How to “Gain Stage” when producing? (before mixing)

So I typically will have the gain plugin on every track I add in Ableton. I do this mainly to tackle gain staging later on. I try not to touch any of the volume sliders until I’m doing the final mix. But basically my process is this, I slap on the gain plugin and a VU meter (from Waves) on every single track I add. If you don’t have VU meter, it’s fine you can still do it by just looking at the peak dB graph while the audio is playing, you’ll just have to solo every sound to adjust the gain until it’s about right. But anyway, with the VU meter, you’re aiming for right around 0. It can go a little over 0 in places, but you wanna make sure it hovers right around 0. This translates to roughly -18dB, so it’s plenty of head room to work with. If you don’t have VU meter, just adjust the gain plugin while watching the green peak dB bar that Ableton has on each track. The fainter greens are your transients, the brighter green is your average dB. You want to try to get the top of that bright green bar to hover around -18dB.

As for your other questions, unfortunately every sample and sound is different, so it’s hard to setup a one size fits all solution to gain staging. You’ll pretty much always have to go through each sound at the start of mixing and adjust them accordingly. I typically just look at this process as my clean up time. I’ll try to get everything as clear as possible and give myself plenty of head room.

Hopefully that was at least a little clear, if you have questions about gain staging or just music in general feel free to shoot me a message. I can try to break it down in a different way if it’s easier to follow.

/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers Thread