This is not the video I was talking about but principle is the same.
Talking about -18DB, well could be that it was intended for analog workflows, I believe you when you say it.
What I do not agree on is that it is “BS”, in the digital domain you have the same problem with overlapping frequencies and the bandwidth of your summing bus, this is where gain staging will help enormously in my opinion and experience.
In practise I do not do gain staging at -18dBu but doing at levels in between -10 and -12.
However everyone has his own workflow with some common practises and a few specific ones 
It is hype, more or less.
The bus is 32bitFloat, that has more “bandwidth” than you will ever need.
Some plugins are calibrated to -18dBFS (none of the included plugins in Cubase)
They will start to color the sound (like their analog counterparts) if your levels approach or surpass that level.
What I could wish for, is a clear indication from the plugin manufacturer what level it is calibrated for and at least give us an input and output Gain on the plugin itself. Well, all plugins should really have this IMHO.
I guess it is so much discussed because all of the DJ’s discovering the wonderful world of DAW’s. Any guitarist that has plugged a guitar into a guitar amp, would know what happens if you turn up the Gain and down the Master knob. 
[quote=“peakae” Any guitarist that has plugged a guitar into a guitar amp, would know what happens if you turn up the Gain and down the Master knob. [/quote]
I do it just the other way round, then again, I’m a bass player.
Your points are valid, still I don’t get where I want to “mix-wise” when just blast every track to the max.
Ooh just to clarify this, as a bass player I turn up the master volume to the max and adjust my levels by setting the gain appropriate.
Only on full-tube amps by the way!!!
Yep. This is pretty much it,
If you are gain staging it is always a good idea to have all meters calibrated (or at least know their relative metering AES-17 or non-AES-17)
Here’s a
trusted calibration -18dbfs AES-17 997Hz(B4) Sine Wav (at 44.1/24)
You should see AES-17 -18db on all your dbFS meters and -21 RMS
For example:
Fabfilter Pro-Q2 meters show -18dbFS but Voxengo CurveEQ and SPAN do not.
Voxengo will show -21dbFS. (To change this you need to set the Voxengo metering scale config to dbFS+3)
Slate Digital’s will show -18 peak and -21 RMS or -3 VU on VTM.
Sleepytime DSP Records VU meters (stereochannel) will show 0 at -18 nominal level.
Focusrite is all calibrated to AES-17.
Waves PAZ is -18 peak -21 RMS
Normalising is a bad idea but it won’t increase your noise floor. All you’re doing is raising the volume which at some point you’ll have to turn down again.
here is a
EBU 0 at -20 dbFS and LUFS test file
with 6 db jump (from -26 to -20)
for European users
and compliant -20
AES_-20dbFS_LUFS wav
for the AES testers who want a -20
Back to the OP question. I am interested in this as I currently have a 1000+ track orchestral template to balance. My issue is that this template has most of the tracks disabled and if I enabled them all, my PC would likely end up in A&E.
I was wondering if it would be possible to create a Macro to set everything to your desired DB? Sure would be useful as a starting point for templates. There is also the issue of loudness of course as very ably explained here - Monitor Your Audio's Loudness | Advanced Features in Cubase Pro 8 - YouTube
this is laid out in detail for the benefit of all experience levels reading…
I have not found a section in the Key Commands for Pre-Gain, so creating a full macro wouldn’t likely be possible.
That being said, what I would do is:
Firstly, make sure to use Folder Tracks extensively in the template!
This would give me the benefit of good organization when using the Visibility section on the left of the main Mixconsole (F3) device.
I would enable visibility for only the needed tracks so only they appear in the Mixconsole.
I would select the first left-most track (on the main portion of the Mixconsole by clicking the track’s meter area)
I would select all the remaining tracks by scrolling through to the right-most track and Ctrl-Shift click (or cmd shift on mac) the meter on that track.
When all were highlighted/selected
Open the PRE Rack (ensure it is visible by selecting the pre/filters/gain/phase in Racks. or create and use key command for Mixer - Views: Filters/Gain or Mixer - Expand: Filters/Gain)
Q-Link the selected channels (or create and use a Key Command at Mixer Q-Link) and select “Abs” button (absolute value)
on the first selected track I would set the Pre-Gain by typing in a value.
All the selected tracks’ pre-gain settings will change to the value I enter.
Then deselect Abs and Q-Link and move on to the next operation!
If I wanted to set ALL the tracks in the project to the same Pre-Gain I would modify the steps above by making all 1000+ tracks visible in the Mixconsole,
select the first track
drag the scroll slider bar at the bottom of the Mixconsole to the last track and Ctrl-Shift Click its meter highlighting everything
then start from the Q-Link operation as described above.
Maybe I should have been clearer. Yes, but say you wanted to set up the mixer so that everything peaks at -8db, for each track there is a calculation involved. Putting all tracks to the same value would not achieve this.
That would be useful!
Take it a step further and Incorporate some basic frequency clashing identification routines from Izotope’s Neutron and that would be an auto-Mixer!
I jest of course!
I guess it could be exotically useful to have an auto recalculation to a given peak or rms value for each selected track. I would assume this could be based on the same routine that provides the Sttatistics in the Audio process menu.
There is no current way to do that automatically within the software that I can think of.
What is the problem on setting up the pre-gain for each track before mixing?
I put my take on this as a feature request
The problem is that I have 1268 tracks in this project
Z
Ok so the problem is practical, not technical, I guess.
Well, can’t you link all the channels and lower the pre-gain all together?
Or you want all the tracks to peak the same?
see my post above
all tracks peaking at a fixed value is not a gain staging
It would be a nice feature tho