Academy Dashboard › Forum › Production › Mixing › Can we talk about the master bus chain, please? › Reply To: Can we talk about the master bus chain, please?
Guido tum SudenHi Lisa,
Just to be sure. You know, that the manual is talking about 0 dBVU on its own VU-meter, which is set to -18 dBFS RMS so some very hard drum hits will be around -6 dBFS Peak?
That said, if you have plugins on your master bus chain your gain staging has to be very good. After setting up your mix without plugins and mixing it, you could put on some plugins on the master bus, but by then a VU Meter on the master bus should already show something around 0 dBVU. If you look after your gain staging when you put plugins on the channels it shouldn't change much throughout mixing.
As an example, with the SDDR2 gain staging is easy. If you put it on a channel which is lower than 0 dBVU you use the trim to go there. After using the plugin use the Output Gain to go back to the loudness the channel had before. You should do that with every plugin. If the plugin doesn't have input or output gains, use a gain plugin.
If you're not using gain staging as much, that's okay as well, but then I would engage all master bus plugins after finishing the mix.
Cheers,
Guido