The Best Gain Staging for Virtual Instruments

Quick note: I still have a spot left in my 6-day Recording Boot Camp in LA November 9-14, 2015. Get info here

________

I was recently on one of my rants about the utter stupidity of recording to 24bit digital with high levels. Anyone that has followed me for a while knows that this is one issue that drives me crazy. Recording with “hot levels” to modern digital is so completely stupid. It has so many downsides and no real world upsides……. I better stop now or I will rant for another 10,000 words.

When I am recording to 24bit digital, I try and set my levels so that my PEAKS hit around -10dBfs, or about 2/3 the way up the meter. This is all the resolution and dynamic range that I would ever need in a real world situation and prevents clipping and stressing the analog stage of the converters. Even if we want to have a super loud end result, it is better to record with conservative levels…… sorry I am starting to go off again… let’s get to the point of this lesson.

One question I often get when discussing this issue is “What about working with virtual/plugin instruments?” I love this question because it is really important and my answer to this is:

Think about the levels of your virtual instruments the same way you think about recording audio tracks.

What this means is that you want the level of your virtual instruments to output with peaks around -10dBfs. While working with virtual instruments we do not really have the risk of losing a “performance of a lifetime” like we do when recording audio, but we still have a situation where hot levels out of our virtual instruments will lead to poor gain staging in the final mix, but more importantly, the “sweet spot” of most of your plugins that might follow your VI is not at the really high levels. Most of our plugins will sound better if we feed them conservative levels.

Many people make the mistake of trying to get proper levels by pulling the channel fader down, but this is the wrong place to do it (the fader affects levels after all our plugins). You want to go into the virtual instrument and pull the level down in the VI/plugin. On a simple VI you can usually do this with a master output, but if you are using a more complex sampler player or virtual instrument that layers many sounds, I prefer to attenuate levels on the individual layers to reduce the risk of overloading the master out of the sample player or VI.

Some people will say that they like the hot outputs from a VI because it sounds better, or even that they like the sound of the clipping, but, as with all things I try and teach you, your projects are YOUR projects and you should do whatever the heck you want.  I just want you to be making the best decisions to get the final results you really want. If you want to use hot levels out of your VIs, I STRONGLY encourage you to do two things:

1) Set up a virtual instrument and buss that to a new audio track, then set the output of the VI really hot so that you are close to clipping and record the audio output. Now do the same thing to another audio track, but set the output of the VI 10dB lower.  After you have recorded both versions, pull the fader of the “hot track” down 10dB and compare the two audio tracks. Is the loud one somehow better? Probably not. So unless the hot one is WAY cooler, why would you want to have levels that will not work as well with the plugins that will probably follow your VIs and make your gain staging in the final mix more problematic?

2) If you’re into the idea of clipping levels out of your Virtual instruments, I STRONGLY recommend that you set up experiments using clipping plugins or even the simple brick wall limiter to achieve a similar result and see if you like the sound or amount of control better. In my personal work, I have always preferred the sound and control of doing this kind of thing within a plugin (or hardware in some cases).

Working with conservative levels is not about being conservative. It is about greater control and power. Even if you want to make the most extreme brutal record ever, starting with good conservative levels and proper gain staging will help you get an end result that is more powerful and gives you more control over the creative process. Conservative levels let you do extreme and conservative productions better.

__

BTW, this month we are giving away a free mic from Roswell Pro Audio. It is the Min K47, a large diaphragm condenser inspired by another mic with 47 in the name.  You have to be on my Free Recording Advice Newsletter to win. You can sign up for both here.