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Old 05-26-2019, 03:43 AM   #35
Pinknoise
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Around Montréal
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Retro Audio Enthusiast View Post
I heard it's to do with gain staging and also that plugins are tested optimally for -18dBFS input.
Some plugins. Mostly analog emulations like Klanghelm, waves or IK for exemple.
But for a lot of 'proudly' digital plugins it does'nt matter like Reacomp for instance as long as you don't peak the master output going to the interface you can be in the red all over the place on the channels.

Going into digital plugins you don't want to clip though it sounds like crap but as long as you don't peak, -18db or not, it sounds just the same IF it's digital and not meant to replicate saturation of analog beeing driven hotter.

Some analog emulations are meant to be going in the red though so rtfm on this.

Still the -18db rule is a decent workflow idea, where you keep your channel meters away from the red giving you a visual idea of the outcome, and keeping your signals ready to be sent into hardware or for a emulation plugin. This is why it's good practice to use the output button ,wich is pretty much a standard button on every plugin these days, to readjust to -18 going out of the plugin or use AGC ( automatic gain compensation ).

Read the manual for nominal(optimal) levels of each plugins.

Last edited by Pinknoise; 05-26-2019 at 04:09 AM.
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