I remember when I first started recording and mixing. That at least gives me a good start, and means I don’t have to mess around with faders quite so much. Then I’ll highlight all my tracks and turn down all of their gain values at once until my K-system meter is reading around +2 to +4 RMS (which translates to -18 to -16 dBfs). Plenty of headroom, and my mixing volume in the room is consistent across mixes, which is nice.Ī little hack that I use is once I get everything calibrated, I’ll play the loudest part of the song and see where the RMS value is on my K-system meter. I usually mix the loudest part of the song to be in the red just a little bit on my K-system meter, meaning the RMS level is at about -16dBfs or so. What this means for me is that I calibrate everything so that RMS -20dBfs hits my ears at 68dB of loudness. Personally, I use “K-system metering” and mix at K-20. Wondering if anyone else faces these issues with disparities in default instrument and plugin gain staging and how others deal with it? Reply
attenuating software instrument volume, resetting track compressor threshold values, etc.) I often feel that some of the original track mojo is lost and in the tweaking process I’ve lost perspective on the larger mix. But by the time I’ve restructured gain on default instrument tracks (e.g. I often find myself spending time restructuring DAW default instrument tracks to bring the gain down so they match my lower gain audio tracks, and so software instruments don’t slam plugins like Slate VMR that sit in the beginning of the track processing chain.
I follow the advice of Graham and people like Fab Dupont that suggest recording and mixing individual tracks around -18 db but find it frustrating and wonder why default software instruments and channel strips in DAWS like Logic Pro X default to very high gain (e.g. More of an observation, but it seems there’s no industry standard for ITB gain staging. It has to be said that your point on using Clip Gain and / or a Trim Plug in to keep each channels levels conservative enough as to not exceed 0dbfs when summed ITB is such a great shout – as I have no idea about the ‘resolution’ deficiencies of running some channels with their faders set really low ? Anyway – Thank you for taking time to make such informative and helpful videos & tutorials ! I’ve been an engineer for a while now and have worked on some cool records – but I have only just set up my own ‘mix room’ – so I’m a little late (at 46 years old) in joining the ‘mixing party’ ! Gain staging in the digital domain when tracking is something most producers are becoming wise to now in order to leave sufficient headroom for mixing ITB … I know for a fact that the last producers I have made records with as an engineer have been super vigilant at checking the levels of everything hitting the Pro Tools Inputs ! So it makes total sense to employ the same mind set when mixing ITB …. Hey Graham – I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your videos, tips and tutorials – Really excellent stuff sir – keep up the great work.