Gain Staging in the box

Mixing
1

Hi Michael.
Huge fan of your work. I have learned a great deal from watching your videos here. Thank you.

I would like to know how you approach gain staging in the box.
Sometimes I get the impression that driving too much signal into plugins makes the sound become unpleasant. Almost as if it is being restrained.

  • Do you monitor how much signal you send into your plugins?

-Do you have a sweet spot from where you think the sound starts to “suffer” ( do you keep the signal at a certain level on the vu meters?)

Sometimes I get the impression that driving too much signal into plugins makes the sound become unpleasant. Almost as if it is being restrained. Hence the question.

Thank you so much.
Erik

2

Hi Erik,

If it doesn’t sound good, turn it down! That’s usually the path of least resistance when mixing.

all audio files go into the folders. I have a global trim to gain up or gain down the feed into them. So yan, if you’re pushing the inserts too hard it’s gonna break up or just not sound good.Unlike analog hardware, most digital plugins are good until they aren’t…

To understand how i mix completely in the box you’d need to watch my 8 episode video that I did with PureMix. If you wanna understand the hybrid approach or complete analog approach then you’ll wanna watch my MWTM videos.

9 Likes
3

Thanks for your reply Michael.