Gain staging Question (Master Track too hot)

[Victor Flores]

Hello Forum: I am trying to teach my self mixing, so I decided to download the stems to a song called "Stay" by Workday Release. I watched a video on gain staging by creative sauce on youtube, and followed it as best as I could. The song has 75 tracks (Ambitious I know) and I have about 6 stereo buses for the instruments and vox tracks plus 4 other stereo buses for compression, EQ, etc; that haven't been engaged yet. I have all track faders at Zero, And all peak at -12 or lower; as well as my 6 stereo buses. Here's the problem, the master fader is peaking at: 11.1 when I hear I should be somewhere around -3. 
Any suggestions? Thanks ahead

[Light Grenade]

This is the best video I've seen on this by far. 

 

[Victor Flores]

Thanks for fast and indepth response Tim. It's a lot to take in and even though I've been using cakewalk since 2004 for comping ideas for songs, I've only started to try to lean mixing recently. So I'll try my best to wrap my head around what you've said, I'm sure I'll have tons of questions once I start applying what you've suggested. 

As for you light granade, I saw the thumbnail for that video, and have it saved in my YouTube play list to watch later. The thing about mix bus tv is sometimes he just talks and explains without showing clips of what he's talking about so I don't follow his videos so much, but I'll take a look at it. Thanks guys for your help. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Victor Flores

[Victor Flores]

Have you ever made instructional videos? I learn by watching a heck of a lot more than by reading. You obviously know your stuff and your video can be helpful to us noobs. But that's only if you got the time.

Thanks again. I'll check it out when I get home. Been out all day

[Victor Flores]

Will do brother. Thanks 

[Quick Math]

You could lower all the track faders to maybe -10db as a starting point before starting the mixing.

One reason of doing gain staging is that, usually plugins sound best at RMS -18db level. If it's louder, the plugin may have more noise, distortion or other artifacts.

Some analog emulation can emulate the analog behavior so if you crank up the input, the sound could have nice saturation even if that could exceed 0dbfs peak level. But most of plugins would sound horrible if the input level is too high.

RMS level is average level of certain amount of time while peak level is just the highest value of the waveform.

RMS is more like perceived loudness.

I usually put VU meter plugin before any plugins and set the level to 0VU by using gain plugin or whatever that can control the level.

0VU usually mean -18 RMS. For not percussive Instruments, I set it to 0VU and for percussive Instruments such as snare, I set peak level at -10db because if I aim at 0VM it could actually go above 0dbfs.

So it'd be like either -18db RMS or -10db(peak) before any plugins 

[Glenn Stanton]

if you find your track levels are fairly consistent for the duration - you can set your fader to say -6db, then adjust gain to about -18db to  -12db on your meter. this way most of your levels are in a good range for mixing. and you'll get some more consistency on plugins. this works decently for live situations as well - get your monitoring set, then (on small gigs) bring up FOH to blend, or large gigs to whatever levels you've contracted for... ? and you have plenty of room to adjust individual performances and keep the monitoring stable...

[Victor Flores]

Thanks Glenn and Quick math, didn't even realize you guys had commented; I am not getting an email stating that I've gotten responses like in the old forum with Sonar. Any who...I am finding my self bringing the gain plugin all the way down to more than -30db on most tracks just to get the master track to peak at -10db. I've been meaning to post an update with my findings, but figured Id just state where I'm at after finding out there were more responses in my topic thread. 

[Glenn Stanton]

@Victor Flores check your notification settings on the sub-forum - the "following" settings let you choose how you want to be notified (or not).

[Alan Tubbs]

Start your track levels at -6dB.  The more tracks you have the more each individual needs to be lowered as a starting point.

[Victor Flores]

Thanks Alan: I started at -18, and even that was too hot given the large number of tracks. 

[Glenn Stanton]

all 70+ tracks have clips playing at the same time?

[Victor Flores]

Like any song, there are spots where almost all the tracks may be playing at the same time; but there are spots where there are only a few playing at the same time. Like I said.  I decided to download the stems to a song called "Stay" by Workday Release.  Just learned that Warren Huart did a mixing tutorial on the song. If any one wants to give it a go them selves(gain staging the song) and report back their findings, that would be beneficial to the thread, plus great self practice; but I do realize this is time out of every ones life. Any who, I really do appreciate every ones time and input so far.  video or gif footage would be even better. 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Victor Flores

[SVSX]

I dont think you need to go down to -30dB on your tracks. I'd rather set some busses and feed them with my tracks. Then you can adjust your bus/groupbus gain. I think many people, are approaching this whole gain staging to technical ?. But just my own opinion, i'm trying to set it roundabout -18 RMS and if a plugin runs hot, i turn the input gain down. 

[Victor Flores]

Well, I've given up on trying to leave the faders alone, and have had some success in getting the master fader to peak closer to -6, but when I bring the faders down past a certain point, they all become the same level because I run out of real estate. 

 

I would love to have a live sitting with some one who can spare a few minutes one day, and once we come up with a solution, I can post my findings to this thread for anyone who struggles with the same issue.  Hit me up if I got any volunteers. 

[mettelus]

Quick insight to add to the above. Firstly, doubling power (duplicate tracks feeding same bus), will add 3 dB, and this occurs on every doubling. If you double tracks 6 times (64 tracks), that is an 18 dB increase. Granted, not all tracks will have sound at the same time, so lowering them all to -18dB (or even -21dB) should give you enough headroom to begin. If they are hot by themselves, you may need even lower.

Bear in mind, in the digital realm signal-to-noise ratio is everything. With noise level low enough, mixing at lower levels will not affect anything adversely (you can use the master fader to achieve monitoring volume). Be cautious of making single tracks too hot as they feed into the rest.

Similarly, you can do the same with busses, each doubling is +3dB. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. (tracks or busses, depending on approach) will add 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, etc. dB respectively. You can also take the approach of each buss hitting -9dB to keep their combination in check (work tracks into busses with that being the target). In a situation where tracks are hot, but you want ones to stand out either 1) lower volume on others or 2) mirror EQ unnecessary content out of the other tracks.

Another trick to achieving volume control is that once content repeats so the listener "gets it," it can often be safely lowered -6dB so that new content gets focus. The listener still recognizes it because they have heard it already.

Mixing is challenging, but also fun and rewarding. Best of luck!

[Victor Flores]

 

This tutorial says to just slap a trim pluggin on the master fader. I've done what was suggested as to get a healthy level. So if that's all it takes, then I guess I'm all set for now. 

[garybrun]

Great post @Lord Tim
Took some time to write that.

[Victor Flores]

All right Tim: Here's my findings; I followed steps 1-3 as per your suggestions, starting from scratch, and I wound up having to drop down to -26db on the faders in order for the master fader to peak at -9.3 which is where I ended up after the static mix. So I think this is a win. Let me know if you agree; and Thanks for all that helped in this thread. (Too many to mention)

Looking forward to when I can get some sound panels for my walls and start inviting musicians over to track and mix my own songs, rather than some one else's files.  

[Victor Flores]

Thanks Tim, and forum.