A huge part of getting a song right is having all the sounds at a balanced volume. If you have something in your app that is so quite you can't even hear it then there's really no point in even having that taking up a track a processing power and being there at all.
SoundShock Gain-Staging Guidelines, The Gist of It
Basically, he gives max levels to have your different instruments at. Interestingly, he recommends having multiple tracks for each "instrument" with them individually peaking at the guideline amounts, having them bussed to their own "instrument sum track", and having a simple gain plugin set to a negative amount (so that the summed track ends up being the same volume as the individuals, just a blend of them. This seems like an obvious thing, but it's actually pretty brilliant and easy to forget- so don't forget it!
SoundShock Gain-Staging Video
For those in a rush, you can always skip to 6:00 for the cheatsheet:
Great tips overall, and I'll try to keep these in mind in all my future mixes. Thanks Daniel! :)
Btw check out more cool stuff from them at https://www.soundshockaudio.com/, on their youtube channel, and on their twitch channel.
Btw check out more cool stuff from them at https://www.soundshockaudio.com/, on their youtube channel, and on their twitch channel.
Similar Advice From Rob, The Musician on a Mission
Rob Hayes has similar advice in his video on gain-staging video, He too advocates the stock-logic "gain" plugin to even has the hilariously awesome term "low fader syndrome" to describe the pain of not using a negative gain and instead using the track volume fader. This makes it difficult to make fine changes because the fader is a logarithmic control... Anyway, enjoy the video!
Key Takeaways
- Use the guidelines and cheatsheet to have different instruments peaking at the levels that are appropriate for them (but feel free to deviate from these if it sounds good to you (but really don't go over -6db with anything because that will almost certainly fuck with the mastering process!).
- Use the "gain" logic plugin if you just need to remove some gain.
- Make sure your summed buss tracks are not going past the recommended cheat sheet volumes (this will often require adding a negative gain to the bus track).
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