What is it?

Gain staging is all about managing the audio levels of different layers within an audio system. In other words, when you need to make something louder, good gain staging is knowing where in the signal chain would be best to do this.

I will focus this article on the realm of mix & post-production work under Protools, since this is what I do daily, but these concepts can be applied in any other audio related situation like recording or live sound.

Pro Tools Signal Chain

To start with, let's have a look at the signal chain on Protools:

Knowing and understanding this chain is very important when setting your session up for mixing. Note that other DAWs would vary in their signal chain. Cubase, for example, offers pre and post-fader inserts while on Pro Tools every insert is always pre-fader except from the ones on the master channel.

Also, I've added a Sub Mix Bus (an auxiliar) at the end of the chain because this is how usually mixing templates are set up and is important to keep it in mind when thinking about signal flow.

So, let's dive into each of the elements of the chain and see their use and how they interact with each other.

Clip gain & Inserts

As I was saying, on Pro Tools, inserts are pre-fader. It doesn't matter how much you lower your track's volume, the audio clip is always hitting the plugins with its "original" level. This renders clip gain very handy since we can use it to control the clip levels before they hit the insert chain.

You can use clip gain to make sure you don't saturate your first insert input and for keeping the level consistent between different clips on the same track. This last use is specially important when audio is going through a compressor since you want roughly the same amount of signal being compressed across all the different clips on a given channel.

So what if you want a post-fader insert? As I said, you can't directly change an insert to post-fader but there is a workaround. If you want to affect the signal after the track's volume, you can always route that track or tracks to an auxiliar and have the inserts on that aux. In this case, these inserts would be post-fader from the audio channel perspective but don't forget they are still pre-fader from the aux channel own perspective.

Signal flow within the insert chain

Since the audio signal flows from the first to the last insert, when choosing the order of these plugins is always important to think about whatever goal you want to achieve. Should you EQ first? Compress first? What if you want a flanger, should it be at the end of the chain or maybe at the beginning?

I don't think there is definitive answer and, as I was saying, the key is to think about the goal you have in mind and whichever way makes conceptual sense to your brain. EQ and compression order is a classic example of this.

The way I usually work is that I use EQ first to reduce any annoying or problematic frequencies, having also a high pass filter most of the time to remove unnecessary low end. Once this is done, I use the compressor to control the dynamic range as desired. The idea behind this approach is that the compressor is only going to work with the desired part of the signal.

I sometimes add a second EQ after the compressor for further enhancements, usually boosting frequencies if needed. Any other special effects, like a flanger or a vocoder would go last on the chain.

Please note that, if you use the new Pro Tools clip effects (which I do use), these are applied to the clip before the fader and before the inserts.

Channel Fader

After the insert chain, the signal goes through the channel fader or track volume. This is where you usually do most of the automation and levelling work. A good gain stage management job makes working with the fader much easier. You want to be working close to unity, that is, close to 0.

This means that, after clip gain, clip effects and all inserts; you want the signal to be at your target level when the fader is hovering around 0. Why? This is where you have the most control, headroom and confort. If you look closely at the fader you'll notice it has a logarithmic scale. A small movement next to unity would suppose 1 or 2 dB but the same movement down below could be a 10 dB change. Mixing close to unity makes subtle and precise fader movements easy and confortable.

Sends

Pro Tools sends are post-fader by default and this is the behaviour you would usually want most of the time. Sending audio to a reverb or delay is probably the most common use for a send since you want to keep 100% of the dry signal and just add some wet processed signal that will change in level as the dry also changes.

Pre-fader sends are mostly useful for recording and live mixing (sending a headphone mix is a usual example) and I don't find myself using them much on post. Nevertheless, a possible use on a post-production context could be when you want to work with a 100% of the wet signal regardless of how much of the dry signal is coming through. Examples of this could be special effects and/or very distant or echoey reverbs where you don't want to keep much of the original dry signal.

Channel Trim

Trim is pretty much like effectively having two volume lanes per track. Why would this be useful? I use trim when I already have an automation curve that I want to keep but I just want to make the whole thing louder or quieter in a dynamic way. Once you finish a trim pass, both curves would coalesce into one. This is the default behaviour but you can change it on Preferences > Mixing > Automation.

VCAs

VCAs are a concept that comes from analogue consoles (Voltage Controlled Amplifier) and allows you to control the level of several tracks with a single fader. They use to do this by controlling the voltage reaching each channel but on Pro Tools, VCAs are a special type of track that doesn't have audio, inserts, inputs or outputs. VCA tracks just have a volume lane that can be used to control the volume of any group of tracks.

So, VCAs are something that you usually use when you want to control the overall level of a section of the mix as a whole, like the dialogue or sound effects tracks. In terms of signal flow, VCAs are just changing a track level via the track's fader so you may say they just act as a third fader (the second being trim).

Why is this better that just routing the same tracks to an auxiliar and changing the volume there? Auxiliars are also useful, as you will see on the next section, but if the goal is just level control, VCAs have a few advantages:

Coalescing: After every pass, you are able to coalesce your automation, changing the target tracks levels and leaving your VCA track flat and ready for your next pass.
More information: When using an auxiliar instead of a VCA track, there is no way to know if a child track is being affected by it. If you accidentally move that aux fader you may go crazy trying to figure out why your dialogue tracks are all slightly lower (true story). On the other hand, VCAs show you a blue outline (see picture below) with the real affected volume lane that would result after coalescing both lanes so you can always see how a VCA is affecting a track.
Post fader workflow: Another problem of using an auxiliar to control the volume of a group of tracks, is that if you have post-fader sends on those tracks, you will still send that audio away regardless of the parent's auxiliar level. This is because you are sending that audio away before you send it to the auxiliar. VCAs avoid this problem by directly affecting the child track volume and thus also affecting how much is sent post-fader.

Sub Mix buses

This is the final step of the signal chain. After all inserts, faders, trim and VCA, the resulting audio signals can be routed directly to your output or you may also consider using a sub mixing bus instead. This is an auxiliar track that sums all the signals from a specific group of channels (like Dialogue tracks) and allows you to control and process each sub mix as a whole.

These are the type of auxiliar tracks that I was taking about on the VCA section. They may not be ideal to control the levels of a sub mix, but they are useful when you want to process a group of tracks with the same plugins or when you need to print different stems.

An issue you may find when using them is that you may find yourself "fighting" for a sound to be loud enough. You feel that pushing the fader more and more doesn't really help and you barely hear the difference. When this happens, you've probably run out of headroom. Pushing the volume doesn't seem to help because a compressor or limiter further on the signal chain (that is, acting as a post-fader insert) is squashing the signal.

When this happens, you need to go back and give yourself more headroom by making sure you are not over compressing or lowering every track volume until you are working on manageable level. Ideally, you should be metering your mix from the start so you know where you are in terms of loudness. If you mix to any loudness standard like EBU-R128, that should give you a nice and comfortable amount of headroom.

Final Thoughts

Essentially, mixing is about making things louder or quieter to serve the story that is being told. As you can see, is important to know where in the audio chain the best place to do this is. If you keep your chain in order, from clip gain to the sub mix buses, making sure levels are optimal every step of the way. you'll be in control and have a better idea on where to act when issues arise. Happy Mixing.

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Figuring out: Gain Staging