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This week, we welcome back mixing and mastering engineer Larry Holcombe for a new set of Tech Tips to help get your tracks into a 3D space.
By using these techniques, we can separate elements of our track to be either further back or more upfront, while owning their own space in the frequency spectrum. This helps with clarity, making them sound more professional and pleasing to the ear, and ultimately helps your tracks ‘breathe’.
You’re in safe hands here with some professional tips and tricks that you can transfer to any DAW, so check it out!
Hi Larry. I don’t understand in the gain-staging video why you are showing us for the kick and snare to reach -6dB and then when you’ve set it up properly you are turning it down to -inf and then start again with gain-staging but this time you are hitting ~-14dB. For what reason did you do this -6dB in the first place?
Thanks Paddy.
Hey Paddy - there are 2 different levels at play here. The input level coming into the channel and then the output level being sent to the stereo bus or any sub mix buses that may be being used. The input level is the level which is coming in and is fed to each plugin chain. So I suggest an input level of -6 for percussive sounds and between -12 and -18 for sustaining sounds. Often plugins are designed to work within a certain range or sweet spot. This is what we are achieving using this technique. The -14 level refers to the output level of the kick drum as a reference. This will then allow us to hit the stereo bus (with all our individual channels summed together) again at around that -6 Input level to again make our stereo bus plugin chains happy. Does that make sense?
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Thanks Larry for the detailed explanation. Now I got it, yes. That makes totally sense. Cheers Paddy