How to affect plugin accross multiple tracks?

[Victor Flores]

Hello forum: I am gain staging a session with 72 tracks, and am using a gain plugin called Blue Cat on all tracks. I can change all my trim buttons in cakewalk at once by holding down control, and bringing down the trim level. But as soon as I try to do the same with the BC plugin...I hold control and bring down the gain knob and only the first track gets affected. All other 71 tracks remain in the 0db position. Any one know how to make the plugin change on all tracks at once? it can become super time consuming to change all 72 tracks one by one; and find out, you're not getting the desired result, so now you have to do it all over again and again. Thanks ahead.

PS: I tried using the connect button on the bottom, and they all change at once, but it doesn't keep. As soon as I close the window, they all go back to 0db.  

[Glenn Stanton]

does the BlueCat gain plugin probably doesn't support the ctrl-move like the native gain control. also, if you have any automation enabled, this can cause the level to snap to what value was set using the automation.  if you do have automation enabled, you can use the ctrl key on that track to make the change - ie.e say you're set at 0db, holding the ctrl key while dragging the volume down should let you change the value.

[Victor Flores]

Thanks for the quick response. I just came across this video after struggling for over a week with this issue. It tells you to group the plugins; and so I did, and it works. But even though I am happy to be able to change all 73 tracks at once, one still has to go through all the tracks one by one to change the setting to group, in order to have them change as a unit (group); which is time consuming, not to mention if you later decide to change your mind to not have them grouped, one would have to ungroup them one by one. None the less I guess the problem is solved. Thanks again.

[Glenn Stanton]

any reason you chose to use plugins instead of the native gain control? curious.

[msmcleod]

You can do this with a combination of groups and assignable controls:

[Victor Flores]

Glen: I went with what the tutorial by creative sauce suggested for gain staging which is at the point that I'm at teaching my self through videos. My goal was to give my self -10db of head room at the master track, and I wound up having to bring the 73 tracks to peak at about -26db to make that happen. The native gain(Trim) knobs only go down to -18, which was leaving my master track to peak at +11db. 

msmcleod: Thanks, I'll be looking into that; makes no sense at the moment, but will check it out later, so I don't want to rush it, and want to fully grasp it.

 

[Victor Flores]

Holy cow guys...I just really payed attention to your post msmcleod; and wow...I want to cry lol.. I just spent like 2 weeks turning those darn knobs one at a time for 73 tracks, and now I see what you mean. I just tried it out, and created 72 duplicate tracks of one that had the BC Gain plugin loaded up, and did it in a matter of minutes, and it works beautifully. Thanks guys

Edited November 25, 2022 by Victor Flores

[Bill Phillips]

On 11/24/2022 at 2:32 PM, Glenn Stanton said:

any reason you chose to use plugins instead of the native gain control? curious.

I used to do that but found that I'd randomly and inadvertently move input gain knobs without noticing until later causing a lot of consternation. So I began hiding the track input gain controls and using gain plugins as well and have the same problem as @Victor Flores particularly on duplicated tracks. But this discussion has got me rethinking that. Maybe I can keep the input gain controls hidden in all workspaces except for a gain-staging workspace that I use solely for gain staging. And for duplicated tracks I can use the assignable controls Groups suggestion from @msmcleod for input gain controls and other controls I tweak on duplicated tracks.

[Glenn Stanton]

also - more curiosity - is the reason for manipulating so many tracks gain due to a) too hot a record level? b) too low a record level? c) using a VI but not using the VI volume control? for me, i tend to check inbound client files for volume levels, noise, etc are part of prep, or if they're my own sourced files / clips  - making sure the peak levels are min -12db or more likely -18db. so i seldom have to touch gain controls unless i want the track to be a bit more hot going into the FX.

[Victor Flores]

Hey Glenn: I go a bit more in depth into the reason why in my second to last thread about my master fader being too hot. (Which you chimed in that thread as well) but here's the scoop. I watched creatives sauces' video on gain staging; and he suggests -18 RMS and -12 Peak aprox. I tried leveling all audio (No VST instruments) tracks to -12 peaks, and after doing so, the Master fader was at +13db. So I brought all the gain knobs down as much as I could, and the master fader was still in the positive. So I remembered the "Blue Cat Gain plugin" to bring down the gain even more because it can go down to -60db. I wound up having to go to -26 on all tracks,  just to get the master fader at -12db peak.  

[Lord Tim]

Just bear in mind that gain is usually before any effects, sends, etc. so if you have a compressor or amp sim on your track, what gain you feed into it will directly affect how it'll respond to that signal.

Cakewalk doesn't give a crap about levels being all over the place internally - it won't clip. So long as the master isn't clipping on export, really - go nuts. There's "best practices" like Mike says on Creative Sauce and it's not a bad idea to keep things in check so you're not having to wind back any masters, but don't stress about it too much.

On the other hand, if you get the gain wrong going into your compressors or amp sim or tube saturation, then it's a big deal because you might find that you'll get those reacting wrong to the signal (either not enough to push an effect, give you the grit you need, or is way too much and is making that effect distort or be unable to control it properly). This goes for running external hardware effects units too - you need to get the levels right going into those.

Like we talked about in the other thread I replied to, try to get it right as you're recording first, and if you can't for whatever reason, or using someone's else's tracks you've imported, try to have the gain at a decent level (-18 to -6 is about right) but ultimately the track volume rather than the input gain is what you should be turning up and down to control your track levels. You shouldn't really need to be bulk turning down any gain controls unless there's a big problem with the tracks themselves.

[Victor Flores]

I started from scratch tonight. Got rid of trim plugin; selected all tracks, went into clip, selected gain; brought it down to -6db. Bounced all tracks. Played song through entirety. And then proceeded to lower or raise gain knob on top to bring peak levels to -12 or close to it on all 73 tracks. Played the song again, and when it was all said and done; the master fader was peaking at  +21.4db

Really thought starting at a lower level (-6) was going to fix the problem. But back to the drawing board. 

[Lord Tim]

OK, go back to basics here - you're definitely doing something wrong along the way.

First:

Don't just turn up or down your gain on ANY/EVERY track. That's not a volume control. That adjusts how much signal goes into your effects bin, and to the track itself. It's for adjusting a clip that's the wrong level, not for mixing.

On a single track, with any effects bypassed, with your volume set to 0dB and the gain set to 0.0, is that track clipping? It shouldn't be. Aim to have the signal somewhere between -18 and -6. Go through your tracks and do that for every one.

If you enable the effects on a particular track and then it peaks out, then you want to adjust the effect output to have it sitting in that sweet spot we dialed in with the effects bypassed.

Next:

If you play them all together, they WILL peak out. the master That's because the volume of each track is cranked. You want to go through each track and drop the volume down substantially. The gain controls how much signal goes into a track, the volume controls how much signal comes out of it and goes to the master, basically.

You should be able to select all of your tracks, and do CTRL+left mouse button drag on the Volume slider and drop them all at once. Just drop them all until your master is no longer clipping.

 

Gain and volume sound like they do the same thing, and in a way they do, but they serve different purposes in a mix.