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

[Lord Tim]

Yep, turn down the tracks.

I don't think I've ever done a mix where I've just left the faders at zero.

Basically, you should set your input gain up to be fairly hot (somewhere between -12dB and -6dB preferably, but not passing 0dB ever) so it's delivering the right level signal into any effects on your track. How your compressors and saturation effects especially react to your track is tied directly to how loud the signal fed into them is, so get that right first rather than trying to mix from the input gain - use that only for prep.

Then, after all of your effects are on, a good starting point is about -6dB volume for every track and then cut or boost as you see fit.

Then, if you get it all sounding great and your master is peaking, and you don't feel like adjusting everything else (which I'd suggest you should do first so you're sending the right gain into the master bus) then just simply turn down the master. Things won't clip internally inside Cakewalk, so you can have things peaking out everywhere and it really doesn't matter if you're just summing tracks - so long as you don't clip the final output.  This goes for any busses you're summing to as well, so if you have 12 guitar tracks going into a Guitar Bus, and that's not clipping, but then when you add that together to your Vocal Bus, your Drum Bus, your Keyboard Bus, etc. and it's clipping your master, turn the busses down.

Of course, if there's effects involved and you have your levels too hot, you might end up with unwanted distortion or weird compression and that kind of stuff, so try to get the gain right first at the track level, then watch how loud you're going into your busses to avoid that issue. As I said, it's not the end of the world if you're too hot into your busses, so long as the final out isn't clipping, but if it's something crazy, you should really sort that out first.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Lord Tim

[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

[Lord Tim]

The rule really is work from the clips onward - think about it like building blocks:

1. Record your audio properly with good levels (if you're doing the recording yourself).

2. If the audio isn't the level you're aiming for, use the Track Gain control to adjust it. You can also use Clip Automation envelopes to adjust the individual clip level on your track to (say you have 5 different clips on a track and one of them is particularly quiet, you can boost the one up using Clip Automation). You're really aiming for -12dB to -3dB maximum.

3. Add in any track effects.

4. Adjust the Track Volume. You'll rarely be leaving this at 0dB - drop that down to at least -6dB initially to give yourself some breathing space. There's nothing wrong with then pushing that up to 0dB (or even more) if you need to, but don't start there.

5. Repeat that for every track.

7. If you've sent those tracks to busses, check to see if the busses are peaking out. If they are, turn your tracks down so they're not. As a tip, you can select all of your tracks you want to turn down, and then, while you're holding down the CTRL key, adjusting the Track Volume on one of the tracks will turn them all down at once. Do that until your bus is no longer peaking.

8. Add any bus effects.

9. After you've sent your busses to your master, if that's peaking, turn your busses down, just like you did with your tracks.

10. Add any master bus effects.

11. If that's clipping then, turn that down - this is the most important thing in the chain, if the master is clipping, your mix will distort in the export.

If you take that kind of methodical approach to it all and get it right as you go along, you'll get into the habit of just knowing roughly where to set your initial levels and it'll all come together really fast by itself.

Obviously don't sacrifice your actual mix by watching your levels too much - take a bit of a "fix the issues as they come" approach to it all rather than treating any of this as a set in stone rule - don't mix with your eyes, use your ears. Like I said, having stuff peaking along the way isn't a show-stopper. Try to avoid it, but if it happens, it's not a massive problem until it gets to your master. Do not clip that.

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Lord Tim
Broke the list up for readability

[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

[Lord Tim]

I haven't, but check out the Tutorials forum here - there's a great series by Cactus Music that goes really in depth right from the very beginning to really getting in deep with Cakewalk.

[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 

[Lord Tim]

I never really found the -18dB level thing to be true, personally. So long as you're hitting with the level in a decent range (and understanding how that relates to the gain structure of that particular plugin is being affected) then it's all good. Honestly, most plugins really don't care how hot you're hitting them, even into clipping - internally the math takes care of that pretty well - you can see that with null testing. But dynamic or distortion type plugins definitely need to be more considered when setting this up. Not that -18 is bad, mind you - if that works for you, then great! Going out to outboard gear, on the other hand.....

Edited November 14, 2022 by Lord Tim

[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. 

[Lord Tim]

The faders are there for a reason: they are your volume controls. If any tutorial is telling you to leave them where they are and mix with the gain controls only, it's wrong.

These are the steps:

1. Set your gain up so the tracks have the right amount of level going into them. They're not for mixing, they're for setting the initial gain, so it's appropriate for the effects on that track.

2. Then add your effects. Check that they aren't adding crazy amounts of gain to the output, if they are, turn the effect output down.

3. Then drop your volume sliders to something reasonable, and mix with them.

4. If, after all of that, it's still too loud at the end for your master bus (it shouldn't be, you can drop each track to 0dB if you want - just turn them down) then you can just turn down the master bus.

It really doesn't have to be hard. You just need to understand that each control has a function and if you use it as it was intended, then it all works.

But the biggest takeaway here is Gain is NOT your mixing tool. The Volume slider is.