Wow, you are extremely passionate about this. I am currently looking into gain structure for a church setting, because I had to put a praise and worship mp3 from my assembly in my Digital Audio Workstation and the audio file was extremely distorted (clipping). I know how to do gain structure within Fl Studio for Hip Hop instruments, but never performed gain structure in a live setting, so I’m learning as much I can until I go to church and ask to be in the sound room and show them what I’ve found.
Mixing on a QU-16 when setting the Gain based on the fader at 0 dB I am only left with 10dB of headroom. When things get quiet and I need to pull something up I don't have enough headroom to bring it up. I found that setting the fader at -10 dB works a lot better for me as it gives me 20 dB of headroom. Any time we adjust the gain it affects all of the in-ear monitors and stage wedges it is a nightmare for everyone so I try to get that done right upfront.
Hello, Nice video.... well put together. I completely agree that there are many ways to achieve good gain structure. I am hearing a lot these days of working it from "the bottom up" (if you will ). I was just wondering if they are teaching this in class now? It seems many young engineers are using this method. I am an old school engineer, 46 years old and 27 behind the console. I went to college for recording but have always mixed live. We were strictly taught to work from instrument to head amp then so on down the chain. Reason being, the signal you are about to work with and process should always start at around unity...anything above or below is unhealthy signal to noise ratio. By default, if your system is properly tuned, the channel fader and master faders will also be around unity. This is crucial when working with highend pre's like midas and others. To get the nice natural sound they can achieve, you really need to get a solid db level pumping through them. In some ways we are really saying the same thing.. I get that. I think however that it should be noted the importance of how to work the head amp and the need for a great "workable" signal, not just a good exit level signal. Keep up the great videos and I think its awesome that you are sharing your knowledge! Cheers Brother!
Hello - Why do you prioritize being able to ride the faders during the set as opposed to getting a healthy signal first and then setting a healthy dynamic range through the compressors? During the set, I prefer to try to let the compression settings that i dial in do as much of that work for me as possible. That way during the set I may only be riding a vocal or instrument part every once in a while. You do say to set gain at 0db, but i see people being tempted to set gain too low because they push the fader all the way up to 0 and then start pushing up the gain until they can hear it well enough. This can end up alot of times with peoples input gains peaking around -15 or lower. Have you seen this happen with people at all? what are your thoughts?
Wow, you are extremely passionate about this. I am currently looking into gain structure for a church setting, because I had to put a praise and worship mp3 from my assembly in my Digital Audio Workstation and the audio file was extremely distorted (clipping).
I know how to do gain structure within Fl Studio for Hip Hop instruments, but never performed gain structure in a live setting, so I’m learning as much I can until I go to church and ask to be in the sound room and show them what I’ve found.
Mixing on a QU-16 when setting the Gain based on the fader at 0 dB I am only left with 10dB of headroom. When things get quiet and I need to pull something up I don't have enough headroom to bring it up. I found that setting the fader at -10 dB works a lot better for me as it gives me 20 dB of headroom. Any time we adjust the gain it affects all of the in-ear monitors and stage wedges it is a nightmare for everyone so I try to get that done right upfront.
Fantastic videos. Appreciate the insight.
I've been watching your videos, and I think they're great. Keep up the great work!
Hey thanks! Anything you would like to see us talk about?
It would be great if you talked about ceiling PAs. (Positioning, coverage, directivity, pros/cons, etc...)
What about gain structure on a floor monitor?
Hello, Nice video.... well put together. I completely agree that there are many ways to achieve good gain structure. I am hearing a lot these days of working it from "the bottom up" (if you will ). I was just wondering if they are teaching this in class now? It seems many young engineers are using this method. I am an old school engineer, 46 years old and 27 behind the console. I went to college for recording but have always mixed live. We were strictly taught to work from instrument to head amp then so on down the chain. Reason being, the signal you are about to work with and process should always start at around unity...anything above or below is unhealthy signal to noise ratio. By default, if your system is properly tuned, the channel fader and master faders will also be around unity. This is crucial when working with highend pre's like midas and others. To get the nice natural sound they can achieve, you really need to get a solid db level pumping through them. In some ways we are really saying the same thing.. I get that. I think however that it should be noted the importance of how to work the head amp and the need for a great "workable" signal, not just a good exit level signal. Keep up the great videos and I think its awesome that you are sharing your knowledge! Cheers Brother!
Hello - Why do you prioritize being able to ride the faders during the set as opposed to getting a healthy signal first and then setting a healthy dynamic range through the compressors? During the set, I prefer to try to let the compression settings that i dial in do as much of that work for me as possible. That way during the set I may only be riding a vocal or instrument part every once in a while. You do say to set gain at 0db, but i see people being tempted to set gain too low because they push the fader all the way up to 0 and then start pushing up the gain until they can hear it well enough. This can end up alot of times with peoples input gains peaking around -15 or lower. Have you seen this happen with people at all? what are your thoughts?
No mention of meters when setting input trim (mic pre-amp)?