tbProAudio (former ToneBoosters) has a meter that is smaller and has about the same information as this meter (and more) with large text, scalable GUI and all, called dpMeter 4. It's free too. It can also display LUFS and K-System as well.
Man, I'm really impressed by the work you do. You must have much more subs, I mean your content is so clear and tasty, perfectly edited, made with love. I find every video useful, and I wish you get much more subscribers! I'm sure you will inspire a lot of people, and they will grow along with you. Thank you for the amazing content you make!
1:00 Differences from the other tutorial about gain staging. This tutorial is more about applying the theory. 2:06 Levelling. The Gain and faders of each channel are set to 0. Before pressing Play, turn down the master fader. 3:00 Side benefit: You start getting too comfortable with the 'working mix' you played along to when recording, it gets rid of what you've done so far and makes you examine it anew. 4:22 Switch off FX plugins. 4:47 5:10 Comfort FX. Delete all the unneeded plugins. 6:13, 6:34 Insert FreeG into the master channel. FX > + 7:18, 8:05 For the instrument you're working on, look at the loudest part of it in the song. 8:40 Adjust gain knob to get RMS to about -18. 9:40 RMS -18, the sweet spot. Only applicable to vintage plugins? Still want to have the gain of the other channels at a similar level. He feels this improves his mixes. 11:53 Chorus vocals now. You can do it with all channels at once but Mike prefers looking at one channel at a time. 13:22 Chorus outro now. 14:04 14:48 Treats the drums differently, focuses more on the Peak level, aims for about -12. 15:28 Cajon and other percussion now 16:36 Now the busses 18:28 Managing gain happens throughout the whole process of recording and mixing. 19:38 Gain gets affected when we add in FX. Turning the FX back on. 21:08 Some plugins will make a big difference to the Gain. Adjusts it with the plugin's master volume. 22:43 He feels gain staging is necessary because his mixes benefit from it because he remains conscious of the Gain levels throughout the process and it sets a level playing field for when he starts his static mix. You don't have to do it though. Try it and see. 23:54 Outro
This series is really amazing! I recently bought a Puremix tutorials last couple of weeks and I can tell already that you explain a lot clearer and better than them haha. I'm really grateful that you shared this in the box mixing tutorials for free. Thank you so much!
Mike, you are an incredible hero for making the much needed sacrifice of soloing your vocals! I absolutely love your maticulous work!! Thank you so much!!!
This is such a great resource. I keep returning to the videos' with specific questions. Thanks so much for doing this. Also, what a great song. It was easy to listen to it over and over. Really. It has stayed with me.
That really made sense Mike. I'm going to go back through some of my prior mixes and redo the gains using this method. I had watched the other Gain Staging vlog, but somehow after seeing this one today, it makes even more sense. I guess it's true that hearing something multiple times helps the learning process. Thanks again.
Another good session. Thanks Mike. Starting with everything at the same level seems to reduce the time spent mixing going back pulling a heap of tracks down to avoid having one track too hot. Thanks again. Tony
Yes Tony - its one big win I think we get from the process. More that that, I think it just keeps us mindful of healthy levels. Great to see you here again friend!
Another way to check the gains, is in Console View, change the Playback and Bus Meter options to PreFader. Then the meters show you the gain before it hits effects and prochannel. You can see how that works by viewing the Signal Flow Diagram in the Reference Manual. I recently figured this out and discovered I had 60 instrumental backing track songs that needed gain adjustments and subsequent remixing - it took a while.
Great tip thank you! Yes - its a pain to realise afterwards, I've been there! Happily we can learn from our mistakes, and monitoring gain can be something we do throughout the process :)
Really appreciate the methodical way you are working through this. Reassuring to find that I already take the same approach to some things but surprised by how much I've learned. Lots of helpful tips for when I get to the tracking & mixing of my next EP.
Another great video Mike. Along with the previous one I now know far more about something I had never heard of before. As a friend once said 'A day without learning is a day wasted' Looking forward to the mixing stage! Hope the forum rejig is going well by the way :-)
Yay let’s stage those gains. I actually jumped into Auria Pro in my iPad Pro, made a back up of one of my album tracks and set everything up to zero following this guide. Sounds nice so far. Let’s see how we go going forward. Another great video.
I think the way to think of gain staging is "making sure that your levels are healthy throughout the signal chain". In which case, I have to say yes. However, don't think of it as a task which should be done at a specific time, so much as a thing you'd minitor all the time.
Hi Mike! Hope everything is going stupendously on your end. | Your other video goes with this one so well. It explains it coherently, and this one really helps to drive home a lot of that information. I absolutely agree that it can help. I think back to my very amateur recordings with karaoke tracks, using Cool Edit Pro (before it was bought by Adobe and renamed), and how they could have been so much better had I known any of this stuff. Even stuff I did in the last few years, especially where I was starting to record horrible guitar parts (because I sucked a lot more than I thought I did back then). I did a version of David Bowie's Wild is the Wind, and also Mull of Kintyre by Paul McCartney--both for my husband, because he loves my voice. I was using Audacity, and knew nothing. I'm not even sure you can do any of this in that program. I could barely use it. Thanks once again for a great video. You've taught me so much.
Hey Rain - thanks again for joining in. A bit of trivia - the first song I learned on the guitar was Mull of Kintyre :) I was around 10 at the time - it had just been in the charts!
@@CreativeSauce That's quite the coincidence. I honestly never heard the song before I recorded it, so I had to listen to it a few times to get the rhythms down. The strumming pattern threw me at the time, because it had these odd upstrokes without downstrokes in part of the measure. Later I learned about keeping the arm moving during strumming, so that would probably account for it. :D Geoff's nana had loved the song, so he insisted it be played for her funeral (many years ago) and the song has a lot of sentimental value for him. [Took me a while to respond, as I get locked into thought processes while I write--only 8K over my intended word count and still have two or three chapters to write...I do go on a bit--thankfully I try to edit severely. I have no editor-mode for comment sections, sadly. Sorry for being so long-winded.]
been really looking for gain-staging at the RECORD step. :(( A) Recording gain-staging for Virtual Instruments; B) Recording gain-staging for mic'd instruments..
I have found that I like to do my gain staging just before the final (you called it "static") mix. I tend to be very conscious of my levels while I add plugins and adjust EQ. Just before I start mixing and sending to sub mix busses I will do my gain staging. It puts everything on a level playing field before the final mix.
Yes its true Jimmy. Actually I often present it as something that 'happens' at this stage, whereas I should more correctly say its something I 'check' at this stage. Gain staging really starts in the tracking phase, but as you point out, its a crucial part of the phase of adding processing plugins.
I did see the Gain-staging video before, but I think I probably will review it coz I judge that exactly this part is extremely important in order not to clip in any part of the song.
Hi, Mike! Thanks for the clear explanation. FreeG has two versions - stereo and mono, which one is more correct to use during the gain staging process or it doesn't really matter? Excuse me, if it's too meticulous)))
So the basic principle is that adjust the gain to the raw audio without any effects from -18 to -10 dB and do the same with the effects but this time a gain plugin above the effects chain. Is that correct? Nice and cool videos anyway! Watched the whole series. Now I started to record my forst song of my first LP. Exciting!
Love the videos! I'm a recent Pro Tools refugee, and your content has proven to be an invaluable resource. I've installed the Free G fader plugin, and it's working fine except nothing shows up in the PEAK or RMS readouts. Any ideas?
You make it sound so easy, thanks! How come you don’t do gain staging as you go along, just after each track is recorded? And presumably any volume automation should be done after gain staging?
I adapted this technique of gain staging and did indeed get better results than not to do so. One point I'm wondering is your Pro-Channel EQ settings. I see them all flat/unused. Am I paranoid when I do put a low cut/high pass at 50Hz on everything?
Hello Mike, I have a question about gain stagin. When I have all my individual tracks at the sweet spot, minus 18Dbfs and the peak around minus 12, the master is still a little bit loud, at minus 4 Dbfs. Everyone told me not to touch the masterfader. Please let me know how to deal with this, and what is the right level for the masterfader. Thanks, keep up the good work and I really learned a lot from you. Greetings from the The Netherlands
Hi Willem, thanks so much for watching. What a great question, which I should have addressed. Actually -4dB is fine. Normally I would aim between -6 and -3, this just gives a little room for mastering. If it goes above that then I would adjust either the gain or the master fader before exporting for mastering (more on that in later episodes). Seems like you are doing just fine!
I always run into issues where the peak is maybe -12 but the rms is -36. Kind of hard to bring the rms up to roughly -18 and keep the peak around -10/ -12. Even if you got the peak to -6 your rms is still going to be -30!
Creative Sauce okay perfect. im learning so much from this series and your videos in general. about to sit tight to watch your detail mixing video. thank you so much!!
Hi Mike! New subscriber speaking, I wanted to thank you for all the amazing videos you give us, the cakewalk users! (IMO the best so far...) Anyway, leaving the complimments aside, as soon as I watched this video I ran to download FreeG and couldnt make it work on CW. Anyone who can help???
This is a little off topic but, at around the 2:00 mark, Mike says he is going to put a link to a video up above his head somewhere. I have seen many youtubers say similar things in other videos, but I have never actually seen any link show up in that area, including in this video. I assume this is because I have some setting improperly set, but I can't figure out what it is. Can someone tell me what is going on?
To clarify, you often have to hover your mouse over the video screen, but sometimes it doesn't work. In full screen mode it seems to for me. (It may depend which browser you're using, as mine is a secure browser that isn't really common.) It's not next to the settings, which is in the bottom right corner, but rather beside the share link in the top right corner. It's barely noticeable, but if you look for a little white circle with an exclamation mark it will bring up a choice if he's recommended more than one. You have to X out of it if you want video controls back, if you don't want to select a link within those suggestions.
Hi Michael - in this occasion it was my fault - I forgot to add it there! However, its there now if you want to test, but just in case :th-cam.com/video/_0xw1QplA1o/w-d-xo.html . Thank you for pointing it out!
tbProAudio (former ToneBoosters) has a meter that is smaller and has about the same information as this meter (and more) with large text, scalable GUI and all, called dpMeter 4. It's free too. It can also display LUFS and K-System as well.
That's a great tip thank you! I must try that out. You are right it has some great looking options!
Man, I'm really impressed by the work you do. You must have much more subs, I mean your content is so clear and tasty, perfectly edited, made with love. I find every video useful, and I wish you get much more subscribers! I'm sure you will inspire a lot of people, and they will grow along with you. Thank you for the amazing content you make!
Thank you so much my friend. Honestly, I have the very best viewers and subscribers - its fantastic to see people embracing the learning process!
1:00 Differences from the other tutorial about gain staging. This tutorial is more about applying the theory.
2:06 Levelling. The Gain and faders of each channel are set to 0. Before pressing Play, turn down the master fader.
3:00 Side benefit: You start getting too comfortable with the 'working mix' you played along to when recording, it gets rid of what you've done so far and makes you examine it anew.
4:22 Switch off FX plugins.
4:47
5:10 Comfort FX. Delete all the unneeded plugins.
6:13, 6:34 Insert FreeG into the master channel. FX > +
7:18, 8:05 For the instrument you're working on, look at the loudest part of it in the song.
8:40 Adjust gain knob to get RMS to about -18.
9:40 RMS -18, the sweet spot. Only applicable to vintage plugins? Still want to have the gain of the other channels at a similar level. He feels this improves his mixes.
11:53 Chorus vocals now. You can do it with all channels at once but Mike prefers looking at one channel at a time.
13:22 Chorus outro now.
14:04
14:48 Treats the drums differently, focuses more on the Peak level, aims for about -12.
15:28 Cajon and other percussion now
16:36 Now the busses
18:28 Managing gain happens throughout the whole process of recording and mixing.
19:38 Gain gets affected when we add in FX. Turning the FX back on.
21:08 Some plugins will make a big difference to the Gain. Adjusts it with the plugin's master volume.
22:43 He feels gain staging is necessary because his mixes benefit from it because he remains conscious of the Gain levels throughout the process and it sets a level playing field for when he starts his static mix. You don't have to do it though. Try it and see.
23:54 Outro
fnally! I've been preaching this for 10 years,,,, all I got was deer in headlights look!..good show!!
Hey thanks for watching! Yes, it makes a real difference, and is easy to do - double wammy! Lets keep spreading the word :)
This series is really amazing! I recently bought a Puremix tutorials last couple of weeks and I can tell already that you explain a lot clearer and better than them haha. I'm really grateful that you shared this in the box mixing tutorials for free. Thank you so much!
So happy that its clear for you - its my pleasure to share my friend :)
Mike, you are an incredible hero for making the much needed sacrifice of soloing your vocals! I absolutely love your maticulous work!! Thank you so much!!!
This is such a great resource. I keep returning to the videos' with specific questions. Thanks so much for doing this. Also, what a great song. It was easy to listen to it over and over. Really. It has stayed with me.
That really made sense Mike. I'm going to go back through some of my prior mixes and redo the gains using this method. I had watched the other Gain Staging vlog, but somehow after seeing this one today, it makes even more sense. I guess it's true that hearing something multiple times helps the learning process. Thanks again.
Haha! Yes the brainwashing works :p
Another good session. Thanks Mike. Starting with everything at the same level seems to reduce the time spent mixing going back pulling a heap of tracks down to avoid having one track too hot. Thanks again. Tony
Yes Tony - its one big win I think we get from the process. More that that, I think it just keeps us mindful of healthy levels. Great to see you here again friend!
Another way to check the gains, is in Console View, change the Playback and Bus Meter options to PreFader. Then the meters show you the gain before it hits effects and prochannel. You can see how that works by viewing the Signal Flow Diagram in the Reference Manual. I recently figured this out and discovered I had 60 instrumental backing track songs that needed gain adjustments and subsequent remixing - it took a while.
Great tip thank you! Yes - its a pain to realise afterwards, I've been there! Happily we can learn from our mistakes, and monitoring gain can be something we do throughout the process :)
Really appreciate the methodical way you are working through this. Reassuring to find that I already take the same approach to some things but surprised by how much I've learned. Lots of helpful tips for when I get to the tracking & mixing of my next EP.
Awesome work Mike!
Great vid. Thanks, Mike.
I learn so much from your videos! They are so well made and you are so easy to follow! Thank you!!
Another great video Mike. Along with the previous one I now know far more about something I had never heard of before. As a friend once said 'A day without learning is a day wasted' Looking forward to the mixing stage! Hope the forum rejig is going well by the way :-)
Its so true Joe. Often people miss - its not getting there that counts, so much as the journey of expanding endlessly!
Yay let’s stage those gains. I actually jumped into Auria Pro in my iPad Pro, made a back up of one of my album tracks and set everything up to zero following this guide. Sounds nice so far. Let’s see how we go going forward. Another great video.
See - I keep you busy!
Pleasant time of the day. Should gain staging be done for every vocal track throughout a recording session ?
I think the way to think of gain staging is "making sure that your levels are healthy throughout the signal chain". In which case, I have to say yes. However, don't think of it as a task which should be done at a specific time, so much as a thing you'd minitor all the time.
Thanks! 👍
Another well presented and well explained video. 👍👍👍👍👍
Hi Mike! Hope everything is going stupendously on your end. | Your other video goes with this one so well. It explains it coherently, and this one really helps to drive home a lot of that information. I absolutely agree that it can help. I think back to my very amateur recordings with karaoke tracks, using Cool Edit Pro (before it was bought by Adobe and renamed), and how they could have been so much better had I known any of this stuff. Even stuff I did in the last few years, especially where I was starting to record horrible guitar parts (because I sucked a lot more than I thought I did back then). I did a version of David Bowie's Wild is the Wind, and also Mull of Kintyre by Paul McCartney--both for my husband, because he loves my voice. I was using Audacity, and knew nothing. I'm not even sure you can do any of this in that program. I could barely use it. Thanks once again for a great video. You've taught me so much.
Hey Rain - thanks again for joining in. A bit of trivia - the first song I learned on the guitar was Mull of Kintyre :) I was around 10 at the time - it had just been in the charts!
@@CreativeSauce That's quite the coincidence. I honestly never heard the song before I recorded it, so I had to listen to it a few times to get the rhythms down. The strumming pattern threw me at the time, because it had these odd upstrokes without downstrokes in part of the measure. Later I learned about keeping the arm moving during strumming, so that would probably account for it. :D Geoff's nana had loved the song, so he insisted it be played for her funeral (many years ago) and the song has a lot of sentimental value for him.
[Took me a while to respond, as I get locked into thought processes while I write--only 8K over my intended word count and still have two or three chapters to write...I do go on a bit--thankfully I try to edit severely. I have no editor-mode for comment sections, sadly. Sorry for being so long-winded.]
@@RainStickland It feels so good to sing Mull Of Kintyre, every now and then I will sing it lol
been really looking for gain-staging at the RECORD step. :(( A) Recording gain-staging for Virtual Instruments; B) Recording gain-staging for mic'd instruments..
I have found that I like to do my gain staging just before the final (you called it "static") mix. I tend to be very conscious of my levels while I add plugins and adjust EQ. Just before I start mixing and sending to sub mix busses I will do my gain staging. It puts everything on a level playing field before the final mix.
Yes its true Jimmy. Actually I often present it as something that 'happens' at this stage, whereas I should more correctly say its something I 'check' at this stage. Gain staging really starts in the tracking phase, but as you point out, its a crucial part of the phase of adding processing plugins.
thanks an easy to follow tutorial
Thank you so much for your help
My pleasure - thanks for watching :)
Great video!!!
Really informative series.
Great to hear you are enjoying it - thank you!
I did see the Gain-staging video before, but I think I probably will review it coz I judge that exactly this part is extremely important in order not to clip in any part of the song.
No manejo muy bien el inglés pero igual se entienden muy bien tus tutoriales. Great content!.
Gracias my friend!
Hi, Mike! Thanks for the clear explanation. FreeG has two versions - stereo and mono, which one is more correct to use during the gain staging process or it doesn't really matter? Excuse me, if it's too meticulous)))
As Elton John says no sacrifice at all! Great sound.
So the basic principle is that adjust the gain to the raw audio without any effects from -18 to -10 dB and do the same with the effects but this time a gain plugin above the effects chain. Is that correct? Nice and cool videos anyway! Watched the whole series. Now I started to record my forst song of my first LP. Exciting!
Love the videos! I'm a recent Pro Tools refugee, and your content has proven to be an invaluable resource. I've installed the Free G fader plugin, and it's working fine except nothing shows up in the PEAK or RMS readouts. Any ideas?
Fab Tutorial!
Thanks for watching, much appreciated!
You make it sound so easy, thanks! How come you don’t do gain staging as you go along, just after each track is recorded? And presumably any volume automation should be done after gain staging?
I adapted this technique of gain staging and did indeed get better results than not to do so. One point I'm wondering is your Pro-Channel EQ settings. I see them all flat/unused. Am I paranoid when I do put a low cut/high pass at 50Hz on everything?
Hello Mike, I have a question about gain stagin. When I have all my individual tracks at the sweet spot, minus 18Dbfs and the peak around minus 12, the master is still a little bit loud, at minus 4 Dbfs. Everyone told me not to touch the masterfader. Please let me know how to deal with this, and what is the right level for the masterfader. Thanks, keep up the good work and I really learned a lot from you. Greetings from the The Netherlands
Hi Willem, thanks so much for watching. What a great question, which I should have addressed. Actually -4dB is fine. Normally I would aim between -6 and -3, this just gives a little room for mastering. If it goes above that then I would adjust either the gain or the master fader before exporting for mastering (more on that in later episodes). Seems like you are doing just fine!
I always run into issues where the peak is maybe -12 but the rms is -36. Kind of hard to bring the rms up to roughly -18 and keep the peak around -10/ -12. Even if you got the peak to -6 your rms is still going to be -30!
what's the plugin for the vocals you are using?
What instrument(s) do you use for your individual drums?
BTW the free g plug in is stereo now. Even better and still free!
what would you set the peak to if you had virtual percussion instead of a mic on it?
Hi, same for virtual instruments. For percussion around -12dB
Creative Sauce okay perfect. im learning so much from this series and your videos in general. about to sit tight to watch your detail mixing video. thank you so much!!
Hi Mike! New subscriber speaking, I wanted to thank you for all the amazing videos you give us, the cakewalk users! (IMO the best so far...) Anyway, leaving the complimments aside, as soon as I watched this video I ran to download FreeG and couldnt make it work on CW. Anyone who can help???
I downloaded 3g and can't see it in my FX plugins. Do u have any advice? Sorry for all the questions I'm a complete beginner to DAW's
This is a little off topic but, at around the 2:00 mark, Mike says he is going to put a link to a video up above his head somewhere. I have seen many youtubers say similar things in other videos, but I have never actually seen any link show up in that area, including in this video. I assume this is because I have some setting improperly set, but I can't figure out what it is. Can someone tell me what is going on?
Go tap/click that exclamation point (!) on the top of his head. It's beside the settings where you can change the Resolution.
To clarify, you often have to hover your mouse over the video screen, but sometimes it doesn't work. In full screen mode it seems to for me. (It may depend which browser you're using, as mine is a secure browser that isn't really common.) It's not next to the settings, which is in the bottom right corner, but rather beside the share link in the top right corner. It's barely noticeable, but if you look for a little white circle with an exclamation mark it will bring up a choice if he's recommended more than one. You have to X out of it if you want video controls back, if you don't want to select a link within those suggestions.
Hi Michael - in this occasion it was my fault - I forgot to add it there! However, its there now if you want to test, but just in case :th-cam.com/video/_0xw1QplA1o/w-d-xo.html .
Thank you for pointing it out!