My youngest kid crossed over to the dark side. Yes. That's right. He has become a musician.
OK. It's actually cooler than that. I am enjoying our miniature jam sessions and teaching him riffs. It's becoming less entertaining, though, as he is rapidly making me look like the beginner.
In a recent conversation, I caught myself trying to explain gain staging to him when he was working on his tone.
In simple terms, clean and full tone in, matched with clean and full tone out equals sonic beauty. That nirvana of perfect signal. Richness, depth, definition. All the things we are generally trying to capture and reproduce as audio professionals.
Boosting weak signal adds noise and hiss. Clipped and distorted signal in doesn't get better going through the system. EQ will not fix poor gain staging. Think of over-salted soup, it's now part of the sound. Enjoy.
The entire concept probably makes more sense to guitarists than it does to sound techs. When I was training church crews, I often got that “deer in the headlights” look when explaining what was making that meter flash red and why it was bad.
Guitarists know how to make distortion work for them... well, most of them do. Some just seem to use it to the point where there is no discernible difference from one chord to the next. Those guys are just happy to make noise. I used to call that the “electric hairball” tone. Too distorted to even tell what note was being played.
The good players can make that distortion add an edge to their tone and get the aggression that certain genres need to push the songs. Well-played distortion is a beautiful thing.
In the glorious analog days, distortion worked for the sound guy like it did for the guitarist. It was an effect. Something that could shape your overall sound and transform it into something wonderful. Signals were crushed, overloaded and saturated but still generally useable. Some engineers became legends for pushing the limits of analog tape and creating that fat and warm magic.
Once we reached the digital age, it changed. Now signals are clipped and go straight from “Hey, that sounds amazing!” to “What just happened?” in a dB or two. Where those flashing red lights once mean that you were pushing it, it now means you are destroying it.
The best ways I found to create clean gain staging was by mixing at unity.
Yeah. I know that some of you are already rolling your eyes and consider that entirely simplistic and almost childish. Maybe you have “evolved” beyond unity mixing. Fine. Whatever works for you. As long as it's a clean and full mix, go for it.
For the rest of us, unity mixing is still the way to go.
In simple terms, do it this way when you bring in a new input. Turn the gain down to zero before plugging anything in. Turn every auxiliary down to zero on the same channel. Bring the fader up to unity or zero or “U” mark --- depending on how your board is labeled.
From there, bring up the gain until you get the level you want. Do the same with the auxiliaries.
When the fader is at the unity point, it's equal to putting your car in neutral. The fader has no effect on it. Above that point is boosting, below that point is cutting levels. It also gives you a large, merciful mixing zone. A half inch of movement at unity is a subtle adjustment, the same movement at the top or bottom of the fader path is dramatic.
If for no other reason, teaching the new guys to mix at unity prevents fader panic. We know the ballpark of the mixer settings without needing to scream at anyone between sound check and service.
When that helpful usher slides a notebook over the console and moves ten faders, it's not a big deal. Move them back to unity. It's different when your board looks like an EKG readout. Feel free to panic as needed.
The big takeaway should be this, mix with your ears.
Whatever technique works for you is fine. If you are mixing some crazy project that wants the sound of distortion, make it happen. For everything else, find that clean balance and listen to it. Excess hiss and unwanted distortion are pretty obvious on a single channel. They are almost unbearable when every channel in your mix is nasty like that.
So, as a general rule, leave the distortion to the guitarist --- within reason.
