Reply To: Mixing Flow

[Andrew MckenzieParticipant]

Hi Lara, what I mean by "gain staging" is adjusting the levels of the tracks (either at individual track level or by using the gain knobs at the top of the virtual SSL mixer in Reason). I've seen other people use a trim plugin at the top of each track in pro tools to achieve a similar thing.

The idea is to control the levels at the top of the signal chain to prevent any clipping into plugins down the line. If I remember correctly, if you use the faders to adjust the track levels it doesn't adjust the incoming level at the top of the chain before the fader (i.e. it's still a potentially hot signal hitting the plugins)

If I have it wrong, then I hope someone will correct me. 🙂

Also I like to have all the faders around zero to give me more control when starting to mix....if a fader is pushed down to start with it gives me less room to push it down further if needed. The example below is where I have pulled the track down by about -9db to get the optimal level (around -10) with the fader at zero.

Cheers....Andrew

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Andrew Mckenzie.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Andrew Mckenzie.