Gain staging is a critical process in mixing.
Gain and volume are two sides of the same coin. Gain refers to the strength of a signal coming into a device, while volume refers to the strength of the output leaving that device.
You should be aware that digital and analog systems measure audio differently. In your DAW, gain is measured in terms of dBFS (decibels full scale). And this is why a good rule of thumb to remember is: -18 dBs (roughly) on the analog domain equals 0 dB on the digital realm.
Be careful when listening as louder signals will always sound better to the human ear. It doesn’t matter who you are or how trained your ear is. This is just how human hearing works.
Output level meters show volume levels within a project file, and are usually one of the most accessible tools on the main screen of your DAW.
Each track will feature a peak level meter to let you know how loud it is, and there will be a separate one for the master as well.
Avoid Clipping
Source: https://cymatics.fm/blogs/production/what-is-gain-staging
Headroom refers to the amount of gain available before an audio system is overloaded. To help illustrate this, the level meters in most DAW’s use an intuitive color coding system:
Green levels are good
Yellow levels are getting close to clipping
Red levels are clipping
Source: https://cymatics.fm/blogs/production/what-is-gain-staging
In order to get a quality master out of your song, it’s necessary to start with a good mix.
For this reason, you should always keep the master channel fader at 0 dB.
If your master channel is in the red, you aren’t leaving yourself enough headroom to properly master your track.
Leave yourself at least -6 dB of headroom on the master channel while you are mixing your song. This will ensure that whoever masters your song has enough headroom to work their magic, whether that means doing it yourself, or outsourcing to a professional mastering engineer.
If your master channel is being overwhelmed with gain, you should select all of your tracks and turn them all down at once rather than reduce the level using the master fader.
If the volume sounds too quiet while you’re working, you can always turn up your speakers, but you can’t fix a bad mix in the mastering process.
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