Gain Staging: How Important Is It Really? 🎚️

Gain staging has always been a hot topic. But here are a few things you may not know about it.

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0:00 Analog vs. Digital
1:32 What is gain staging?
2:42 Digital headroom in modern DAWs
5:18 No loss in fidelity
7:04 Wait, what about -6dB?
8:06 What’s wrong with the analog gain staging workflow?
9:19 Exceptions: Analog plugins, recording, and more

[RJJ]

Sorry, I think this is completely wrong. Gain staging in DAWs does matter because of many reasons. Firstly, you might want to clip, limit or compress a track to -1db to get rid of any dynamics (This is most dubstep, EDM producers). If you do that and don't gain stage each track, you will quickly end up with distortion going over 0db. Secondly, your example is bad. Try that again with a big chord, playing notes from 40hz up to 15khz. See how far you get then. Finally, gain staging is part of work flow that leads to better mixes. I used to be lazy and not bother gain staging, allowing 32bit float in Ableton to give me +20db over 0 headroom. But when I exported, my tracks sounded flat. Most professionals start the sound sources for each track at either -12db or -7db on each track. Decap just did a video about this. Sorry mate, you're totally wrong on this one. You're encouraging bad habits and work flows.

[Otuzartı]

Why don't you use a vu meter? you can apply it to any channel, if you choose peak instruments on drums as vu

[watchmanhwa]

Thank You master i will return here when i will get lots of stream in future, Thank you master!

[Victorcolongarcia]

When I master the song I just make sure that at no moment it marks zero. Always orange but never red. Is that ok? It’s a pity that when I bounce the track to itunes the sound is not exactly the same. Maybe it’s just me but on the LPX the tracks sound better? Thanks for the heads up in advance. I’ve just started making music like 2 years ago and mixing and mastering is for me the worst part. Such a headache 😅

[yikayikayika]

I started getting on this concept when I learned about guillotine mixing... Modern day EDM music just works differently than the old days... Period.

[AutPen]

The best thing about making stupidly loud music is that you'll go deaf by the time you're 45 and then you won't hear how bad it is.

[G_handle]

Almost EVERY SENTENCE of this is Wrong!
Even if you were foolish enough to try to follow this advice, he just made so many exceptions to his own nonsense that there's No scenario left in which you wouldn't gainstage.
He's not alone though, there's a crop of dead wrong advice in the YouTube abyss.

Without actually explaining gainstaging properly, which is easily searchable, let me offer 2 points:

1) this advice is like saying "the highway has no speed limit anymore, so you can drive as fast as you want!" "Unless you're car has an engine or tires or brakes or a suspension, and you actually need to get on the on ramp or off the off ramp, or maybe turn the steering wheel to follow the road, or avoid collisions with any other traffic that might be on that road. But drive as fast as you want."

2) Look at your hand and grab a Sharpie. Write on your pinky "Acoustic", your ring-finger "Analog", your middle-finger "Digital", your index-finger "Analog", and your thumb "Acoustic".

If you wanna be an Audio Engineer, head to the tattoo shop and fully commit.

Now, your job is to manage that process.
Between an Acoustic source and destination.
Between a mouth and an ear.

The smart-asses among you are probably thinking "well my sources are already in the computer ".

Okay, well A) are they ever coming out? Into say, speakers or headphones. And B) how did they get in there? I bet a real audio engineer, one that knew gainstaging had something to do with it.

Last point:
This guy is talking into a microphone, and listening on headphones.
What would happen if he cranked the gain All the way up on either the Mic Amp or the Headphone Amp?

Okay last last thought:
Those "electronic" producers, the ones producing brain-splittingly loud mixes...

There not ignoring gainstaging, they've absolutely mastered it!

[btomas.]

Spot on! Such a simple concept, yet many mastering engineers (in the box) will still ask for a -6dB peak pre-master 🙄