Gain staging in mastering (the right way)

When building your own mastering chain it is very advantageous to get the gain staging set up properly. Otherwise you may be led to make suboptimal decisions while believing you are making progress.

This way of gain staging is very good for assessing those small changes that you often make in mastering.

💚 Sofia & Thomas

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0:00 Intro
1:31 Gain staging the wrong way
5:53 Why this is bad
8:19 Gain staging the right way
15:54 Benefits of proper gain staging
21:07 When to use the wrong method
22:38 Summary
24:31 More mastering strategies

[terrencerdee]

This channel deserves so much more attention than it has received. Being a mastering engineer myself, I learnt a thing or two from this channel that I never considered in the past. Thank you Thomas & Sofia!

[dabanjo]

Loudness bias...gets me every time. This video really helped me to start thinking more critically about what plugins are doing to the actual sound.

[unclemick-synths]

Back in the day I did the full Katz system and the most important thing I got from it was how keeping unity gain through the chain enables one to hear EQ changes accurately.

[highsocietysongchannel]

Clear explanations of gain staging up through mastering. Tracking, mixing, mastering-super tricky. Always something to learn. Thanks Sofia & Thomas for sharing this insight.

[Goran-Mogli]

I didn't even watch the video, and I joined the channel, when I heard a voice, which is calm and clear.

[helmanfrow]

When I was starting out some 28 years ago gain staging was one of the first things I learned. Basically keep everything at unity gain until you need it loud.

[PlayedbyInstinct]

Never ever thought of matching the gain on each plugin to the original gain like this, what a great idea! Going to have so much more headroom and clarity now, I can't wait to try this!

[AntmanFelix]

I do something similar by using a VU meter and making its consistently hitting the mark as I use plugins. It could be wrong but I definitely try to make sure that the plugins accomplish what I want to without it being "louder".

[darrellroseborough]

Why oh why I didn’t see this channel when it first came out!!! Nonetheless I’m glad I ran across it now. Thomas you explain it in a clear and simple way to understand exactly what I should’ve been doing some time ago not to say I wasn’t getting good results but now better results. It’s almost like how Dan Worrell normally breaks everything down in detail. I’m doing a hybrid thing but probably 90% ITB. I agree you don’t want to get fooled by volume changes. Maybe slightly but nothing drastic thinking it’s better because it’s louder. Again thanks a lot Thomas and Sophia keep up the great work.

[Sonmz]

I never get tired of watching Gain Staging videos. Thanx! Really informative. Pre-post fx gain matching s a mandatory rule when using plugins.

[monkmusic]

This is a unique clip I have been looking for a year now. No one reall covered this. Great

[howtodostuff]

definitely changed my perspective on final mixdown and mastering ...thank you

[MR_Cellarpop]

Thanks :) this is probably the best video out there explaining good gain stages in mastering

[LeonardoLima-nkfv]

Thank you so much! It’s something I always take care even in the mixing process, I like to mix into 3 mixbuss, I > II > III > Master each one doing little or much of something I can disable and listen what it does, otherwise it’s easy to fool yourself if its louder, it easily gets messy.

[muhammadsarmadhussain]

Thank you so much for taking the time to make such a great video. It was really ear-opening! 😊

[helmanfrow]

Good explanation. There's a lot of nonsense floating around out here and this really helps cut through it in a very straightforward manner. .

[holmesoffice]

Excellent. I am just at the start with mastering, and this demo is a great help. Many thanks indeed.

[matthewjbarnhart]

Fantastic video, Thomas. This is exactly my workflow, even when using an analog/digital hybrid chain. One comment: I personally use Short-term LUFS for setting the initial gain of the track as it feels more natural to me when mastering album projects.

[iainmackenzieUK]

The summary was really useful at the end -
Will be sending you something to master this evening

Many thanks - really enjoyed this.

[bobe.thomas]

Excellent, simple concept that is not at all "simple" but rather logical and thus totally brilliant... thanks, a game-changing idea