Gain vs. Distortion, Compression, & Dynamic Range - Explained

Today in Plague Scythe Studios, I venture into the foggy realm of overlapping and convoluted music production vocabulary - gain, distortion, compression, dynamic range, and more!

[krystofpolansky]

great explanation, I finally understand how distortion, gain and tone relate to each other. The examples of waveforms from DI, amp and pedal and the clipping charts also helped a lot. Thanks a lot :)

[ericcarpenter]

I know the audio wasn’t up to your standards, but it really wasn’t bad at all and in no way did it take away from the subject. Then again, the subject and presentation was amazing. Your deep dives into subjects are in the top 1% for music on YouTube. Great job, I loved it.

[chesterlsy]

Great video! Explained a lot of questions I had

[andrzejthethinone]

Audio is great, tbh! Even through headphones. And thanks for great info! As always btw.

[LightCyrus]

Love your channel dude. Nerdy and in-depth. Just like me.

[EversonBernardes]

One thing about tube preamps is that, even for really well designed ones, triode tubes just have inherently asymmetrical amplification properties. For small signals and small amplification factors, you can exploit a reasonably linear amplification region and minimize that. For what you're doing with most instrument signals, that is virtually never the case. Result of that is that all tube preamps distort the signal to some degree. It's inherent to the tech.

Power amp tubes are pentodes, and a completely different animal (hence why they distort in a completely different way).

[ChiefNonsense]

Great content. To streamline your untethered lav setup, see if you can find a used Tascam DR-05 that you can slip in your pocket. The on-screen meters and tally light will help you know that you’re actually working (when you tap on the mic to see the spikes) and as a bonus, the preamp is quieter than the one in your phone. Pretty high quality upgrade for the pretty reasonable price.

[SHARt_murmur]

Great vid, man, love stuff like this. Thanks!

[jay]

Very interesting! Sounds samples would have been cool (to help better understand). Love the show!

[markk]

The audio was slightly distorted lol! Another great analytical video by the Professor. I'll never look at a high gain amp ( I mean an amp with a lot of distortion on tap because that is what it actually is ) again in the same light. Well done!

[MrTheog]

I was always under the impression that 3dB was doubled volume. I went googling after hearing you mention 6dB and now I am left even more confused. I'd love some insight into this:

"The human ear's response to sound level is roughly logarithmic (based on powers of 10), and the dB scale reflects that fact. An increase of 3dB doubles the sound intensity but a 10dB increase is required before a sound is perceived to be twice as loud."

[Brunix]

Aw the audio issue ain't that bad dw haha. I kinda stopped hearing it as you got to the meat and potatoes of the vid.

Keep up the great mate, been loving the content recently!

[warphalak]

This was really good man. Already kinda... knew this, or shall I say guessing all theses stuff, but it's even better when it's more... clearly explained. Maybe an episode or some... on bus compression and maybe, sidechain? Thank you for this one.

[marksanders]

Good info! So how you liking the Gargoyle? Interesting design...

[Anshul]

I was wondering about this. I use a Um300 in front of the Marshall MG50Dfx clean channel and I noticed it beefs up the low end when I Increase the gain on the amp. All that solid state thin sound doesn't sound all that bad once I do that. Ofcourse with the 8 string I reduce it.