what is meant by gain structure in mastering chain

Title say it all

web has only suff about mix situation, can you use the same methods for mastering?


if so what is the method


cheers


skal1

Gain staging as discussed on the internet is 97% rubbish.  It's being bandied about these days as some sort of dark art.

In reality all of your gear has a certain noise floor and clips at a certain point.  When running things through your chain you don't want signals so low that noise becomes an issue and so high that it clips.

Certain pieces of gear behave differently as you drive them with different levels, tube compressor or transformers based inputs/outputs for example.  Again the benefits of this are highly overstated on the internet.

What is your current chain?  Including converters. 

hi ruairioflaherty


remember i am just starting out so my chain is not mastering grade  ;D

ruairioflaherty said:

What is your current chain?  Including converters. 

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daw-a/d behringer faca202-orban 622b-chaswick clone-back to the daw through behringer to daw

skal

You never did tell me what speakers you are using? (asked twice in the other thread)

Everyone has to start somewhere and we work with what we have.

Do you have a good set of headphones?

I want you to do a test for me

- pick a commercial song that you know sounds great - full quality wav file, preferably something with some dynamics and a good balance of frequencies.

- Import in you DAW and turn it down 6dB

- copy that track and record out through your DA outputs and back into the DAW through your chain

- Set you eq so that it is inline but with the bands set flat.  Set your compressor so that it's not bypassed but make sure there is no gain reduction happening.


- When you have record the track back in through your chain set to flat I want you to compare the original file with the file passed through your chain.
- Each time you listen focus on a different element - the lows, the highs, the stereo image etc etc.


Let me know what you find.

ruairioflaherty , i did  mention it in  the my first  master thread any way monitor system is 8030a Genelec nearfield moniters with sub.

No headphones


will do that  ruairioflaherty , ha thanks for your support in my quest


cheers

skal

ruairioflaherty said:

Gain staging as discussed on the internet is 97% rubbish.  It's being bandied about these days as some sort of dark art.

In reality all of your gear has a certain noise floor and clips at a certain point.  When running things through your chain you don't want signals so low that noise becomes an issue and so high that it clips.

Certain pieces of gear behave differently as you drive them with different levels, tube compressor or transformers based inputs/outputs for example.  Again the benefits of this are highly overstated on the internet.

What is your current chain?  Including converters.

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I'll give it 90% rubbish..  effete way of saying "how loud did you turn it up?".

In general speak it means to be smart about where you put your gain. Early is generally better than late, since gain late in the path amplifies all the noise in front of it, early gain is generally cleaner.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

In general speak it means to be smart about where you put your gain. Early is generally better than late, since gain late in the path amplifies all the noise in front of it, early gain is generally cleaner.

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In electronic design absolutely.  In a mastering chain there are several complications that arise but Skal doesn't need to think about those now.

John, when you say early gain, do you mean in the digital realm before the analog chain?

It's great to see some proper advice given here without giving judgement like other forums!

Skal, I'll chime in where I can though I too am on a quest.

druu said:

John, when you say early gain, do you mean in the digital realm before the analog chain?

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I would expect analog to always be first and last in any mixed technology chain.

Gain structure in the context of A/D conversions suggests level strong enough to involve most digital codes but this is quickly becoming less of a concern with modern hardware. 

JR

It's great to see some proper advice given here without giving judgement like other forums!

Skal, I'll chime in where I can though I too am on a quest.

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Ok  test complete,

findings ,  lowend  seems to be down a couple of db ,other than ever thing else seem in line through my monitors.


cheers

skal

Thanks JR, it's good to know.

Skal, it would be worth doing the test with headphones as suggested to see if you notice anything else. Good to have a pair for referencing too.

Done some checks with span, 1db down between 8khz n 10khz and down 1db at 450hz ...


what headphones would you recommend druu .


skal

I'm using some Beyerdynamic DT-250s at the moment but i'll be upgrading to some open headphones soon. I'll probably try out the usual; Sennheiser HD600/650 but I've always been partial to Beyer's so will give the DT-770/880/990s a try too.

They're only used for quick referencing after I've made my adjustments through monitors though, so they still get rarely used! But still great to have nonetheless.

BTW, SPAN is great for visual checks but try not to get into a trap of relying on it. Try to make aural checks/adjustments first, then visual to confirm. If it sounds good...

yeah i hear you on that, use your ears

skal

Good work Skal.  Your issues are likely related to the compressor but could just as easily be pots that aren't centered perfectly on the Orban - just one of the reasons that most mastering people use gear with rotary switches.

The reason for the test is that you need to know that you can pass a good mix through your chain without doing too much harm.  When mixes are really dreadful it's easy to do a bunch of eq and feel good about the changes but very soon you'll start getting some good mixes from clients and if you lose X% of quality just by passing through your chain things get tricky.

One tip about gain staging - a common myth on the net is that driving the shit out of your analog chain is a good thing.  I've done a lot of listening and a lot of controlled tests and I disagree with that hypothesis.  I rarely leave the DAW with a signal higher that -6dBFS and I return at roughly the same level.  I make up the final level in the box using my limiter (and clipping if necessary).

You may find that a good plug in EQ (Fabfilter / Equilibrium) will beat the sound of the Orban but having hands on control is a very valuable thing so the trade off may be worth it.

With compression less is more, you'll very very rarely need to do more than a dB on the meters, slower attacks with quicker releases are your friend.  Lots of mixes come in that are already compressed heavily - try to listen at low levels and see if they really need compression. 

As I said in the other thread mastering is just like chess, the aim is to win in as few moves as possible (less gear, less processing, less time).

I type so slowly, I wish there was a better way to communicate this stuff....

An example of bad gain staging would be to boost a signal 20dB going into a device and cut it 20dB going out of the device. All you have done is reduced headroom and increased distortion. You have degraded the signal for no reason.

i think i have will have to stay ITB for now..


skal1

skal1 said:

i think i have will have to stay ITB for now..

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A couple of thoughts

- ITB can be very good these days
- You don't have to stay in the box but it would be smart to find out what it causing your response variations

Measure you D/A and A/D with the connectors looped to each other, then add just the Orban, then just the tube comp.

Hi

just did a loop back through AD/DA card ,it seem to be  adding gain when returning to the input on the card, humm

ok just noticed the the inputs on the card are unbalanced would this cause the extra gain?


seems to sound the same even with the xtra 2db gain

cheers

skal1