Well maybe there are plugins that are not linear in response for example maxing out the output adds distortion (clipping+harmonic overtones), but for the most part gain staging is bollocks. Similar kind of non-sense to directional speaker cables.
Stacking compression really sound better to me than only using one working real hard like you said. A bit like how I get great distorted rock/metal guitars tone stacking gain stages. Nowadays, for mixing low end sources especially and vocals, I try to start with a LP an HP into a "transparent" compressor (4-6db) into a limiter (2-4db). Sculp with an EQ, then send into a more colorfull comp to give some caracter, an other EQ stage then finally a limiter. (2-3db) I got that tip from Warren Huart it it really improve my mixes. I will also apply this concept to my mastering learning endeavor.
Another helpful video, but I've come to expect that from you. A few years back, say 20 none of this information was attainable without spending mad money and getting very little in return other than a degree that no studio would even look at so thanks again Streaky, all your help is greatly appreciated by me and many others I'm sure. If you ever retire from mastering (unlikely) you should consider teaching, you are very good at explaining things in a clear and understandable way. I could see you producing a whole generation of good mastering engineers.
One of the best UA-cam channels seriously. Thanks man. Learned a lot this past year from you! I mostly work with classical music. I remember you saying it was the most challenging for you because of "harmonics". I just don't quite get how is the harmonic content more complex than any other genre? Is it about preserving instrumental timbre? If you elaborated on that I'd appreciate! Cheers bud
I've been dj'ing for a long time and have to mix all kinds of music. A lot of music that is salsa, merengue and bachata, which are live genres. Now compared to edm, the difference between live sounding and electronic sounding music is VERY apparent. So yeah, dealing with electronic music is easier because you're not dealing with humans and that "live" sound. With classical music, there's the need to preserve the natural sound of every instrument, while making it sound louder / better. With electronic music, you can fiddle around with the settings to make it sound whatever way you want
I’d love a video on plug-in auto-gain, more specifically what you do when it’s not there! I tried using my ears, but I’m new enough to this to get fooled by liking whatever’s louder. Measuring LUFS before a plugin and following it with a gain one to match LUFS after works so-so, but it’s tedious enough to discourage quickly poking at everything and slows down learning. I’m tempted to go buy replacement plugins with auto-gain, but I’m sure there’s a better way...
Hi Streaky. thanks for sharing, really enjoy the no nonsense approach to sharing this information ! Something I’ve always struggled with - in a hybrid set up - is moving in and out the box into analog gear properly. Is there another video you’ve done or could do, to show a hybrid fx chain (comp / eq etc) which includes analogue and digital gear, and what level your working at please at each stage to prevent clipping the analogue gear ? Using digital signals always seem very loud going into analogue gear, and when you come out seems quiet. Do you need to use gain plugins at every in/out to keep everything in check - do you use vu meters as opposed to the daw DBFS scale, to keep signals at the analogue domain throughout the process ? hope this makes sense ! Thanks again :)
Thanks Streaky great Vid! As Always. I am learning loads last few years and mixes and tests getting better and better. When you Master any track can you make it sound great in Mono? So it sounds acceptable on small and mono devices? Even if the mix is not nice in Mono? What is your Approach to that if you do that. EQ’ing? Fixing phase issue’s? Work with Stereo image plugins to narrow the image? I cant get my mixes sounds good in Mono yet as still learning (gain issue’s and just sounding weird). Cheers Streaky!
sometimes in gain staging it can be necessary to actually turn the volume down, gotta make your plugins/hardware happy. i personally like to keep everything at the same perceived loudness, NOT adding perceived loudness (levelmatch by ear) so i can bypass stuff and actually know for sure, if i am making things better or just louder. while doing that, i try to get better peak-to-loudness-ratio (watching meters) AND make things sound better by using saturation, compression, limiting and clipping. a clipped track for example can have the same perceived loudness but be quieter on the output than in the input. that's a win then. but there's also tricks like boosting eq into a limiter etc. where level matching the eq afterwards wouldn't make that much sense, cause it changes how the limiter reacts, and you equed with the limiter in mind. there's millions of approaches in gain staging, i would say make your plugins happy, and what happy means, is determined by your ears and the user manual.
To another video you say that you start only push with a limiter. An if its sounds OK then " gone" finished. Here you say that you start taking gain from a few plug-ins... I am confused 😕
...mmm. It would be great if you talk about gainstaging and the difference between setting normalization based on peaks or lufs for the tracks within a song.
i thought it was about keeping in control the gain of each sound (input volume ) ? i'm so confuse. if all your sounds are at zero let's say and they sound good you just have to level-match the plugins you put or put soft clipper at the end ?
some plug ins clip internally, so you "shouldn't" clip them/go over 0dBFS, unless you like how they clip, which is a thing i like to do in Waves Api2500 or Sausage Fattener for example. in general, a lot of plugins are able to operate in 32 bit these days, which means, it doesn't matter what you send into them, they'll be fine, you would have to test all this out though or read all your manuals =D so you can't take that for granted, and if you use analog emulation plugins, their sweet spot is often calibrated to around -18dbFS, so be aware of that. but yeah, if (in mastering) you're always around zero, and IF your plugins actually sound good, it's theoretically no problem. but better be safe than sorry.
Again good advice. I recently compared my home made master to landr and guess what? mine sounded better thanks to all your tips!
Well maybe there are plugins that are not linear in response for example maxing out the output adds distortion (clipping+harmonic overtones), but for the most part gain staging is bollocks. Similar kind of non-sense to directional speaker cables.
Stacking compression really sound better to me than only using one working real hard like you said. A bit like how I get great distorted rock/metal guitars tone stacking gain stages. Nowadays, for mixing low end sources especially and vocals, I try to start with a LP an HP into a "transparent" compressor (4-6db) into a limiter (2-4db). Sculp with an EQ, then send into a more colorfull comp to give some caracter, an other EQ stage then finally a limiter. (2-3db) I got that tip from Warren Huart it it really improve my mixes. I will also apply this concept to my mastering learning endeavor.
Another helpful video, but I've come to expect that from you. A few years back, say 20 none of this information was attainable without spending mad money and getting very little in return other than a degree that no studio would even look at so thanks again Streaky, all your help is greatly appreciated by me and many others I'm sure. If you ever retire from mastering (unlikely) you should consider teaching, you are very good at explaining things in a clear and understandable way. I could see you producing a whole generation of good mastering engineers.
Nice one! :) This is great advice for mixing too. Thanks, Streaky!
One of the best UA-cam channels seriously. Thanks man. Learned a lot this past year from you! I mostly work with classical music. I remember you saying it was the most challenging for you because of "harmonics". I just don't quite get how is the harmonic content more complex than any other genre? Is it about preserving instrumental timbre? If you elaborated on that I'd appreciate!
Cheers bud
I've been dj'ing for a long time and have to mix all kinds of music. A lot of music that is salsa, merengue and bachata, which are live genres. Now compared to edm, the difference between live sounding and electronic sounding music is VERY apparent.
So yeah, dealing with electronic music is easier because you're not dealing with humans and that "live" sound. With classical music, there's the need to preserve the natural sound of every instrument, while making it sound louder / better. With electronic music, you can fiddle around with the settings to make it sound whatever way you want
id be interested in seeing a video about your room..
Very helpful explanation
`Great! Cheers Streaky.
I’d love a video on plug-in auto-gain, more specifically what you do when it’s not there!
I tried using my ears, but I’m new enough to this to get fooled by liking whatever’s louder. Measuring LUFS before a plugin and following it with a gain one to match LUFS after works so-so, but it’s tedious enough to discourage quickly poking at everything and slows down learning.
I’m tempted to go buy replacement plugins with auto-gain, but I’m sure there’s a better way...
Hi Streaky. thanks for sharing, really enjoy the no nonsense approach to sharing this information !
Something I’ve always struggled with - in a hybrid set up - is moving in and out the box into analog gear properly. Is there another video you’ve done or could do, to show a hybrid fx chain (comp / eq etc) which includes analogue and digital gear, and what level your working at please at each stage to prevent clipping the analogue gear ? Using digital signals always seem very loud going into analogue gear, and when you come out seems quiet. Do you need to use gain plugins at every in/out to keep everything in check - do you use vu meters as opposed to the daw DBFS scale, to keep signals at the analogue domain throughout the process ? hope this makes sense ! Thanks again :)
Thanks Streaky great Vid! As Always. I am learning loads last few years and mixes and tests getting better and better. When you Master any track can you make it sound great in Mono? So it sounds acceptable on small and mono devices? Even if the mix is not nice in Mono? What is your Approach to that if you do that. EQ’ing? Fixing phase issue’s? Work with Stereo image plugins to narrow the image? I cant get my mixes sounds good in Mono yet as still learning (gain issue’s and just sounding weird). Cheers Streaky!
sometimes in gain staging it can be necessary to actually turn the volume down, gotta make your plugins/hardware happy. i personally like to keep everything at the same perceived loudness, NOT adding perceived loudness (levelmatch by ear) so i can bypass stuff and actually know for sure, if i am making things better or just louder. while doing that, i try to get better peak-to-loudness-ratio (watching meters) AND make things sound better by using saturation, compression, limiting and clipping. a clipped track for example can have the same perceived loudness but be quieter on the output than in the input. that's a win then. but there's also tricks like boosting eq into a limiter etc. where level matching the eq afterwards wouldn't make that much sense, cause it changes how the limiter reacts, and you equed with the limiter in mind. there's millions of approaches in gain staging, i would say make your plugins happy, and what happy means, is determined by your ears and the user manual.
To another video you say that you start only push with a limiter. An if its sounds OK then " gone" finished.
Here you say that you start taking gain from a few plug-ins... I am confused 😕
Great stuff and thanks for dropping Your video inro!
That busted a few myths for me...i knew adding EQ was affecting my overall volume!!! lol!
...mmm. It would be great if you talk about gainstaging and the difference between setting normalization based on peaks or lufs for the tracks within a song.
Can you do gain staging through Normalize option in pro tools?
Awesome tips
Gain staging is also about finding a sweet spot for your gear.
i thought it was about keeping in control the gain of each sound (input volume ) ? i'm so confuse. if all your sounds are at zero let's say and they sound good you just have to level-match the plugins you put or put soft clipper at the end ?
some plug ins clip internally, so you "shouldn't" clip them/go over 0dBFS, unless you like how they clip, which is a thing i like to do in Waves Api2500 or Sausage Fattener for example. in general, a lot of plugins are able to operate in 32 bit these days, which means, it doesn't matter what you send into them, they'll be fine, you would have to test all this out though or read all your manuals =D so you can't take that for granted, and if you use analog emulation plugins, their sweet spot is often calibrated to around -18dbFS, so be aware of that. but yeah, if (in mastering) you're always around zero, and IF your plugins actually sound good, it's theoretically no problem. but better be safe than sorry.
BIG SOUND. LOUD.. DELICIOUS.
The level you talked about is it in rms or peak?
Peak i guess
With all due respect man, I think you should care whether or not folks use cracked plugins. It's bad for the industry as a whole.
Watch my video on cracked plugins and you’ll see my point of view
@@Streaky_com I have, which is why I was kinda surprised to hear what you said in this one.
Don’t really care about loudness. Spent enough time mixing to have all that work go to waste by getting smashed to bits
Gave you a like, the whole advice about gain staging was on point but crack plug ins come on man that’s not right “ELEVATE” our community . ✌🏽