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Old 05-26-2019, 04:16 AM   #37
mschnell
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Krefeld, Germany
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Retro Audio Enthusiast View Post
"Gain staging is the process of managing the relative levels in each step of an audio signal flow to prevent introduction of noise and distortion.
This is perfectly retro but plain wrong in a DAW. A DAW internally uses Floating point format for the samples and hence the absolute value of the numbers (i.e. the gain of the signal) is of absolutely no concern at all.

Of course it is true that there are cases where the signal gain does make a difference: at any A/D and D/A conversion (i.e. analogue outboad equipment) and certain "nonlinear" plugins that don't feature an input gain control setting (which I esteem erroneously crafted).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Retro Audio Enthusiast View Post
record everything at 0dBfs then push your faders to +12dB on every track then tell us how great your master bus is sounding.
Say you have a setup that features no nonlinear plugins (e.g. just ReaEQ and ReaDelay). Say you have a ReaEQ followed by a ReaDely in any track and a ReaEQ in the master FX. everythging is running at about 0 dB. Now you increase the Gain slider in the ReEQs in all tracks by 12 db and decrease the Gain slider of the ReaEQ in the master by 12 dB. The meters near the Track sliders will look horrible but the resulting rendered file will be exactly the same.

(Reaper even might force a track to Mute for safety of your ears, but you can disable this feature in the preferences.)

Same is true when lowering the gain in the tracks by whatever dB and increase it in the master appropriately. The render result will be the same: no additional noise.

-Michael

Last edited by mschnell; 05-26-2019 at 05:59 AM.
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