n00bs - gain structure

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This is from a PM convo with Senator Adam, it may be a bit vague until you get used to things, but it might help...

Macc Wrote:
Senator Adam Wrote:To answer your question I don't have a method with the master fader besides adjusting it so the audio doesn't clip.

i.e. turning it down, right? Grin

Quote:It seems to always work fine for me (my mixes usually sound alright) so I haven't explored much in that area. I know that I need to though, and I will read up on the right methods. Gotta read up on some Bob Katz when I get time.

Do you have any suggestions on what I should read that refers to gain structure in mixing? For some reaon reading about dBs always makes me feel like I'm studying math, and that's what I dreaded most in school...

Regarding the master fader and so on, it isn't so much a matter of sound (although there's a couple of things to mention there) as a matter of ease of mixing. Maybe when it was all noisy and analogue etc ( Lovesmilie ) it was, but not so much now.

ANyway, the BEST advice is simply DO NOT MOVE THE MASTER FADER.

The only times I move the master fader are a) to listen to my mix at different volumes, and b) to avoid clipping at mixdown.

Now I know what you're thinking - 'that's what I do, what you on about?' Grin Lemme explain (I'll try to make this brief, you know what I am like Oops )

What you seem to be doing is: on the left, ie in the channels, applying lots and lots of gain, and then on the right, in the master, taking out loads of gain.

In fact that makes my point pretty well - why bother? Why not make it easy for yourself? You can't say 'it's no hassle' or else you wouldn't have asked the question in the first place, hehe Grin

The benefits of not moving the master are plentiful Smile You know exactly how much headroom you have, or how much you are clipping by. This makes mixing much much easier. But you do need to break the 'turn it up' habit.


The important bit: I think of it like a tree, or rather the roots. loads of fine little ones joining up and getting bigger, and then those joining up and those joining up and ending up all in one trunk.

BUT the 'sum' of the roots is NEVER greater than the size of the trunk - and you never get a branch bigger than the trunk Wink


Stuff to bear in mind: If this trunk (hippy cru Hahaha ) is formed from only two branches, each branch can be that much fatter. In this case, if they were equal, each would be peaking at -6dB. To put it another way, -6dB is half your mix. So if your drum track is peaking at -6dB, half your headroom is given over to your drums. Now if you put your bass in peaking at -6dB, the other half of your mix is going to be bass. That will give a master peak at 0dB - NO ROOM FOR ANYTHING ELSE. So if you want to add more to your mix, you have to move the master, which instantly adds another number/factor into your sums to confuse things.

But if you set both to peak (using faders or limiting or whatever) at -7dB, you have 2dB extra to play with, which when you're talking about a suspense 'eeee' string or soft pad is plenty.

So yeah, the more things in your mix, the quieter they have to be, right? Turning down the master is a false economy. Turning down the tracks is the way to conserve headroom and make things much much easier for yourself - provided you are aware of what track is your 'reference point', say the drums at -7dB in this case. If you leave that alone and mix to that track - which you KNOW is taking up the 'correct' amount of headroom - you'll find that you don't have to adjust many faders by very much at all. Smile

If a track is still too quiet and you run out of room on the fader, then it means the source material is too quiet - ie apply some gain to the source material (the audio file). I said about a 'couple of things to mention' earlier, this is one of them. If you find you're doing this a lot then you're rendering/recording your audio files much much too quietly and losing resolution, meaning things will start to sound grainy/8-bitty in certain cases. No point working at 24-bit if you're only using 10 of them (which is fecking quiet). Not only that, but you have to keep fucking about with the faders a lot. Get it right as early as possible in the signal chain.




So I might post this in the studio walls, may as well with all the n00bs about Hahaha


One thing I forgot to mention Adam, is that I turn down my master only at mixdown just as a safety precaution. However I am killing that habit off now too by leaving more headroom in the mix, so nothing clips, ever.





Chime in with q's etc if you wish...
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Nice one Macc !

Very good, informative (and funny) analogy!!!

Cool
Actually, one question springs to mind... about dB levels.

I studied dB's in collage (but not hard enough obviously!) Lol

Anyhow, say you had 2 tracks (drums + bass) @ -3 db's each, would that work ? I'm forgetting how the scale works I think, care to recap?
-6dB is half the available headroom.


-3dB is about 70%ish (some decimal points I can't be fucked to remember), so having two tracks running at peak levels of -3dB would result in clipping - they add up to 140% or so. Of course, you can then turn down the master, but all you are doing is effectively turning those channels down and bringing an unnecessary fader into the equation. Smile So do it on the channels.

*****In digital systems you ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT EXCEED 0dB, even if you wanted to. The exception here is when working at 32-bit floating point precision as Cubase etc etc do internally - that allows handling of numbers over 0dB. This is why you can, as Adam does, have all the channels running really hot into the master, then turn the master down to stop clipping there. On a real desk those channels would be clipped, not when working at 32-bit FP though, which gives over a thousand dB OVER 0 headroom Icon_eek

BUT BUT BUT your soundcard outputs at 16 or 24-bit resolution, meaning that if your master hits 0dB, it WILL clip. There is a 'bottleneck' if you like, at the output (your DA convertors). So better to have nothing clipping at all.*****

The thing to remember here n00bs - DO NOT allow your output to clip, and achieve that by controlling the channels, not by turning them allup and turning the master down. Sonically you won't notcie, but in terms of getting your mix right easily and without fucking about too more than is necessary, this is the way.


At this point I refer all n00bs to the digital clipping thread.
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Okay, gotcha... cheers Bob!
thanks macc!!!

i'm just in the midle of trying to get a tune to sound right Icon_eek
wotcher jurgen Wave
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Following on from what you said earlier Bob,

would -9dB be around 30% of yer headroom and -12dB approx 10 - 15% approx ? Is there a formula for calculating it?
Hahaha - I just replied in detail and was absent-mindedly fiddling with something with my foot.. I realised what it was when something popped out and my computer turned off Hahaha


Anyway, dB is a relative scale, not absolute. It is a logatrithmic scale, so what you just said is incorrect.

Secondly, even if you wanted to, you can't mix on paper by adding up percentages calculated from peak values. Mixing is waaay too complex for that... (The key words here are peak vs RMS. We're talking about peak volume, which doesn't tell you very much at all about perceived loudness, which is what you judge your mix on).

In short, if there was a formula I wouldn't have to post all this shit on here for you cunts Teef Wink


At your level Conor and co, just get these two principles into your head:

1) on your master fader, -6dB is half of your available headroom. More generally speaking, a change of 6dB is equivalent to a doubling/halving of the source value.

2) In a digital system, 0dB is absolutely 100% incontrovertable, unavoidable, unchangeable and err, your fucking daddy. You have to 'shoehorn' the elements in your tune into the available headroom - the more elements, the less loud each can afford to be (ignoring compression etc for simplicity here). As much as you may feel you can 'move the goalposts' by turning down the master fader, YOU CAN'T. All you are doing is making things harder for yourself.
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
ay good thread Smile
Macc Wrote:At your level Conor and co, just get these two principles into your head:

1) on your master fader, -6dB is half of your available headroom. More generally speaking, a change of 6dB is equivalent to a doubling/halving of the source value.

2) In a digital system, 0dB is absolutely 100% incontrovertable, unavoidable, unchangeable and err, your fucking daddy. You have to 'shoehorn' the elements in your tune into the available headroom - the more elements, the less loud each can afford to be (ignoring compression etc for simplicity here). As much as you may feel you can 'move the goalposts' by turning down the master fader, YOU CAN'T. All you are doing is making things harder for yourself.

Okay!

Gotit.
Applause


Macc, I'd buy you a beer, but I'm pretty damn far away... Instead I'll just give you a virtual one.

[Image: guiness-glass.gif]

Or two...
Thanks Macc! Smile

Macc Wrote:At this point I refer all n00bs to the digital clipping thread.

Oops Oops Oops
[Insert signature here]
Yeah, there's some good info in that thread.... and you can read that long post where I caned bhima Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha
[Image: protabl3.gif]
Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Macc Wrote:Yeah, there's some good info in that thread.... and you can read that long post where I caned bhima Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha

Just did!!!

Macc, you're a saint!!!

Grin
Macc Wrote:nd you can read that long post where I caned bhima Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha

(Lol + Teef)/Oops
[Insert signature here]
bhima Wrote:(Lol + Teef)/Oops

= Neutral
[Image: protabl3.gif]
Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
bhima Wrote:
Macc Wrote:nd you can read that long post where I caned bhima Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha

(Lol + Teef)/Oops













Hahaha
When I read the topic subject, I thought it was about how to gain structure in your tunes...

Roll

I really am a tosser, heh heh.

Hahaha
macc, you got some thing very wrong on that original post .
































































































































you missed a few smileys Teef
always happy to oblige...

Jig Nana Falcon [Image: kingteef.gif]
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Macc Wrote:[Image: kingteef.gif]

Rofl First time i've seen that one Hahaha
[Insert signature here]
what about this 1
Classiquex!! Hahaha Hahaha Hahaha
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Don Cherry Wrote:Every human is blessed in her or his life with one love (passion), no matter how long it may last. This Absolute love will last in one's heart and soul forever.
Lol Lol Lol
[Insert signature here]

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