Gain Stage multiple tracks simultaneously?

Is it possible to Gain Stage multiple tracks simultaneously? e.g.

Under what circumstances would you want to do this? What are you trying to accomplish?

Typically different Tracks will have different sounds on them, at a variety of levels, and different insert effects so each audio path is unique. Therefore youā€™d need your gain staging to be unique for each Track.

The question strikes me a bit like asking if you can simultaneously drive to New York and LA.

Andā€¦ can you?

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Well I can, but most folks cannot.

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Hi, the reason Iā€™m asking is; for the past few days Iā€™ve been watching a live seminar being held by a group called Mastering dot com ā€¦ they hold these webinars occasionally and call them ā€œFix the Mixā€ and spend a few hours for 3 days demonstrating their approach to doing a mix, while trying to recruit students . Out of curiosity I attended this most recent one . One of the emphasized approaches to their method, was to 1st , pre gain stage all your tracks to the exact same DB as a starting point. In their session they stated, -10 to -20 . They were using Logic as a DAW. and opposed to setting each track individually, they were able to *with Logic, select all tracks and pre gain stage the entire project to a specified value . -20 db in this demo . I wanted to try this in Cubase, to determine if there was an advantage to approaching my mix using this method . however, it is tedious to go into each track and set the pre gain so theyā€™re all identical . this is the reason for the question

Not exactly what you are looking for, but an approximative way to do this is to use (as ā€˜regularā€™ tracks linking doesnā€™t allow the linking of the ā€˜Preā€™ section), in the MixConsole, the Quick Link function :

  1. Select the involved tracks
  2. Activate the Quick Link button in the MixConsole toolbar.

  1. Set the Gain as wanted on one track : the other follows, but only in a relative way, which means that adding +2 dB to one will add +2dB to each of the others, no matter the Gain value already set for it. It behaves the same way when trying to use the <ctrl + click> function to bring a Gain value to 0 or entering it with the keyboard).
  2. Unactivate the Quick link button.

Maybe it could help, thoughā€¦

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If you set this up once on a bunch of Tracks and save that as a Template you can use that as a starting point for future Projects.

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thatā€™s a good idea . thanks! . I also went back and reviewed the video of how they did it in Logic . missed it the first time . they selected all tracks and did a global Normalize . I attempted this with one project in Cubase, however I think it crashed because the tracks were too long and many. I need to try with a smaller project. still donā€™t know if itā€™s possible. Iā€™m not a big fan of Cubase Normalize as it appears too black box, e,g. seems to be timing out in the process and Iā€™ve yet to observe a visible change in size of the wave form. anyway, thanks again!

Standard peak level normalizing is pretty much useless for gain staging, as it only considers the highest sample value in the whole audio (this is why you can sometimes see no change in the waveform). You might have better luck with loudness normalization, but you need to be a bit more careful especially with highly dynamic material, as it might exceed 0dBFS.
Personally, I just use good old pre-gain for gain staging, as that works on audio as well as instrument tracks. Sometimes with a help of a VU meter, but over time you get a feel for it and can get in a good spot by just looking at the channel meters.
You could also try Hornetā€™s VUmeter plugin (less than 3ā‚¬), which can can do automatic gain staging either to VU or peak (whichever comes first, which is the smarter way to do it). Slap it on every channel (with Quicklink), hit auto, play the loudest part of the project, and youā€™re done. Not perfect, but quite good.

Same here.

I only normalize as a corrective when the source material is unusually low.

Ok, well obviously Iā€™m a little confused . so I just reviewed the webinar demo that got me here in the first place . this engineer demonstrating global gain staging, he had 65 tracks and started off doing them individually and stated he was gonna show a trick. He selected all the tracks, opened up a Peak Region Normalize process, set it to -20 db, and one click later, all tracks adjusted up or down ā€œtoā€ -20 db. So, Fese, I hear what youā€™re saying about normalizing to the highest peak, and in the Cubase Normalize Process it does allow you to set your target db . what am I missing here? thanks again everybody for your input!

I think one caveat here is that normalizing peak levels doesnā€™t do you any good as far as actual perceived loudness goes. Peak to loudness ratio can be very different comparing for example cowbell to electric bass. So normalizing the two to peak is to some questionable.

The other caveat is whether or not you have very different levels on a track, i.e. different events have very different levels. If you donā€™t, then instead of doing it this way you can just grab the faders and set your levels that way. And if you want it pre-inserts you can do the same by just setting your input trim level. Doing it for each track makes sense if you want to get a basic level between the tracks that is a good first balance between instruments. After all, the goal with a mix isnā€™t to have everything be equal.

Ahh, I see the source of confusion. In Cubase Normalization is applied to Audio Events and not Tracks. Try Selecting all the Audio Events and Normalize them.

That said Iā€™m highly skeptical of ā€˜one size fits allā€™ audio processing in most normal circumstances. Itā€™s really easy in audio engineering to do stuff because it seems like what you should do instead of having a good reason to do something.

hey guys, raino, mattiasNYC >>> I see and agree with both your points . that being said, I believe the intent of this group (mastering dot com) with this approach is to initially ensure (i.e. set a benchmark) that guarantees enough headroom for each track to accommodate adjusting mix volume and any processing plug-ins without getting into a clipping, or nearly maxed out situation . I see them as trying to promote an air of caution from this perspective. they are attempting to teach people how to mix . I dropped in on their webinar out of curiosity as they hit me up with emails inviting me . e.g. Iā€™ve gone in really hot on some tracks and before I ever got where I wanted, I was peaked out on my plugins trying to get the affect I wanted . so, from that bozo perspective, I understand their conceptual approach. Then again, I agree with Raino, "skeptical of one size fits all " . Back to square one, Iā€™d like to examine their approach with one of my projects, as Iā€™ve never done it this way before . and was hoping Cubase had a quickie set up to do this . Iā€™ll try again . if all else fails, Iā€™ll do the one track at a time jst to test their approach . thanks again! tg

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I saw the same thing done on StudioOne. He selected all the tracks, set a normalization peak level (-12) in this instance, went to some macros and hit ā€œnormalize tracksā€. And bam, gain-staging done! All tracks are set to a -12 peak level just like that.

I read a ton of these threads, and it seems like people get really bogged down with technical stuff. Basically, before you add any processing there are two stages:

  1. Clean up your audio
  2. Gain stage

In the gain staging process, I have to set up a VU meter (because itā€™s closer to human perceived loudness and slower), then go track by track adjusting the gain levels until I get a desired level. This is tedious.

Why canā€™t I have the option, to simply set the gain on these tracks so that they all peak at the same level, this way I can get on with it.

Reaper does this same thing with gain staging, normalizing the tracks to a specific peak level or, even better, a specific LUFS. Seems like a nice easy quick way to gain-stage and you arenā€™t really losing anything.

Iā€™m kind of shocked at how many things Reaper does, and much easier for a 60-dollar piece of software.

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I disagree. Adjusting levels is gain staging. We only need to do this if the levels need adjusting. If Iā€™m in the process of adding sounds to an existing project Iā€™m not going to add things that are miles louder than everything else, Iā€™m going to add whatever it is at an appropriate level. If thatā€™s the process then thereā€™s really no need to ā€œgain stageā€ everything to some sort of arbitrary level (see exception below).

Also, normalizing to peak wonā€™t do you any good if youā€™re looking for an evening out of loudness. In other words the cowbell, strumming guitar, ride cymbal and electric bass may peak at the same level but they might not be what you want. And if you instead normalize to loudness peaks wonā€™t be equal.

Back when I used to mix a mostly music Iā€™d often start with drums, percussion and bass and get a balance between them that worked for the song. Not once as far as I recall did I decide to first equal those items out so they were perfectly even (either by loudness or peak). Instead I just grabbed faders and adjusted to taste. If / when I added EQ, compression etc. I just adjusted as I went along. If I had evened everything out I would still have performed the exact same tasks anyway so the process would just have been longer. And then I just moved on to the next instrument to add. Same procedure - set the level roughly using the fader, add effects and adjust as I go along. Have to do that anyway.

The only real reason to not do that in my experience has been when the job begged for a more dramatic change. In other words the song was tracked and only the mix is left, but the mix is supposed to greatly shape the song. Sometimes when that happened it made sense to just get rid of essentially everything that was applied to try to see if anything else would pop up in my head in terms of artistic expression. This would be the one exception I can recall.

But generally Iā€™ve never found that sort of broad ā€œgain stagingā€ to be beneficial assuming Iā€™m working in a reasonably calibrated room using a reasonable process during production.

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I donā€™t know, all I know is I just learned it and it allowed my mixes to finally breathe like never before. So, thatā€™s what I do.

I set up a VU meter, and I make sure that my levels are hitting where I want on every single track, I DO NOT use the faders, I only use the gain to bring the wave form up and down. I may even be surgical, and find a spot that is too soft, grab my scissors and cut it out, and gain it up a bit.

Itā€™s all level matching.

Once that is all done, I then do my panning and balancing using the faders.

After this is all finished, I then add my processing EQ, Compression.

Two stages:

  1. Attenuating or corrective EQ
  2. Polishing EQ

Same with compression. Corrective, then polishing. Throughout this process, I make sure my levels donā€™t change. After this, I send everything into a ā€œ2bussā€, and do a lite master.

This is the basic process, a lot more goes into it but the steps are there and I recorded and mixed and mastered my first song, and it feels like Iā€™m listening to another band I found on Spotify that was recorded at an actual studio.

Thatā€™s the process I learned from ThinkSpace ā€œIntro to Mixingā€, and itā€™s changed my world, and workflow.

To each their own, if a mix sounds good it sounds good. For me this process has renewed a desire to make music.

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I donā€™t doubt that it helps a lot of people solve a problem, I just mean that itā€™s a problem I think at least many of us who have been around for a while donā€™t really run into because of how we learned engineering in the past.

So really the emphasis on my post was probably ā€œassuming Iā€™m working in a reasonably calibrated room using a reasonable process during production.ā€ Iā€™ve definitely worked with composers that have used virtual instruments and everything is close to peaking, and if someone just sat down and mixed that itā€™d be annoying or sound ā€˜crampedā€™. So in those cases I just group all faders and pull it all down, or alternatively if audio has been rendered I just pull down the clip gain across the board. I still donā€™t hit a target value though, but I see your point if you feel like it sounds better now.

Iā€™m a bit old fashioned I admit, but I feel ā€œgain stagingā€ is a fad. Similar to side chaining compressors were a few years back. Iā€™m old enough to remember a time before DAWs and no one talked about gain staging back then. Engineers just used their ears to find the sweet spots throughout the signal chain.
Not saying thereā€™s anything wrong with being mindful of your levels but I feel itā€™s been blown a bit out of proportion. Especially if youā€™re mixing in 32bit floating point bit rate or higher. You have a LOT of headroom.

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Same here.