Christopher Carvalho. This article serves to help you understand the concept of gain staging and how to apply it when mixing in Logic Pro X. Gain staging is level management. It comes from the analogue days proper gain staging logic pro x free download it was essential to get a good signal-to-noise ratio whilst preventing clipping distortion. More info on that.
Gain staging was also needed to make sure that the level going into each hardware unit was optimal. Using pre-fader metering in Logic Pro X is essential to practice gain staging.
However, if we remain in post-fader mode defaultwe may be unaware of how hot those levels were before the fader adjusted them. For example, if the level shows dBFS, but our fader is at dB, that means the level before fader is at 0dBFS, which could be giving the plugins we use on that channel a very hard time. So with pre-fader metering on, we know the level of the tracks even with the fader all the way down.
From proper gain staging logic pro x free download we can do some simple pre-mix housekeeping. As early in the signal flow as possible. Attaining the ideal level in your audio tracks is as easy as using the clip-gain feature in the region inspector. I would play the track through, get a rough idea of the level at which it is peaking, and simply apply the maths to the gain control in the inspector with all of the regions on that track selected. See below. I recommend you look into using the K-System, or for a very quick and easy way to do this, I wrote a blog on how to do this simply using your ears and the Proper gain staging logic pro x free download app for Mac.
Now that you have calibrated your monitoring, it will be near impossible to overcook the mix as anything louder than dBFS RMS will be loud to your ears, forcing you to practice decent level management. The solution is as simple as loading a Gain utility Logic stock plug-in on the master bus Stereo Out and raising the volume of the mix from there. You should be able to get it loud enough that you can hear it comfortably whilst preventing the channel from clipping. At this point, your mix is well balanced and the level on the master bus is close enough to 0dBFS without clipping.
At this point, you might be tempted to use some dynamics processing on the master bus to increase perceived loudness. But before you grab your favourite compressor or limiter, I suggest that you bounce the mix out to 24 bit and do all of this in a separate mastering session.
Give some time between the two sessions so that you can come back to the Mastering stage witrh fresh ears. Sign up to Labs for a bundle of free resources to help you create and release your music. Music Production. What is gain staging? The fader is in itself a gain stage. This is especially true if any of them are dynamics processors such as a compressor. Consider it housekeeping. Music Production Recording in the stones of Stonehenge.
