Idiot's Guide to "Gain Staging"

[Mister Natural]

kindly enlighten me as to what it means to properly gain stage . . .

peace

[TheBev]

Gain Staging

[Martin Walker]

That's the perfect link for DAW gain staging TheBev!

Martin

[Mister Natural]

very helpful

thank you

[ConcertinaChap]

What sorted me was a remark in passing on this forum by The Elf some years back. He said (words to the effect of) it looks very disconcerting at first to see the meters bobbing round at the bottom of the scale while you're recording but once you get used to it, it gives you lots of freedom. I felt like I'd been given permission not to worry about not pushing the gain right up.

CC

[Hugh Robjohns]

...it looks very disconcerting at first to see the meters bobbing round at the bottom of the scale...

Yes, although the original R&D engineers did it for good, logical reasons at the time, the scaling of the 'traditional' digital peak sample meter -- and even worse those meters with expanded top-ends, like the default Logic meters -- have caused unbelievable levels of misunderstanding and foolish equipment operation. The inevitable result is overstressed analogue front ends dna monitoring chains, causing the 'hard digital sound' and ultimately resulting in massive damage to musical dynamics.

In a century musicologists will refer back to the 25 year period between the 90s and 2015 as the era of digital abuse, at least as far as recording quality was concerned.

I strongly recommend people ignore the useless standard digital peak sample meters in most DAWs and switch to something more appropriate, such as plug-ins with Bob Katz' K-system or the BS1770 loudness meters.

H

[Zukan]

You had a look at this Hugh and worth the 49 bucks?

[Hugh Robjohns]

I've not used that specific version of the K-meter, but I have a lot of time for the company's products and engineering. They were behind the Perception Plugin which I reviewed recently (and which will appear in a magazine shortly) and was very impressed with it.

This particular K-System meter has some useful extra bells and whistles too that make it very attractive, such as true peak metering (spotting any pesky inter-sample peaks) and full BS.1770 loudness metering modes.

Anything that encourages tracking and mixing with headroom has to be good, and at $49 this seems a no-brainer future-proof bargain to me.

H

[Zukan]

Thanks for the info pal.

Wallet.

[TheBev]

That's the perfect link for DAW gain staging TheBev!

Martin

Yup, I'm an idiot & even I could see that.

[Hugh Robjohns]

I'll be reviewing the meter plugs K meter in an issue soon...

[Jack Ruston]

I'm using K20 these days...completely agree with everything above....BUT don't feel you have to buy some amazing meter. All you really have to do is adjust to whatever you've got to work with and get a sense of how it should look. I accept that it is very difficult with eg the Logic meters where you basically don't see anything happening until you've gone too far.

J

[Hugh Robjohns]

Quite right Jack, and I totally agree... but sensible meters with sensible colour-coded regions make the job much more intuitive because it just looks right, and you don't have to analyse and interpret what the standard DAW meters are indicating. I'm playing with the MeterPlugs K-meter now and I like it a lot... (other K-Meter versions are available!)

H

[Zukan]

Well, for 49 bucks, the K-Meter was a no brainer and damn useful.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Yes, it's really good. If you configure it for 4x upsampling the peak displays will show inter-sample peaks with an error below 0.7dB, which is really handy. The ability to set the average meters to show the sliding loudness level (ITU-S) is a nice gentle introduction to the world of loudness metering too (although they don't include gating so aren't fully BS.1770 compliant... not that it matters). And the inclusion of pink-noise generators linked to the K-scale reference level, to allow quick alignment of monitor replay levels, is very helpful.

I'm very happy to recommend it for anyone with difficult-to-use DAW meters.

H

[ConcertinaChap]

Wallet! Heel!

CC

[ConcertinaChap]

Well I've had a play with the K-Meter and I can readily see how it's going to be useful. The manual is pretty good too. I do have to criticise the section of the manual that talks about calibrating the monitors (having just done that recently). This should be a plus because the plug-in has pink noise facilities built in, which should make the job pretty straightforward. But the manual says, "Adjust your monitor gain until the external level meter reads 83 dB SPL". No allowance for room size. That would be deafening here. Perhaps, Hugh, you could gently point them at your "Room Size vs Reference Level" table.

CC

[Hugh Robjohns]

I do have to criticise the section of the manual that talks about calibrating the monitors (having just done that recently).

Ian Kerr (the man behind MeterPlugs) has seen my review of the K-Meter in which I commented on this aspect. Essentially, Ian has just copied the set-up description Bob Katz' included in his initial K-Meter published papers, but they were targeted exclusively at the industry professionals (mostly AES papers) where a sufficiently large room to comply with the industry standard or 83dBC was a given.

Elsewhere in his on-line publications Katz has recognised the importance of adjusting the reference level down for smaller rooms... but that aspect didn't make it through to Ian's handbook.

So yes, less helpful than it could have been... but as long as you follow the set-up guide in my MAY 2014 article all will be well. And having the built-in pink noise generator levels linked to the K-? setting makes it dead easy to adjust.

H