gain structure and mixing aka THE MONEYSHOT THREAD

[skimpi]

If you guys have Ableton and think it's a hassle to pull down each fader, you can hold down shift and click on each track and all selected tracks will be brought down.

If you're using another DAW I can't help.

....that's essentially bringing down the master fader. the whole point is you have to go through and gain stage all the different tracks to get headroom, then it's good

Well if you are so bothered about it, gain stage from the fucking start and stop asking questions about how to rectify it afterwards.

[eldoogle]

Yeah I felt like laying down a technical tip. It's easier than bringing down every track at once.

[ehbes]

If you guys have Ableton and think it's a hassle to pull down each fader, you can hold down shift and click on each track and all selected tracks will be brought down.

If you're using another DAW I can't help.

....that's essentially bringing down the master fader. the whole point is you have to go through and gain stage all the different tracks to get headroom, then it's good

Well if you are so bothered about it, gain stage from the fucking start and stop asking questions about how to rectify it afterwards.

i mean if the mix is solid i.e. everything has room and it isn't clipping but its maybe one or two db higher than you like then what wrong with pulling down the master?

[mitchAUS]

If you guys have Ableton and think it's a hassle to pull down each fader, you can hold down shift and click on each track and all selected tracks will be brought down.

If you're using another DAW I can't help.

....that's essentially bringing down the master fader. the whole point is you have to go through and gain stage all the different tracks to get headroom, then it's good

Well if you are so bothered about it, gain stage from the fucking start and stop asking questions about how to rectify it afterwards.

i mean if the mix is solid i.e. everything has room and it isn't clipping but its maybe one or two db higher than you like then what wrong with pulling down the master?

Yeah i don't really understand the problem here either. If your mixing with your ears and you get get your mix balanced, punchy and has you rocking the electric boogaloo in your room, why would you go back and redo the whole thing as you accidentally mixed to -2db instead of -3 or -6 or whatever the target of the month is. I can't see the harm to pull the master fader down a db or two. If nothing is clipping and you want to give your ME/yourself more headroom when mastering i'd be happy to know the issue of knocking a db or two off the master fader before you bounce the track.

[skimpi]

If you guys have Ableton and think it's a hassle to pull down each fader, you can hold down shift and click on each track and all selected tracks will be brought down.

If you're using another DAW I can't help.

....that's essentially bringing down the master fader. the whole point is you have to go through and gain stage all the different tracks to get headroom, then it's good

Well if you are so bothered about it, gain stage from the fucking start and stop asking questions about how to rectify it afterwards.

i mean if the mix is solid i.e. everything has room and it isn't clipping but its maybe one or two db higher than you like then what wrong with pulling down the master?

Yeah i don't really understand the problem here either. If your mixing with your ears and you get get your mix balanced, punchy and has you rocking the electric boogaloo in your room, why would you go back and redo the whole thing as you accidentally mixed to -2db instead of -3 or -6 or whatever the target of the month is. I can't see the harm to pull the master fader down a db or two. If nothing is clipping and you want to give your ME/yourself more headroom when mastering i'd be happy to know the issue of knocking a db or two off the master fader before you bounce the track.

I mean, now in current DAWs its probably no problem, but I still dont touch the master, even though all the numbers probably add up so that you can be fully clipping the master, then bring it down to a good level and it would be the same, I still dont like to pull it down. Like if your going to do that, then the mastering engineer might as well just take out some gain in the track right? I just select all tracks in Logic and bring them all down together until the level is how I want it.

[e-motion]

Like if your going to do that, then the mastering engineer might as well just take out some gain in the track right?.

The difference is that, while Audio is inside the DAW, clipping won't distort it because DAWs work at 32+ bits. So you can have your track peaking at +20db and then lower the master fader (there's no clipping with 32bits). The reason why ME say you should send at -3db or -6db is mainly due to Intersample peak, because even if your DAW reads peaking at -1db you may still get intersample peak. Google what intersample peak is

The reason of planned gain staging is more a discipline. If you mix without a disciplined gain staging, you may loose yourself like this:

- Hmm, my mixing is clipping, better turn down the master fader.
- Hmm, now I can't hear the kick, better turn the kick up.
- Bah, now the sub is too low, need to increase the sub.
- Oh it's clipping again.

This will happen a lot if you don't plan your gain staging. This discipline just helps you set up things at the right spot from the beginning so you don't have to move the master fader during mixing (or else the situation above will happen... a lot). But if in the end you end up with a good mix at -3db, no problem! Turn it down.

[mitchAUS]

In all honesty I've never touched the master fader either. I buss all my tracks so that i only have 4 or 5 faders to balance that feed to the master bus so the mix is usually where i want it and i don't have a need to touch the master fader. In my understanding though, couldn't changing the volume of every fader to get the end level effect the sound. Say you have something like the satson bus compressor which is dependent on the input single, so losing 2 or 3 db could lose the harmonics you originally gained by running a hot signal into it. Following that logic if you change every fader wouldn't that effect the gain staging of any signal chain that relied on input level the same way? If you turned it down at the master fader it wouldn't change any of the input levels in your signal chain.

This is why i bus my tracks. So i have submixes I'm happy with, that have the texture and tone of the sound locked in of these groups. When it then comes time to do my final balance of these submixes the only things i really have to consider is the output level of these groups, which as i mentioned is only 4 or 5 faders.

[skimpi]

Like if your going to do that, then the mastering engineer might as well just take out some gain in the track right?.

The difference is that, while Audio is inside the DAW, clipping won't distort it because DAWs work at 32+ bits. So you can have your track peaking at +20db and then lower the master fader (there's no clipping with 32bits). The reason why ME say you should send at -3db or -6db is mainly due to Intersample peak, because even if your DAW reads peaking at -1db you may still get intersample peak. Google what intersample peak is

The reason of planned gain staging is more a discipline. If you mix without a disciplined gain staging, you may loose yourself like this:

- Hmm, my mixing is clipping, better turn down the master fader.
- Hmm, now I can't hear the kick, better turn the kick up.
- Bah, now the sub is too low, need to increase the sub.
- Oh it's clipping again.

This will happen a lot if you don't plan your gain staging. This discipline just helps you set up things at the right spot from the beginning so you don't have to move the master fader during mixing (or else the situation above will happen... a lot). But if in the end you end up with a good mix at -3db, no problem! Turn it down.

I know what fucking intersample peaks are, I didnt mean if the mix was clipping, I meant if you have like -2.5db or whatever and wanted more headroom. I dont know how you plan your gain staging like that though, I usually mix whilst doin the track, and like keep lowering the levels once I see that its clipping. Then when coming to the end of the mix if it is peaking then I will usually get the mix to sound good, and then dropped all the faders. Then the mix sounds exactly the same, just quieter, so I dont have to turn other things up again. I just mix till I think it sounds reasonably good, and then make sure that I have enough headroom.

[thomascooper93]

So what exactly does it mean when someone says, "Set your drums at x dB"...does that mean i try to get each individual drum hit( ie kick, snare, OH's, etc.) all hitting at that level? Also if I'm layering multiple sounds to make my kick and snare, does it make sense that my two individual kicks are at about -25dB to combine to hit at -10dB and each individual part of my my snare (layered a clap, snare, and snippet of whitenoise) hit at like -35 to combine to around -10dB?

Hope this makes sense...I'm very new to production and I'm a little confused myself haha.

Hey guys, still hoping someone could help me clarify this...sorry if it's a dumb question haha.

[nowaysj]

No one answered because that question is asked, answered, explained, reasked, reanswered and reexplained a few times in this thread. Gonna have to read it.

[Killamike49]

God, TURN DOWN EVERYTHING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN THE SIGNAL CHAIN. The master fader is last, therefor, pretty much the worst thing to turn down. If you want to ask why, read the fucking thread.

[fv2k]

Anyone care to explain what Macc means here?

"To make my position clear;

To an extent, smashing the absolute balls out of a track can help to inform your mix decisions, and personally, I heartily recommend doing this for informative purposes. I've detailed one or two methods for this on here before. You can make decisions based on how the mix holds up under extreme pressure, and then remove it to see how things are in the real world.

This way you know you have the best of both worlds: you know your mix can take a proper spanking, but you haven't cooked irremovable distortion into the mix that is likely raise its head later on."

I know the method he's talking about 20db compression. But what are you checking for?

Thanks

[ehbes]

to make sure your mix is still solid at high volumes

[JHolland]

I think this is the best thread that I have ever read in my long history of going on internet forums (and that goes back a long way!). Big up macc and everybody else who has contributed such great knowledge and information to this one. Proper mixdowns are something that I have always struggled with so needless to say this thread is VERY helpful to me and I am sure many others.

[macc]

Hello all!

I'm not dead - been working extremely hard. Some very good things happening here I'll have something very nice for you all quite soon too. Keep em peeled.

The difference is that, while Audio is inside the DAW, clipping won't distort it because DAWs work at 32+ bits. So you can have your track peaking at +20db and then lower the master fader (there's no clipping with 32bits).

True mathematically, but your DAC will be clipping - DACs are real world components and don't operate at floating point. So you're hearing clipping, whether the mix mathematically clips or not. This is another reason to avoid moving the master - if you've mixed it so that it's by clipping by 20dB and turn it down for your ME, suddenly you have a completely different sounding mix. Probably really spiky.

The reason why ME say you should send at -3db or -6db is mainly due to Intersample peak, because even if your DAW reads peaking at -1db you may still get intersample peak. Google what intersample peak is

That's not why MEs ask for that. No one really gives a shit about ISPs in the real world, it's an internet thing. People ask for -3 or whatever to make sure that people don't do stupid stuff like try to get everything to -0.0000000001dB TO MAXX OWT ALL DA BITZ (which I get), or turning it down to -30 and then exporting at 16-bit anyway (which I also get).

[elyhess]

I've been struggling with my mixdown a bit, this is a track i sorta stopped working on, and like i've tried several different versions of mixdown, and i was just wondering, amidoinitrite?

ha

Soundcloud

i left approx 6 db of headroom and tried to balance it as best i could. ( i did throw a limiter on there, just because i know i'll never send my tracks to a professional masterer)

but to me it still doesn't sound as clear and nice as other peoples stuff, i just wanna know if theres anything you mixdown pro's notice?

sorry if this is the wrong thread, i just assumed it pertains to mixdowns, and i assumed feedback wouldn't quite be the right section, considering im not too worried about how it sounds, more of how everything fits? and if im doing my mixdowns right

[bassbum]

lets say I have to mix down to -6db for mastering. If I mix so its not peaking then turn the master down so its peaking at -6db, is this ok?

I ask because at college I was told never to touch the master when mixing down but they never gave me a reason why.

[nowaysj]

It is a shame that they didn't explain that to you, but this thread provides enough information that you can answer that for yourself.

Otherwise, you can rely on:

[elyhess]

that voodoo shit is intense

[nowaysj]

Bottom line, do what you've been told, understanding it or not