Gain Staging – The 3 Rules You Need To Know – In The Mix

Sorry about the bad audio, my microphone broke during this video.
I have sorted this out so it should not happen in future videos :)

Today we are talking about gain staging. This is a highly requested topic, with everyone seeming to be talking about it and chipping in their opinion! This is a good thing but it also leads to confusion.

I remember pouring through articles and videos trying to understand what was important and what was simply myth. It led me to become stressed and worried that I was doing something wrong.

After several months of reading and testing things out, I think these simple steps are all that you really need to worry about when it comes to MIXING.
We might make a follow up video about how to gain stage when RECORDING :)

The three guidelines are:

1:10 – Don’t clip the mix bus!

Find any loud sources and reduce them or simply lower all your faders slightly to avoid digital clipping on the master bus.

1:50 – Optimise Plugin Performance

Use a trim or gain plugin to make sure that your plugins are receiving the right level – which many quote as -18 dBfs RMS (roughly 0VU). This will reduce the chances of unwanted distortion and ensure that they are working in the sweet spot

3:12 – Optimise fader position for maximum precision.

Add a trim plugin at the end of your effects chain so that you can use it to add or remove gain. This will let you get your fader higher on the mixer and give you more resolution.

When your fader is higher up, you have a lot of control, large movements only change 0.5 – 2 dB.
When your fader is low down, the same movement can cause a 5-10 dB change.

check out this article about the noise floor of modern DAWs, ut’s a fantastic resource :
https://theproaudiofiles.com/video/whats-the-noise-floor-of-a-digital-audio-workstation/

The audio was a little bad in this video but hopefully it is not too distracting – I think we were getting interference from a local radio station!

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