Thank you! Was gain staging my mixes for months and noticed that my mixes didn't have enough "oomph". I just went back to a more intuitive way of making sure my individual tracks weren't clipping and if my master bus was clipping, adjusting individual track volume accordingly. Made a huge difference for the better...
Been recording music for quite a while, and I could honestly say that with my journey, recording music has always been stepping stones. You keep learning as you progress and get better. We never stop learning.
Say it ain’t so Joe! You’re a saint spewing out bonafide, classified common sense. Thank you so very much for bringing some clarity to this misunderstanding myth that everyone and their mother on RU-vid is spreading. I always say say as long as you’re not clipping all the tracks and the master you should be good. I was always stressing about damn if I don’t gain stage my mix would suffer. I used both methods and I totally agree the mix didn’t sound any worse or any better. So again thanks for sharing the great info that you do and continue your musical educational journey you’re are awesome. ❤
Great advice! I actually stopped gain staging a while back because of having more headroom. I always use my ears to guide me most and hardly use the solo button. I make EDM but it must be the same for all genres of music.
If you want to improve your mixes, read Bobby Owsinki's book on mixing and use reference tracks. For what it's worth, gain staging really helped me start getting better mixes with a lot more headroom. My rough mixes now almost ever clip. But before, i was always mixing far too loud.
It's a great book. I had one of the earlier editions many years ago when I was starting out. However, I didn't really have a solid foundation before I started getting into the book, so I don't feel like I benefited a whole lot from it and back then. Also, it was geared more towards using analog gear and a desk, not a DAW. I'm sure the recent versions add more of the DAW process involved.
Well said Joe. It's nice that the New upcoming Engineers have RU-vid for some Positive?True advice ...wish some of us had it back then. ( Like you mentioned.... can;t believe every thing we hear. George
Especially with that last advice, a lot of beginners do too many things in solo and think it sounds good. And then they throw it back in the mix and wonder why it's all muddy and not sounding like a mix. Or guitar players trying to dial guitar tones by themselves in solo rather than doing it while the track is playing. In terms of gain staging, -18 starting off is a good rule of thumb as you learn and get better. For the most part, as long as the tracks don't clip and the master bus is clipping when faders are at zero, I feel like you're good, but everyone's take will be different. If you're using analog gear, the signal may or may not sound better, especially on drums, because clipping on analog is different than digital.
Hi Joe , I've been watching you for years and great stuff .I write a song, I record with plugins , do I use buses at this time or wait till I mix for things like reverb parallel if you could take time and help I'd really appreciate thanks Arnold
Arnold… I’ll give my 2 cents and Joe can thumbs up or down 😅 When MIXING: use BUSSES for, - each Group of instruments - each Group of vocals - Reverbs -Delays All routed to your master fader. You can SEND to your effects BUSSES from the individual track OR from a Group Bus. ..☝️👍 -a Delay
Hi Joe! I appreciate you and what you're saying man. But I absolutely disagree about gain-stage. First, it's a part of the prepping process. Second, it isn't any processing whatsoever. Third, by prepping a gain-stage you allow every track to start at an equal playing field. I can't count how many times someone has missed out on properly giving a track it's space because it was gained down low and they were't aware of what it was and what it was doing. Last, and most importantly for me, is that when things are set to your own standard of gain you know exactly how something should sound and hit compressor when you pull up any of your own presets and templates. *Disclaimer: I am a professional live sound engineer. So gain-staging is even more important in my work.
I believe, but am not sure, that your predecessor on this channel preached gain staging. Not to be a -18, but to be at a reasonably low level. Why? He said that if your tracks were very hot, let's say maxxed at 0db then they would mostly have to be turned down to about -18 and lower to get a mix that worked. He indicated at that level small changes in level were very significant. If you gain staged the tracks so that they all started at fader level 0db and then you adjust volumes of various tracks to lower levels to get a good mix, small adjustments would not have the same impact.
Yes, Graham preached gain staging heavily. I’ve heard this conflict in other RR videos as well. That said, I’m not 100% sure you guys are referring to the same thing. Can you clarify?
@@team-starfoxThats why i stopped following the channel, Graham made things simple, the static mix blowed my mind at the time. Now everybody is always confused in the comments about this gain stuff.
I 50% disagree with the gain staging thing. I found mixing for me became much easier when i put SOME time into input levels and plugin inputs. Before, I would end up overloading the master as I started to add more elements. Now, as I go I just keep an eye on those things and adjust, more as I go. I just feel a beginner might find it helpful to understand and practice proper gain staging. Eventually it becomes this natural thing, like recording at proper levels instinctively. Just my 2 cents.
back when I first got a daw I said for a year "I'm not doing unnecessary things like compression and eq... gainstaging is good enough". lol I was such a dumba**
Monitor your input level, any sims and IRs your running through and your master fader, as long as they are not in the red and sound good then you will be fine. A little bit of red light clipping can be useful on heavy drum tracks. Most importantly, as outlined in the video... Use your ears.
Graham has had other guys step in the past few years and make content for the Recording Revolution, as he decided to pursue business coaching as his main gig. Now Joe has taken over that role of being the sole content creator/voice of this channel, but Graham still owns the actual brand.
All I know is - My mixes started improving and I actually got compliments from the results when I started using proper gain staging. As far as equipment/software/treated room, etc. etc. - the Pros are still doing it that way. Having done a project in a "real" studio, I can testify to this. The owner of the studio actually did the Mixdown for the drums that were on the latest [at that time] album by Scorpions. Idk - I only know the difference between Scorps and those telling me "You don't need to do this" or "You don't need to do that" is simple. One is making serious money. The other is making Recording Advice videos on RU-vid 😜
So, there are people who have won Grammys mixing on cheap headphones but there are no people who have won Grammys when gain staging 🤔? It's really crap advice to tell people that gain staging is bad practice. If for no other reasons, you should do it to avoid clipping, make adding, removing, or moving plugins easier, and allow the full resolution of your faders to be used. This doesn't even account for things like controlling the amount of saturation you are adding with analog emulations. Shame on you for spreading misinformation. Gain staging is SUPER important! This is coming from someone who mixes 200 + records a year professionally. Do you need to be super detailed about it and spend hours obsessing over it, no! But it also isn't something that should just be glazed over. I couldn't get my mixes to sound right till one day I learned how to gain stage and everything made sense. I stopped fighting myself and my processing. You know better man and if you don't then you have no business teaching. Go ask pretty much anyone who mixes records full-time if gain staging is important. Especially at a professional level and see what they say.
