Michael Lewis wrote on Tue, 15 February 2011 16:09 |
Care to share what is your variation on "faders at unity"? What about the article that I brought up? Is it a good method to adjust PFL gain, then use trim / VCA to set faders at unity?
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I skimmed the article, but my general feeling was that the author was suggesting too many steps and adjustments, and over complicating the procedure.
To properly describe my method would probably take an article too, and I'm not up for that tonight. So, assuming that the back end gain is OK, and you have an adequately powered system to work with, here's my routine.
1. Turn all the gains down to minimum, pads in, if there are any.
2. With the channels muted, set the faders to zero (10 dB in hand). They won't necessarily stay there, but it's a good starting point. The console's master fader goes at whatever level the system gain was set, typically between -10 and 0 dB.
3. Start getting levels on individual channels by un-muting the channel and turning up the gain until it is appropriately loud. "Appropriately loud" is a subjective thing, but I think of it as the loudest I'm likely to want that input (solo level). After I've got the sound of the channel right, I reduce the level to whatever would be the normal level in the mix. Guitars and horns typically will come down 5 or 10 dB, vocals will stay at unity, maybe being boosted 5 dB for leads. Kick and bass might move up 5 dB too (or start there) since they're not likely to walk on the vocals anyway.
4. Then dial in monitors and FX, and mix on the faders for the rest of the show. As long as there is adequate power in the whole system, there's no danger of overloading any inputs.
An added benefit for me, since I mix many different acts from gig to gig, is that dynamics parameters and send levels are already in the ballpark, once I turn the gain up to the "appropriate" level. Generally only minimal tweaking is required rather than starting from scratch every time.
I use a similar technique for FX, setting the returns for "unity gain" before hand, and then just turning up the send until I get the desired effect. I may not be driving the effects anywhere near 0 dBFS, but so what? If it sounds good, it is good. Modern digital has a noise floor so low that squeezing the last bit of performance out of a 12-bit converter is a thing of the past.
I don't expect everyone (anyone?) to adopt my methods, but since you asked, that's the general idea. For me, it's a fast way to work that gives me consistent results.
GTD