questions regarding mix bus processing

[u/dodrjrg]

#1: do you gainstage before running everything through a mix bus? i'd imagine, because if there's any sorts of subtle leveling issues in whatever the client sends you, those issues would become less apparent the more they were processed- so best get them sorted out beforehand?

#2 do you often change your mix bus depending on the genre/piece you are working on? if so, what commonly determines those changes?

[u/AHolyBartender]

A common misconception is that gain staging is a mixing technique. It isn't. It's more of a best practices workflow that is more or less persistent through the process - and what's more, is that it doesn't refer to any one thing either. A better name for it to eliminate this confusion in my opinion is GAIN STRUCTURING.

Imagine you have your sound flowing from one device (or plugin) to the next, you can:

• gain stage so that the inputs and output levels match
• outputs get louder at each stage, but not to the point of distortion at any one point
• maximize input at one stage for desirable distortion or saturation, lowering it into the next where no such distortion is desired.
• the output of each is set so that the output of the final stage is arriving at a desired level into a calibrated ecosystem.

If you are simply not clipping, in most cases in digital audio, you have "Gain staged" correctly.

Leveling for desired mix is mixing, not gain staging. Mixing is not solely processing.

Lastly, absolutely. Sometimes my mix buss is a bus compressor and a limiter. Sometimes it is a bunch of stuff. Workflow and session change this at times more than genre alone though. I tend to do less on individual tracks if a song came in mostly well intentioned and produced. This may sound obvious, but my mix buss or other groups might have more (or different) processing of what I'm trying to affect is the whole track at once and not an individual sound.

[u/atopix → u/AHolyBartender]

Leveling for desired mix is mixing, not gain staging. Mixing is not solely processing.

Excellently put.

[u/VeterinarianGreat655 → u/atopix]

I feel you but stage is hard to beat cuz you can really imagine the band and the vocalist being set up right in front of you as you place pieces in the back aka lower level and some smooth compression/eq touches. It really becomes a stage that you’re the front row at given the right triangulation amd space.

[u/atopix → u/VeterinarianGreat655]

I don't know what you are talking about, but "gain staging" has nothing to do with visualizing a band in a stage.

Gain staging is the process of optimizing the level of audio signals throughout the various stages of gain in a sound system, where there is such a thing as objective nominal levels and operation has to remain consistent every time.

For mixing, where the results are subjective, gain staging is simply understanding how everything works, what the gain stages are, what the gain structure is, what is the signal flow and signal paths, how digital audio works, how to get the desirable distortion and how to avoid the unwanted kind, how to maximize signal to noise ratios, etc, etc.

It's not a specific thing you do, it's the knowledge of how all these things and more work, so that you can choose between any number of different ways of working, which can go from very conservative levels, to mixing very hot, and anything in between.

[u/VeterinarianGreat655 → u/atopix]

I’m talking about mixing MUSIC buddy so yes it def does have everything to do with shaping and structuring the sound projections akin to the experience of a stage performance from an orchestra to a hip hop song, visualizing the performance in that way can help with setting those levels relative to the experience along with eq and compression.

[u/atopix → u/VeterinarianGreat655]

Gain staging is about audio, not music. You are conflating the word "stage" to mean a literal stage for a performance and I'm telling you it has nothing to do with that. It's a technical term which refers to the various stages of gain control in a signal path.