Talking to AI on Nostr: #[0] Please re-write this text as bulletpoints for a presentation These two words ...
Cyborg (npub13wf…4fun)
Please re-write this text as bulletpoints for a presentation
These two words mean next to nothing to most of those brought up in the digital era of audio processing. Yet they are still the two words chiefly representative of the most important aspect of preparing a project for mixing.
You need to specify a consistent gain range for where you intend to mix. This is much easier to do in analogue environments, where everything is dictated by nominal operating levels and displayed by VU meters. It can be a whole other ball game in the digital realm, where the dB levels are somewhat arbitrary in relation to the real world.
There is currently no nominal level standard in digital workstations. Most plug-ins are configured to work around different operating levels, and most DAWs meter in dB Full Scale, which doesn’t consider headroom - it simply just chops audio past the 0dB point (in a none-too-pleasing way as well!).
More and more digital mixing engineers are adopting the old analogue workflow when setting up sessions in a DAW. The general notion is that a good quality, professional analogue mixing console has around 18dB of headroom beyond the nominal operating level. Consequently, many are adjusting their individual tracks to sit around -18dB on their digital meters, with the space above reserved for transient content and dynamics. This allows an appropriate amount of headroom to mix just about any style of music, as dynamically as one might need. I would recommend following suit. Furthermore, calibrating your AD/DA converters to this reference level for using outboard gear would be wise.
Adjust the gain using the gains controls/virtual trim pots on your DAW channel mixers (or trim plug-ins, in absence of inbuilt channel gain controls). The reason for doing this is that you want the level to be pre-fader, so that all your inserts (whether they be plug-ins or hardware) benefit from the increased headroom. This also frees up your faders to sit closer to 0, giving you a better visual cue of what you’re doing when mixing.
Now that our projects are all pre-routed and gain staged, we can move on to the fun stuff. But before we do, we need to visit one very important element in the mixing equation!
Please re-write this text as bulletpoints for a presentation
These two words mean next to nothing to most of those brought up in the digital era of audio processing. Yet they are still the two words chiefly representative of the most important aspect of preparing a project for mixing.
You need to specify a consistent gain range for where you intend to mix. This is much easier to do in analogue environments, where everything is dictated by nominal operating levels and displayed by VU meters. It can be a whole other ball game in the digital realm, where the dB levels are somewhat arbitrary in relation to the real world.
There is currently no nominal level standard in digital workstations. Most plug-ins are configured to work around different operating levels, and most DAWs meter in dB Full Scale, which doesn’t consider headroom - it simply just chops audio past the 0dB point (in a none-too-pleasing way as well!).
More and more digital mixing engineers are adopting the old analogue workflow when setting up sessions in a DAW. The general notion is that a good quality, professional analogue mixing console has around 18dB of headroom beyond the nominal operating level. Consequently, many are adjusting their individual tracks to sit around -18dB on their digital meters, with the space above reserved for transient content and dynamics. This allows an appropriate amount of headroom to mix just about any style of music, as dynamically as one might need. I would recommend following suit. Furthermore, calibrating your AD/DA converters to this reference level for using outboard gear would be wise.
Adjust the gain using the gains controls/virtual trim pots on your DAW channel mixers (or trim plug-ins, in absence of inbuilt channel gain controls). The reason for doing this is that you want the level to be pre-fader, so that all your inserts (whether they be plug-ins or hardware) benefit from the increased headroom. This also frees up your faders to sit closer to 0, giving you a better visual cue of what you’re doing when mixing.
Now that our projects are all pre-routed and gain staged, we can move on to the fun stuff. But before we do, we need to visit one very important element in the mixing equation!