add any color just by putting them on the track, they add color once you start hitting them, and the purpose of these limiters are not to limit. The awesome thing about music is there is usually multiple ways to achieve one result, and my way isn’t necessarily the right way or the best way, it’s just my way. If you have something the works well for you, then keep doing it. If gain staging isn’t something that’s important to you then that’s ultimately up to you, but gain staging won’t make the songs frigid or boring, it’s merely a way of insuring you have consistent results every time. Some people say the same thing about templates, but if you know you have something you like that your going to do every time, why not save it to a template and save time? At the end of the day, the guy who is doing this for a career mixing hundreds of songs and multiple different genres needs a duplicatable system that delivers him consistent results and does it quickly. Proper gain staging and templates will allow him to achieve that
Actually, my method is heavily influenced by one of the greatest country music mixers in Nashville, Billy Decker. I slightly altered his way and made it my own with the limiters. But if you have a better way please enlighten me and anyone else who is here to learn how to properly gain stage. I’m sure all of us would love to know a better way, and based off your comment i’m assuming you know of one. Perhaps you can make your own RUclips video since you are obviously an expert and share your knowledge with the world. Otherwise, if you aren’t prepared to be constructive, then I would suggest you spend your time honing your craft instead of being a keyboard warrior online and making the audio community look bad :)
NICE !! Dig in kid....anything you bring to, "THIS MIXING BOARD" is obviously going to teach anyone with less "REAL" knowledge, something they are looking to learn, and learn they will !! Your defense was impeccable, obviously you understand the word, "Humility" and how not much is displayed in this , "staggeringly professional pro audio expert" who has no intention of teaching anything to anyone.....has even failed at that for having, "ALL OF the knowledge that he accused you of having none of !" He has STAGGERINGLY FAILED at proving to you and I......TEACHING US as a matter of fact, that HUMILITY is no longer in the thought process of those who I call ASSHOLES !! ....and you obviously no nothing in the field of BEING An ASSHOLE.... because we know ECACTLY WHO Is THE PROFESSIONAL at that.....don't we ?? GREAT SHOW !! IM A FAN. LIKING and FOLLOWING !!
Wow 🏴☠️ CHEW on THIS...💩 ......oops, I meant the other brown thing ! 🤎 LUV ! WHAT ever happened to the society of musicians, music professionals and music fans ?? I remember feeling like we were unlike the rest of the world......better in fact ! After all weren't "WE" the only ones with the creativity and the understanding of what we are and we're responsible for being the only real imagination and that being shared by us and ONLY US made us say things only we knew what they meant.....we were the only ones to..... UNDERSTAND.... FEEL..... EXPERIENCE, LIKE THE LATE GREAT JIMMY SAID !?? What happened to us man ?? Cause we.... YOU AND I ARE NOT THE SAME MAN. Gp$3
This is just another video confusing gain staging with mix balancing. I really don't see why a quite complicated method involving clip gain and limiters would be more practical way to do mix balancing than just using the tool that is designed for this job: the track's mixer fader.
Real gain staging, on the other hand, is the process of adjusting the input signal level for every single plugin in a track's processing chain to make sure that plugins get fed with an optimal signal level to work with.
I understand what your saying. However, this video was meant for anyone from absolute beginner to pro, and a beginner may not know what their favorite plugins and routing are yet. They may not even have a template yet.
For those people, I didn’t want to take them through an intricate template with tons of plugins and routing, I wanted them to be able to create a very simple template with basic routing that they could build on over time.
Balancing is a core fundamental of mixing and plays a big part in gain staging, because if your balancing is out of whack your gain staging will be too. I believe I even said in the video that they were closely related
In the video, I explained why I chose to do it this way with the clip gain and limiters. The clip gain comes before everything else and determines the levels going into your template and plugins, so if it’s too low or too high you will be hitting your plugins wrong
Thats why I have a target level I aim for, and it’s simple because you can visually adjust the levels of your track which in turn is adjusting the level at which everything within your template is being hit
If you clip gain to that level every time and have your template set up in a way thats based around your tracks coming in at that level then you pretty much always guarantee that your plugins and signal chain will be getting hit at the same level, or nearly the same level, every time. It takes out the guess work
The limiters are a preference for me that I also explained in the video. It allows all my faders to stay at unity making automation much easier, and it also allows my session to look less messy, because I personally don’t like to have faders all over the place, but if you want to use faders you can.
Lastly, at the end of the video I show what it looks like when you do this exact same method using a template complete with plugins and complex routing, and show just by clip gaining at the level I said how I’m able to hit everything at the exact level I want, or close, and have the song sounding 80% mixed before I even start mixing
@@AndrewAurora The point is, by using the tern "Gain Staging" and don't explain the whole concept of it, you just confuse the beginners even more.
It is okay if your personal preference is to keep the mix faders at unity and use other ways to level your tracks, but again, recommending that to beginners would add even more confusion to them.
There is a big advantage of using the mixer faders for leveling, especially if you did proper gain staging so every track's signal is at roughly the same level before it hits the mixer fader: By just looking at the mixer, you instantly see which elements are loud and which ones are not. This is crucial information you take away from yourself when every single fader in the mixer sits at 0 dB.
Also keep in mind that limiters react to volume changes of a signal, while faders don't. So they are not interchangeable when it comes to adjusting the overall volume of a track.
I'm also not a fan of doing volume automation on the mixer faders, because it complicates mixing adjustments once automation is used. I'd rather use a gain plugin for volume automation instead.
@@markuskopter Thats where you and I approach it differently. You prefer to use a gain plugin for automation and I don’t prefer that, I prefer the fader.
I don’t think cubase has a gain plugin, but a gain plugin would work too to balance instead of a limiter. I know Pro tools has one called trim.
The difference between balancing and gain staging, which is what I covered in this video, is that to gain stage you need to have a defined volume goal and a defined volume starting point
Balancing alone is just balancing the volumes in relation to each other, regardless of the actual levels
Gain staging is actually having a target level and properly controlling your levels throughout your chain to achieve said level, which is much easier when you have a defined level starting point, and a defined level target.
However, balancing is a big part of that, because who cares if your goal is to hit -6 on the master and you achieve that, but your drums are 4 db too loud and your vocals are 3db too quiet and you can’t even hear the bass. See what I mean?
As for the limiters and mixers, the mixer levels change when you change the volume on the limiter, so you don’t lose any information, and for me personally I almost never use the mixer window in my workflow, so that wouldn’t effect how I mixed anyway.
The limiters don’t react to the volume changes at all unless they are limiting. But again, i’m not limiting with them unless I want to.
At the end of the day, you can use any plugin that you can control gain with to do this, I just use limiters because they are simple and designed like faders, don’t add color, and if I want to do any limiting to control the volumes, I can
The limiters seem to be the biggest point of contingency with people here. I suppose I should have been more clear about the fact that you don’t need to use limiters if you don’t want to. You can use anything you want to, I just like using limiters
Pretty cool Idea. It seems a few are worried about coloration from inserting a limiter on the buses. If anyone is really that concerned about coloration then just use a 'Gain' plugin rather than using a limiter for this purpose.
Exactly. I’m not sure if Cubase has a regular gain plugin. I know Pro tools does. The limiter i’m using in this video doesn’t add color just by being on the bus, certainly nothing that is audible if it does, so it doesn’t matter
I'm sure you mean well, but I don't think this simplifies things for beginners. It's a non-standard approach that seems inefficient in terms of how long it takes, and will likely confuse newbies into making mistakes that could be detrimental to their education or even the quality of their work. They will all have to learn a "better" way at some point, so I'd recommend they watch some other videos that show more common working practices.
Everyone has their own approach, and I’m not saying mine is the best, but for me this is the approach that produces the most consistent results. After watching some other gain staging videos on RUclips, I personally think mine is the most simple and easiest to understand and duplicate.
I’m not sure how this would confuse anyone. It’s literally just using clip gain and limiters as faders. Once people start developing their templates they will have to adjust accordingly, but it’s quite simple
3:51 Is clip gain a separate task from normalization? (I always normalize the peak of all tracks to -10~-12dB in logic Pro)
Normalization will work too! Just structure your template around your tracks being at that -10~-12db level.
If you are dealing with very dynamic tracks where one section is much louder than another section then I recommend splitting those sections and normalizing them separately, because normalization is going off of the loudest point on that track
I just want to make sure you're aware that simply using a limiter on a bus can add specific character to the audio tracks even if it's not actually doing any gain reduction. Not that the limiter is a bad idea on a bus per se, but just make sure you're aware of that. Also, you don't need to gain stage everything to the level that you did and then turn them back down with the ceiling on a limiter. You can just set your kick's gain to a good level with headroom then gain stage everything around the kick to make a quick pre-mix, then start fine tuning. (for this genre of music)
That limiter doesn’t add any color just by being on the bus, but I do understand what you’re saying. In my experience most limiters I have used don’t add any color unless you actually start limiting. The reason I don’t clip gain the kick to that level and then gain everything differently around it to get a good pre mix is because I know when I have everything clip gained to the 50/50 level I talk about in the video that it will always be hitting where I want it to or close to where I want it to based off how I have my template set up. Individually gaining each track to different levels every time would take more time, but also change how my plugins within my template are getting hit every time. I’m always open to learning better ways, but this way consistently works for me
You mean clipper not limiter
@@Positive_Tea No, I definitely mean limiter
confusion in the mix 😅
This is not a gain stage.
This is gain staging!
ruclips.net/video/Qe6o99g4Rr0/видео.html
To gain stage all u have to do is turn down the gain,wtf r u doing?
Lol well I am turning down the gain on whole groups of elements using limiters as faders on busses. I know when clip gained to that 50/50 level I talk about in the video that my tracks will always be hitting where I want them to, or close to it. If an individual element is too quiet or too loud I will adjust the clip gain on that element, but if all the guitars (for example) are too quiet or too loud in relation to everything else, I’ll use my limiter as a fader and I will adjust the volume of all the guitars. That prevents me from having to use the actual fader, which I prefer to leave at unity. All of this allows me to get consistent and properly gain staged mixes every time
@AndrewAurora i would just put a vu meter and adjust the level and that's it,every limiter changes the sound of a instrument or a vocal so i use them only when i need them,i do the automation by hand where i need it...i don't say u r wrong but i don't know if it's necessary to put a limiter on all those channels...these days i don't even think about it,after all the processing,parallel compression,saturation and stuff i have enough clean and coloured signal,that never gets deep in the yellow zone and it's powerful more than enough...so i don't see the point in gain staging,to tell u the truth,i never gain stage,cause it makes the songs boring and frigid,i don't like a perfect mix,maybe it's just me
@@Mio-fu1sr The point of the limiter is just to be used as a fader on my busses. It’s my personal preference, but if someone wanted to use the faders they could. The limiters and the vast majority of plugins don’t add any color just by putting them on the track, they add color once you start hitting them, and the purpose of these limiters are not to limit.
The awesome thing about music is there is usually multiple ways to achieve one result, and my way isn’t necessarily the right way or the best way, it’s just my way. If you have something the works well for you, then keep doing it.
If gain staging isn’t something that’s important to you then that’s ultimately up to you, but gain staging won’t make the songs frigid or boring, it’s merely a way of insuring you have consistent results every time. Some people say the same thing about templates, but if you know you have something you like that your going to do every time, why not save it to a template and save time?
At the end of the day, the guy who is doing this for a career mixing hundreds of songs and multiple different genres needs a duplicatable system that delivers him consistent results and does it quickly. Proper gain staging and templates will allow him to achieve that
You're trolling stop it
@@Positive_Tea Who’s trolling?
mid
🤣😂🤣😂 You have no clue what you are doing do you? No pro engineer gain stages this way they don’t the time to mess about.
Actually, my method is heavily influenced by one of the greatest country music mixers in Nashville, Billy Decker. I slightly altered his way and made it my own with the limiters. But if you have a better way please enlighten me and anyone else who is here to learn how to properly gain stage. I’m sure all of us would love to know a better way, and based off your comment i’m assuming you know of one. Perhaps you can make your own RUclips video since you are obviously an expert and share your knowledge with the world. Otherwise, if you aren’t prepared to be constructive, then I would suggest you spend your time honing your craft instead of being a keyboard warrior online and making the audio community look bad :)
NICE !!
Dig in kid....anything you bring to, "THIS MIXING BOARD" is obviously going to teach anyone with less "REAL" knowledge, something they are looking to learn, and learn they will !!
Your defense was impeccable, obviously you understand the word, "Humility" and how not much is displayed in this , "staggeringly professional pro audio expert" who has no intention of teaching anything to anyone.....has even failed at that for having, "ALL OF the knowledge that he accused you of having none of !" He has STAGGERINGLY FAILED at proving to you and I......TEACHING US as a matter of fact, that HUMILITY is no longer in the thought process of those who I call ASSHOLES !!
....and you obviously no nothing in the field of BEING An ASSHOLE....
because we know ECACTLY WHO Is THE PROFESSIONAL at that.....don't we ??
GREAT SHOW !!
IM A FAN.
LIKING and FOLLOWING !!
Wow 🏴☠️ CHEW on THIS...💩
......oops, I meant the other brown thing !
🤎 LUV !
WHAT ever happened to the society of musicians, music professionals and music fans ??
I remember feeling like we were unlike the rest of the world......better in fact ! After all weren't "WE" the only ones with the creativity and the understanding of what we are and we're responsible for being the only real imagination and that being shared by us and ONLY US made us say things only we knew what they meant.....we were the only ones to.....
UNDERSTAND....
FEEL.....
EXPERIENCE,
LIKE THE LATE GREAT JIMMY SAID !??
What happened to us man ??
Cause we....
YOU AND I ARE NOT THE SAME MAN.
Gp$3
@@AndrewAurora to you Andrew !!
So there is nolo misunderstanding of who Mr Asshole is !
Do You Bro !!
Gp$3
To Mr Asshole
Gain Staging Made with DYN and EYES! Great! Lol
Whats DYN mean?
Talking 'bout DYNamics@@AndrewAurora
@@francescol8836 Oh, duh. Lol