From dilvie on 27.12.2003, 19:11:
Mastering Gain
Dilvie's Psycle Tips Volume One: Mastering Gain
I've noticed that a lot of questions lately have been about gain. With that in mind, here are some tips that are sure to make life a little easier for some newbies:
Don't tweak the wire volumes!
This tip is at the top of my list for one very good reason: Wire volumes are the most natural way to control your over-all global mix, independent of your pattern expression. If you set wire volumes arbitrarily in your patterns, you break your ability to control your global mix without editing patterns. So how do you do gating and other volume expression that 0Cxx won't let you control?
Use the gainer plug
The way an instrument or effect implements volume can varry from one machine to another, and it's possible that a volume option may not even exist in some plugins. Luckily, there is a gainer plugin in the effects when you need it (ayeternal Gainer). When you can't tweak a volume parameter, don't tweak the wire -- use the gainer.
Use wire volumes to control your master mix
The reason for the top two tips is this: Eventually you're going to want to turn down an instrument, or an effect, or the effect level of some instrument, and you won't want to edit EVERY VOLUME SETTING in EVERY PATTERN that addresses it -- if you've been tweaking wire volumes, that's exactly what you've got in store. On the other hand, if you NEVER tweak wire volumes from patterns, you can use them to reliably set the over-all global level of every output from every machine.
Share effects like reverb
Effects that are useful for more than one instrument should be shared. Set their output level to nominal, and control their volume by adjusting the incoming signal level for each signal source you connect. For example, I often use a single reverb plugin for all reverb in my music. It's always set to unity gain at the output, and I control how much reverb each instrument gets by setting the input level accordingly.
This has two advantages:
- It creates a consistent accoustic space and adds to the cohesiveness of the sounds
- It saves CPU power without sacrificing audio quality.
Pay attention to your gain path
Your gain path is all about headroom. You want to ensure that you maximize the amount of control you have over the level settings of your machines. That means paying close attention to your gain settings. Ideally, if an effect output can be set at unity gain (ie, by controlling the effects input level), it probably should be.
This rule of thumb doesn't always apply. Some effects exist specifically to tweak their output level. Effects that control amplitude for expression should be the first effect in your path to the master output (ie, instrument -> gainer -> reverb -> master).
Shared effects should always have output set at nominal. Control effect level by adjusting the effects input level. Most of my effect outputs are nominal, but I still retain a lot of control over the effect levels. If you turn down the effect output, you turn down that effects headroom, which means you don't have as much freedom to set the effect level for individual effect inputs.
Before you turn something up, turn something else down
Now that you've got a great way to control your over-all mix without editing patterns, you're probably going to do a lot more level tweaking (trust me, this is a good thing). Rule #1 here: Before you turn something up, turn something else down -- if you can't hear something in your mix, chances are the reason for it is that something else is drowning it out. If you can get away with turning down that something else, it'll probably be better for your mix.
Filter the frequency hogs
If you turn something down, but it's still dominating your mix, don't be afraid to slap a filter on it. Chances are, a high-pass or low pass filter will do the trick. There are some good filter plugs in Psycle -- put them to good use. Remember, filters are better at cutting frequencies than gaining frequencies, but they can be used to bump a specific frequency -- set the cut-off and give the filter some resonance. Depending on the filter, you should get a bit of a boost centered around the cut-off frequency.
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And it doesn't crackle & pop like using the Gainer to do gating...
Assuming that the individual master inputs haven't been limited at some point.
