How to Set Gain on Your Mixer | Digital or Analog

Gain Cheat Sheet

Church Sound Made Simple

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If the knobs on your mixer could talk, gain would definitely be throwing a fit about feeling misunderstood. Gain has this great purpose, but often gets mistaken as simply volume control.

In this video, I make it simple by showing you a simple strategy for setting gain that drastically improves the quality of your mix.

[lasithas.f]

"Gain is not volume control " it really, THANK YOU!

[wildlifegrocery]

ROFL.
I’ve been running FOH at churches and on staff for almost 20 years. I’m so blessed you started this video out with the water line/faucet thought process..!
I prayed about how to teach others, and started using this type of example about 8 to 10 years ago. May God richly use you to continue to teach others how to mix sound correctly for church..!!
When we mix sound for a service, we aren’t actually back stage or behind the scenes; we are literally becoming the means of how clearly the attendees hear the Word of God preached and taught..!

[cdrchrrs]

Thanks for pressing that point about gain staging every time you start a mix. My pet peeve is hearing singers say that I should be able to “set it and forget it” (they want to show up at start time or later—🤮).

[Bryanegreenlee]

Simply put… gain deals with input signal (microphones, instruments, etc) into an audio interface or mixer and volume deals with output signal (speakers etc) leaving the interface or mixer. Thanks for the insight and knowledge! 👍🏾

[kevinniemeyer]

It's also important to note that setting the level coming out of the instrument itself (if available) as hot as you can without distorting is just as important as setting the gain level coming in to your mixer. If it's not hot enough, you will have to turn your gain up even more to compensate, and that will increase your noise level.

[jxb]

Well that was incredibly helpful and refreshingly concise. Thank you.

[charlestaylor]

Thanks! This is the most practically helpful video I've yet seen on mixing for live sound! Lee.

[sammysamuel]

Woow thanks brother May gob bless you, very usefull love from srilanka🇱🇰

[Jocepos]

This is the best description of gain 😎

[eastsideprineville]

This was helpful. I'll definitely be passing this video on to our new sound techs.

[drumrooster]

Wow thanks for yr videos.I been bands most my life and was always told to ALWAYS run Amps wide open lol..I just replaced my Drum PA amp with a bigger Amp and was searching to see if it was ok to turn the Amp down (choke lol) . This and yr other Amp level video really cleared that up for me. Much appreciated 🙏

[garyens]

Thanks for the straightforward, simple explanation. I really liked the faucet analogy. It can be tough to find helpful content for newbies like myself.

[jhowardpercussion]

My master looks peaked out all the time in Pro Tools for our livestream...still trying to figure out why this is. I will be looking at gain in the tracks as you said. Thank you!!

[munifzeybek]

Thanks for the informative video. Like you said, setting up gain is one of the most important parts when mixing. This video made me curious about your channel and after taking a look at some other videos, I decided to subscribe your channel. I also want to point out something about units. When we talk about -18 on the meter, it is supposed to be -18 dBFS (dB Full Scale). Not -18 dB. For example, 0 dBFS corresponds to maximum possible digital level of sound. Therefore, the signals above 0 dBFS would get clipped. In my opininon, as there are more than one decibel units such as dBm, dBu, dBV and so on, we should be more careful about units. Thanks for the sheets as well.

[ransfordfearon]

God bless you brother for educating the body of Christ. I have very little knowledge of the Behringer X32 compact. My church is very small and is especially affected by the Covid Virus. I have to take up the mantle. For the past3-4 weeks there is no audio feed leaving the X32 to the 3 floor monitors. The Monitors have juice but no audio sound. What could be the problems? Thank you and may God bless you.

[EvanDufresne]

Freaking fantastic, practical video bro!

[davelongenecker]

Setting gain for every instrument or vocal 1:41

[TruePurpose]

Great advice. One question though. In your downloadable you start with: "While the musician is singing/playing with 'live performance' energy..." Where does one find the magic unicorn that practices/sound checks at "live performance energy"? 🤣🤣🤣

[NonnyStrikes]

So. I should be sending my dj board to the "line" inputs so only the board is effecting the total output of the signal. Correct?

I get a bunch of changes in clarity when I go dj(xlr main out) to channels 15-16 on the xr18.

I'm assuming this is right, I'm going to try it out, but thanks regardless! I might have solved the problem.

[judsonfinny]

My drums hit the yellow spot on the mixer, whereas the keys and the guitars don't hit that much but they do are audible out. should I decrease the fader and set the gain to the level that all the input levels are equal or should i just look at the output of what I am able to hear?