Another Gain Staging Tutorial
Posted May 18, 2022, 8:38 PM UTC
1618
The best thing I did to improve my mixes was to visually track my master output signal through an external audio interface and record and listen back obviously.
Most of the time I'm never using the master channel on my mixer to full output so I have no accurate reading of my master channel. Only the individual channels, so by watching my headroom on my interface I can see if I'm clipping when I'm mixing two tracks at the same time.
Motu m2 or m4 is the best imo, those Scarlett's and other interfaces only have blinking lights or 5 led indicators, the motus have a full lcd display.
2
Great advice
1
I have an external VU meter tracking my mix while I'm Twitch DJing as well as the volume levels just so I know more accurately when I go into the red.
https://www.amazon.com/Douk-Audio-Spectrum-Display-Indicator/dp/B083DTNT3W
It also looks cool on stream!
1
oh wow hell yes thank you this is amazing
2
Thank you!
2
More DJs need to learn about this.
2
It's good advice more DJs need to really learn, don't crush your mix in the red ever. I wish DJs would stop doing that, especially in clubs or venues with a audio engineer.
A lot of people don't understand that leaving a bit of headroom actually tends to make the music sound louder.
I liked this particular video because it also discusses how multiple channels can add up to cause redlining at the master. Important as so many people use 4 channels now.
The other thing that would really help DJs is understanding a tiny bit f psycho acoustics.
We know for a stone cold fact that our perception of volume is completely flawed.
Out brain will literally turn down the perceived volume of loud things over time once we know it’s not a threat.
DJs constantly turning the gain up to get more oomph are literally chasing a feedbackloop in their mind. The mind is gradually turning perceived sound down as they keep increasing gain.
The other useful nugget is that all humans will perceive a louder sound between two similar sounds as a “better” sound. Until it gets into clipping,but even then the effect can still hold.
So DJs are trapped in this loop of trying to get more oomph and also improve perceived quality to keep up with crowd noise. Then the crowd talks/yells louder to be heard over music and around and around we go.
As mentioned below this is why it’s important for a venue to be properly tuned by a pro, and have hard limiting presets for different capacities. In a pro setup the dj shouldn’t have any responsibility for overall house volume at all.
Partially agree, but experience is the best teacher. Inexperienced DJs will prioritize loudness as much as inexperienced listeners.
Louder does not sound better to us, even on an instinctive level. Clarity sounds better. As we gain experience we tend to focus more on quality and less on quantity.
At some point we graduate from 'Wow look how loud this is' to 'Check out how good this sounds.'
In my opinion it is akin to that point in life where we transition from focusing on how loud our exhaust is toward how clean we can get our car.
Focus on excellence. Any asshole can be obnoxious.
I get your point, but I’m referring to science from clinical testing.
Louder does sound better, it’s been shown in clinical tests over and over. Obviously there are limits to this, bit it’s a known effect in psychoacoustics. Between two similar sounds in timbre and tone in blind tests, humans pick the louder one as higher quality.
This is also why the entire industry of audiophile gear is built on selling things that have benefits that aren’t actually objectively measurable. It’s all about the perception. The difference exists in peoples heads.
People without a background in psych/neuro aren’t really aware that we don’t experience the world in real time from our senses. Our brain throws away an estimated %70 of our sensory input at any given time as it’s not relevant to our consciousness in that moment.
It edits the rest and presents it to our conscious mind as “reality”.
This affects our perception of sound in the same way as other senses.
Stand next to something that smells offensively bad, almost unbearably bad? Stay there for half an hour and it’s nowhere near as bad. Our brain is literally turning down the sensitivity of our smell in an involuntary process. It’s exactly the same for hearing.
Focus on excellence? Hell yeah my friend. The “average” sound system is so much better now than it was 20 years ago. It’s a great time to be into audio.
Also, percieved 'loudness' can be seperate to gain altogether.
A track can sound 'loud' even when the gain is way down. That is due to the properties of the audio, not the amplification.
That is why producers try to guage 'loudness' as well as gain staging on their mixes. There are some plugins for loudness monitoring, but I don't think they're as good as trained ears.
Just being aware of this in your mixing makes you a better DJ than most.
Absolutely. Related but separate issue that every dj should have familiarity with.
Most modern music, especially commercial EDM is mastered with brick wall compression. The waveform is essentially a block rather than having large peaks and troughs. Thankfully there seems to be a movement back towards dynamic range in recordings again, but the more commercial the sound the less dynamic range it tends to have.
This has been shown to be very fatiguing over time to a listener so the response to that fatigue from a dj is turning the gain yet higher to get that oomph feeling back.
You can go into the red on a Pioneer mixer without hurting audio quality (just avoid the clip light). The signal to noise ratio will even be better.
Even the clip lights are largely fictional on Pio gear. There’s still headroom after red.
Yep. I think you can go to +21db over 0 on a DJM-900NXS2.
You *can* sure, but it's really not best practice to do so. At all.
The issue I find most common is that smaller bars/clubs don't have one of them...their amps are locked away, "set and forget" and a certain level, the night fills up, the people noise/bodies absorbing the sound, the DJs only option to "turn it up!!!" like punters are requesting, is to start pushing the channels / master into the red.