If you produce or mix your own music and you don't properly understand or
implement gain staging, you could be ruining your mixes today.
I'm gonna uncover the seven gain staging mistakes that almost all producers make
and how to fix them so that your music will sound instantly better.
My name's Will from EDM Tips, and over the past six years
I've helped thousands of bedroom music producers,
just like you, get their music to a professional level and get released on some
of the world's biggest labels. Now, before I knew about gain staging,
I was banging my head on the wall,
thinking why isn't my music sounding as good as my favorite producers.
And when I learned about these seven mistakes I'm gonna show you today,
my music instantly elevated to a new level,
and that's what you are gonna learn today.
Number six on its own is gonna give you instantly better mixes
every time you start a new project
but you need to understand the other points first.
So, stick around and watch the whole video. But, firstly,
what difference does gain staging actually make?
And we will explain exactly what it is as well,
but let's just compare two examples.
So, this example hasn't been gain stage properly,
it's distorted, everything's a bit muddy.
So, now let's listen to the same track when the gain staging is done properly.
It's still loud and punchy, right,
But there's clarity and there's dynamics in the mix.
And that's exactly why gain staging is so important to understand. If you enjoy
this video, consider subscribing to my channel,
check me out over on Instagram for tips every single day.
And you can also download my 30 most essential mixing tips completely free below
this video. Okay, without further ado, let's hop into the DAW and
I'm gonna show you these seven mistakes and how to fix them. Okay?
So, the first mistake that most producers make is not understanding,
gain staging properly or just ignoring it all together.
So, let's quickly touch upon what gain staging is.
All it really means is being aware of the level of your signal of every single
track in your mix at every single stage of the processing.
So, if it goes from one plugin into another,
what level of volume should it be at when it's going into that next plugin,
what level of volume should it be at when it hits your channel
fader, hits your group bus and ultimately your master bus. It's that simple,
but ignoring that can give you terrible results.
And it doesn't matter if you are mixing within your production session or
whether you've actually got bounced down stems, like in this situation,
gain staging is super important for both. And once again,
it doesn't matter whichever DAW you are using,
whether you are using Ableton logic, FL studio, Studio One or Cubase,
and it doesn't matter which genre of music you are creating as well. Ultimately,
we want to make sure that we've got enough headroom,
that means space before we hit the clipping level,
When things start to go a bit distorted,
And ultimately when all our tracks are playing together,
we want our master channel to be peaking at about minus six.
So, that's what gain staging is. And it's important for two reasons. One,
we want to avoid unwanted clipping everywhere in our signal path,
throughout the whole process to make sure we don't have any unwanted distortion.
The second reason is if you are using analog model plugins,
that is plugins that are created to mimic a real life piece of audio equipment.
They operate best when the level of volume going into them hits a sweet spot.
So that's the second reason for gain staging,
and I'm gonna touch upon that sweet spot very soon, as it were.
So now we understand what gain staging is and why it's important.
Let's go on to mistake number two, which is not setting your initial levels.
As I said,
this doesn't matter whether you're doing the mixing, within the production phase,
or in a separate mixing project, let's see how you do it and why it's important.
So for this example, I've reset my mix.
I've loaded in the stems and everything defaults to zero on the fader channel
and zero on our master channel. That's pretty good. Okay. Having it there.
And the first stage of knowing how to set your levels is to understand the
difference between peak volume and average volume. Because with gain staging,
it's most important to consider the average volume,
the volume that the signal has over a period of time, rather than one short,
sharp, specific peak a case. Case in point, if we listen to our kick here,
you can see it's hitting about minus 0.66,
and that's with the dark green meter here.
But the light green meter is the average volume
and you can see it's actually a bit lower than the peak volume.
And that's always the case.
The peak volume will always be higher than the average volume. Here with the
drums the difference is even more pronounced.
So you can see we're peaking at about minus 12
and our average volume is about minus 28, minus 26, something like that.
So, that's the difference between the peak and the average volume.
So, what are the ideal volumes for starting your mix with? This little fellow here,
in Ableton it's the utility plugin,
but in Logic it's called the gain plugin, and every single DAW has the
equivalent of one of these. All it really is a volume control, in some DAWs
it's called the trim plugin as well,
and we need to get it so that each of our channels is hitting about minus 18 on
the average level. So, with all the fades set to zero,
let's try that for the kick drum.
So we can see the light green meter is just about in the right place,
about minus 18. You don't need to have to be,
you don't need to be super accurate with this, by the way.
So, now let's do that for the drums as well.
So we can just copy our utility plugin over to our drums.
We've left the volume fade at zero, but now we've got this gain plugin,
this utility. So let's get that to our average volume of our drums is minus 18,
which is the sweet spot for analog plugins.
And we can see it's bumping up around there and it's peaking quite high.
Now what we need to do is do exactly the same for every single track in our mix.
So I'm gonna fast forward and do that now really quickly.
Okay. So now we've done that.
We are seeing that everything is averaging at about minus 18.
All the faders are on zero, but you can see we're clipping on the master channel.
That's not a problem and you'll see why very shortly,
but these are the ideal levels to get your mix started with because all of these
sounds when they go into an analog model
plugin will be hitting that sweet spot.
So, this takes me neatly onto gain staging mistake, number three.
When you've got your levels set like this,
obviously, you're gonna have to turn some of the instruments down because we are
clipping on the master channel. Now, if you do that and you end up with a small,
like quiet percussive element, for example,
you might want that to be really low in the mix. It's absolutely fine,
and there might be elements that you want low in the mix, like strings,
for example right down,
what happens is then you end up using your fader right down here.
And if you look at the, the scale here on each fader, it's not linear,
it's actually logarithmic.
So the gap between zero and six is much bigger than the gap between 54
and 60, which is six. And if you are mixing down here,
it's just a much lower resolution that you've got to play with.
So, the way to get around that issue is you can have another gain plugin on,
after you've got the initial setting gain plugin,
and that can attenuate the volume. So in the case of the strings, for example,
we've got our initial utility bringing the gain up,
so it's averaging about minus 18,
but that's gonna mean we have to take our fader right down.
So, we've got a secondary utility here,
which we're just gonna take the volume down on,
which will allow us to do the fine mixing with our channel fader up and around
zero. Let's have a look at that.
So it's gonna look something more like that. Now the trick here is,
and the thing to be careful of, is that you need to put all of your plugins on
the channel then in between these two utilities,
because you want that sweet spot to be being hit
when you're going into each of the plugins in between these two utilities.
And if you do that for all of your sounds,
you should be able to end up doing the mix roughly up here with the fader to
you're not having to do too much stuff right down low here. Not essential,
but does give you a bit more control.
And that takes me onto gain staging mistake, number four,
which is clipping on the busses.
So we've got each of our separate channels and they're not clipping and they're
hitting minus 18. Fantastic. But we can see here, we've got our basses,
both rooted into a base buss,
and we want this base buss to also be hitting the sweet spot.
So, at the moment you can see this bass and this bass together mean that ours
is a little bit loud and we're averaging up about minus 12,
which means if we put any analog plugins on this channel here, on the group
level, it's gonna be slightly hot and over the sweet spot,
simply resolved by putting utility at the beginning of that group level and
just taking down the gain.
So, we are hitting minus 18 there as well.
Make note that the fader is still up around zero, so we've got all that control.
But that's what I mean about making sure your signal flow is gain staged at every
step of the process.
Now, we're about to get onto my three biggest mistakes that producers make when
it comes to gain staging
but let me know when the comments have you found this useful so far and the
most important thing is what are you struggling with in your music production?
I wanna know in the comments,
because I want to know what you want me to make a video helping you with. Okay,
let's crack onto the final three gain staging mistakes. Mistake
number five is not gain staging in between separate plugins.
And this is really important because some plugins will add or decrease volume
and then it's very hard to hear when you are A/B testing and bypassing them on
and off and the difference that they're making, as well as the fact that then the
signal won't be going into the next plugin at the sweet spot.
So, we kind of want to maintain that minus 18 average volume throughout the whole
signal pass. So we're getting the best results at every step of the process.
If we've got our drums here, we've got no effect on them at the moment.
We've added our gain
plugging at the initial and we are averaging about minus 18 DBFS.
So we're gonna add some Thickify by Rocket Powered Sound,
and you can get this plugin using the link below this video,
but let's put some of this on and just get these drums a bit fatter,
Add some drive.
Now, if we turn this off, we can hear it much quieter.
And we're also peeking here and way too loud on the average volume.
So, some plugins will have an output gain control,
and we want to be taking this back down.
So it's the equivalent volume of when it was going in. Now,
if your plugin doesn't have an output gain control,
you'll need to put another utility plugin or gain or trim plugin,
they're all the same thing, after the fact and then take it down manually.
So let's do it both ways. First is take it down
so we're averaging about minus 80 again, like so.
And now when we bypass it,
we can really hear the difference it's making without confusing our ears,
just because it's louder.
We also know that this signal is gonna be going into our next analog plugin,
If we use one, at the sweet spot. Now, as I said,
if you don't have a output gain on that plugin,
you'll have to be doing it order or manually, sorry.
So let's put a utility on there
And just take it down like this until it's sitting minus 18. Now,
what you can do at that point is group those two plugins together
And then just bypass the group
Magic, eh?! So, mistake number six is wasting time by not setting your
ideal gain structure straight away. So if I'm producing,
I will already have certain volumes programmed in,
like I will have about minus 10 to peak on the kick drum,
because I know it's gonna be averaging at about minus 18,
but if you are using audio stems and, bringing them into a completely fresh mixing project,
as I have been doing today,
there are a few things you can do to save yourself a lot of time.
The first is to simply copy and paste a utility gain plugin on every single
channel that you bring into the mix.
The next is just to make sure your master fader is left at zero because
ultimately we want our mix to be peaking at about minus six.
And if we move this fader, it's gonna confuse things.
And the last thing, as we've already touched upon, is to make sure that any group
processing we do is also gain staged and that we have a utility plug in there,
or again,
plug in to make sure that our actual buses are averaging at about minus 18 as
well. Which takes us onto my very final and the biggest gain staging mistake
I see producers making.
I get this every couple of weeks for my students in my Music Production
Accelerator, and that is obsessing over gain staging.
So we've touched upon some very important points today,
but the number minus 18, isn't an absolute science.
It doesn't matter if you are up and down a bit.
You don't need to invest in fancy VU meter plugins to measure the average
volume,
especially when DAWs have built in average volume measurement nowadays as well.
So with Ableton, for example, we could see there are these two different levels,
the dark green, the light green, you can just do it by eye.
We don't need to be hat to hitting exactly minus 18.
We need to be hitting roughly somewhere around that.
So the only two things you always need to be aware of is one that you are not
clipping anywhere within the signal path. And two,
you are hitting the sweet spot when you are going into your analog model
plugins. And actually there's a third one as well,
which is whenever you are putting a plugin on,
just make sure you are gain staging after the fact,
so you are giving your is a fair comparison of the effect that that plugin is
having. And also it's gonna be going into the next plugin at the sweet spot.
And that's it guys. As I said, this is really, really important,
but it's also important not to obsess on it because we gotta have fun whilst
making the music and just being aware of this will make your mixes way, way better.
So there you have it guys.
I really hope you enjoyed this video and found it useful.
I wanna give a quick shout out to one of my Accelerator students,
Richard Ball, whose brand new track is out now.
You can hear it playing in the background and if you wanted to get to a
professional level as quickly as possible, with one-on-one coaching, weekly
feedback, I recommend checking out my Accelerator link below this video,
and you can find out more details there. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed,
please like this video, subscribe to my channel,
share it with your friends and I will catch you next time. Until then, cheers and
happy producing!