Is gain staging necessary?

[Dave G]

I'm an amateur MIDI musician who doesn't plan on "going pro" or promoting my music. However, I want it to sound its very best. I don't play instruments or record vocals; I transcribe all my notation through the Piano Roll.

I've been doing much research on gain staging, and although I have a general understanding, I'm seeking more insight. This is the way I understand the gain staging process:

1)  Ensure each instrument track's volume fader is at unity (0db). Don't adjust the Master or Stereo tracks.

2)  Find the loudest part of the song and the most prominent instrument track.

3)  Watch the meters and adjust the Gain dial accordingly, keeping around -18db. Repeat for each instrument track.

4)  Bounce the tracks to audio. Apply the desired plug-ins and effects.

5)  Finalize the mix by adjusting the volume faders accordingly, keeping to around -18db per track and -6 in Master.

What I wonder is: What if I don't want to use gain staging? Why can't I just finish all the tracks, add the plugins-effects, and then just use the volume faders to mix?

Bonus question: What if I have an instrument track that's too loud by design, and I can't lower the Gain/volume enough?

I know this sounds kind of uneducated and foolish, but I would just like some clarification. Thanks in advance!

[Byron Dickens]

Nope. Not quite.

 

https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/gain-staging-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it.html

 

https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/gain-staging/

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_stage

50 minutes ago, Dave G said:

What I wonder is: What if I don't want to use gain staging?

It's your project. You can do whatever you want. Don't get mad if you don't get the results you wwant

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by bdickens

[Byron Dickens]

51 minutes ago, Dave G said:

I'm an amateur MIDI musician who doesn't plan on "going pro" or promoting my music. However, I want it to sound its very best.

Then it would only make sense to use those accepted industry standard pro practices to make that happen.

[bitflipper]

Devil's Advocate: gain staging isn't nearly as important in the floating-point digital world as it was in all-analog days. Back then, it was a big deal. Truth is, digital audio is extremely forgiving about such things. It's entirely possible to complete a project without once thinking about gain staging. At least, I think that's so, because I almost never think about it.

Granted, I'm sure I do a lot of things unconsciously, ingrained habits acquired over a half-century. But I have also experienced problems with audio quality precisely because I violated a gainstaging principle. Bad on me for being complacent. I don't recommend complete complacency.

 

 

[John]

3 hours ago, Dave G said:

I

Bonus question: What if I have an instrument track that's too loud by design, and I can't lower the Gain/volume enough?

I know this sounds kind of uneducated and foolish, but I would just like some clarification. Thanks in advance!

I can't think how that could be unless it's clipping and really useless. 

BTW MIDI gives you total control over all aspects of music creation including levels, weather working with soft synths or hardware. 

[Tezza]

If your using the piano roll to play midi instruments mainly then velocity and automation is probably more important than gain staging. VST instruments can sound very different at different velocities and it doesn't always match to the kind of song your playing ie, it may be a slow quiet ballad but upping the velocity of the bass and piano might sound better. Drum samplers need to be kept up high in the 110 to 127 range because all you are doing is triggering a sample and providing some headroom for volume changes but the bass drum and snare should always be kept up high to get the best sound, hihats etc can be lowered as needed if you really need to. Drum samples don't sound their best if you lower the velocity because your not really lowering the velocity your just lowering the volume. Unless you have loaded and set velocity layers for each cell. I generally like pianos to sit around 100 or so regardless of the genre, but this is personal preference. Instruments are usually ok to adjust velocity because they have velocity layers baked in.

With midi, it's more about setting the volume of the instrument on the instrument and seeing how that feeds into the compressor and eq, then not changing that but adjusting the faders to suit, you don't need all faders on unity gain when working with midi instruments, that might not produce the best sound. I just juggle it a bit between the instrument volume and fader volume and try to get the faders to unity gain for ease of mixing but continually lowering or raising the volume on the instrument just to achieve unity gain can stuff up the sound unless you also check what is going on with the compressor when you do that.

Also, people work in different ways I guess but generally, I don't bounce VST instruments to audio. Perhaps i Should be doing that, I don't know, sounds ok to me.

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Tezza

[Lord Tim]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

Devil's Advocate: gain staging isn't nearly as important in the floating-point digital world as it was in all-analog days. Back then, it was a big deal. Truth is, digital audio is extremely forgiving about such things. It's entirely possible to complete a project without once thinking about gain staging. At least, I think that's so, because I almost never think about it.

Granted, I'm sure I do a lot of things unconsciously, ingrained habits acquired over a half-century. But I have also experienced problems with audio quality precisely because I violated a gainstaging principle. Bad on me for being complacent. I don't recommend complete complacency.

 

 

This.

You can "clip" the hell out of the signal in every step along the way but so long as it doesn't clip on the output (turn it down to not clip) then CbB will shrug and go "yeah righto" and sound fine.

But when you add in plugins to the mix, how loud the signal is going into them has a big bearing on how they respond, and if you decide to freeze tracks or bounce anything down, that will cause you misery.

I don't think about or care about gain staging at all unless it's one of those cases. Nothing like working on a console back in the day, that's for sure!

[John Nelson]

Every point in the signal path where you can increase or reduce the signal strength is a "gain stage".  What you choose to do at each point has an impact on the final sound.  There are well established best practices which can be found with a cursory search on the internet.

At the end of the day it's voltage.  The signal begins as voltage at a microphone transducer and ends as voltage at a speaker transducer.

With MIDI VSTi you are in a somewhat different boat however, there's still a sweet spot.

If you drive your digital signal path hard it sounds like crap at some point. Maybe that is what you as the mixer wants but most pros avoid the hotboxed territory.