ITB Plugin Gain Staging???

[Nick Laho]

Hello. Is it true that there is a certain way to use plugins in a DAW where you not only have to watch the levels of the channels and the master, but also of the levels in between various plugins? So if I have several plugins on one channel, I have to be aware of the volumes between them, not just the final level coming out of the last plugin in the chain? Any opinions about this?

[Kiwiburger]

Absolutely. There might be some plugins where you can abuse levels, and totally exceed 0 dB and get away with it. Because floating point arithmatic cannot be clipped.

For example - create a sinewave peaking at 0dB, and run it through a plugin with clean gain - maybe a compressor. Copy it to a few tracks. Smash it over 0dB, and hear the nasty clipping from your D/A converters. Save a mix of this as a 32 bit floating point file. You would expect this mix to be totally ruined beyond repair. And yet - you can import this wave file back into your DAW - lower the fader, and hear and see the pure sine wave tone. No harm was done.

The point of this exercise is to understand that clipping will definately occur in 24 bit fixed point converters - but it's not possible to clip a 32 bit floating point file. And since most plugin formats use floating point math, there is no headroom issue.

BUT - and this is a big BUT - many plugins are modeled to emulate analog circuits. Analog circuits saturate beyond a certain point, and this can be modelled. So yes - if you abuse these plugins, the distortion will be horrible - just like abusing the analog version.

There is no reason whatsoever to run DAW channels close to 0dB. Your master bus can't exceed 0dB, so there is no point in running your channels too hot and then summing them, and then having to attenuate. Keep well away from 0dB and nobody gets hurt.

[dviola]

hopefully someone will step in with more knowledge but in short yes.
obviously plugins change the volume of a recording in some way and the channel meters are not necessarily representative of what's going on in between. For example you could be overloading the 'input' of a compressor but when its done doing its thing you have an acceptable level, which would be represented on your channel meter. Overloading the input however will change the way the compressor reacts and sounds. This is just one example. Some plugins provide ways to monitor this but in other situations you sort of have to be more creative to figure out what's going on and most of all use your ears. Hope this helps and hope someone else can provide more insight.

rock on

[Nick Laho]

Cool. So as long as no individual plugin is going over 0db then im okay? I thought I may have read that you should keep them even lower then that for some reason? Or no?

[peeder]

Originally Posted by dviola

hopefully someone will step in with more knowledge but in short yes.

(Looks like this was posted without seeing kiwi's response above it! )

Originally Posted by Tarron_D

Cool. So as long as no individual plugin is going over 0db then im okay? I thought I may have read that you should keep them even lower then that for some reason? Or no?

Here's a situation where it's best to...gasp!...use your ears. You can run a test tone through your plugin chain (I often do) and see what distortions are happening (I also run pink noise in to see what the frequency distribution is). If you want clean that will reveal it. And if you want some grit, that will help get it where you want it...which may or may not be around 0db. You will need to use your ears to determine how much of that grit you want, where, and from what processor.