Yet another gain vs. fader question

V

vonner

Member
So I'm using a MixPre-3 for recording Musical Theatre singer auditions in my low budget studio. I'm mainly a video guy, but I have a (barely) above-average handle on the audio situation. But for the love of me, I can't figure out if I should be using the adjustment knobs for gain (in basic mode) or as faders (in advanced mode). My biggest issue with these recordings is that the kids will sing very very softly... and then BELT TO ALL HOLY HELL. Sometimes THEY SING real soft AND THEN LOUD and then soft just because it's the NATURE of their VOICE. It's quite a challenge to keep up with them. Traditionally I've been riding the gain and adjusting on the fly as I learn the song through multiple takes, and by the end I'm able to follow them pretty accurately while avoiding any spikes. But with my total lack of knowledge and experimentation with faders/advanced mode, I can't help but think I'm doing it wrong.

Can you guys school me on this and tell me how to handle it correctly??
 
Well, on the one hand Custom Mode (with everything set to advanced except gain set to basic) will allow riding combined gain/fader simply (as in basic mode, but without the other limitations) - and you will find no observable difference in self-noise etc. - but there is the more general principle here of riding gain excessively: the Mixpre-3 has very quiet preamps and a very good (analogue) limiter, so it would make sense to record conservatively (not being afraid if the limiter kicks in occasionally) and not ride levels continuously.

I spent yesterday recording (with a Mixpre-3) a singing guitarist who, while no child, has a voice that ranges from a whisper to the other extreme: there was, however, no need to ride the levels.

Cheers,

Roland
 
Absolutely - Musical Theatre (something I work in quite a bit) has these very dynamic songs, and the music tracks also have the same high dynamics. They are not meant to be fader levelled and loud all the time. All you need to do is set the gain staging so it doesn't distort on the peaks, and then leave it alone. To be honest, the success is more down to the tracks they are singing to. Some are good, and some will be terrible. Even piano accompaniments have wide range normally. We record musical theatre tracks and in the studio we simply set a maximum - usually taking the song's loudest part, and then getting them to just sing that bit - then add a safety 3dB or so, just in case, and then record. Your recorder has decent dynamic range - so it's not a problem.
 
First off I'm with Throwback, I would not ride gail if at all possible. It is a PITA to deal with tracks where the recorded gail is going all over the place. Much easier to smooth it out in post and if you are recording on a decent recorder (you are) at 24 bit (with the limiters protecting overs) you should have no problems with the range.

I don't have the MixPre recorders but generally speaking "Gain" is the name for the mic preamp gain, and "faders" are a post mic pre gain stage. SD recorders used to only have gain settings, which is fine for a recorder but not so great as a mixer because you can never get them all the way off. I'm guessing that is also true in the MixPre3. On a mixer you would set the "gain" to match what was connected to the input and you would set the "level" with the faders. Gain generally goes from a hot line level (not a lot of gain) to a low powered dynamic mic in (a boat load of gain), a fader goes from no sound at all to some level of boost, usually in the10 to 20dB zone.

-------
Paulears slid in before me.
 
Noiz2 said:
SD recorders used to only have gain settings, which is fine for a recorder but not so great as a mixer because you can never get them all the way off. I'm guessing that is also true in the MixPre3. On a mixer you would set the "gain" to match what was connected to the input and you would set the "level" with the faders.
Click to expand...

Hi Scott,

Just picking up on you incidental point, the Mixpre-series recorders' gain only goes down to 6db, but in all three modes the front fader knob (or, in Basic mode or Custom mode with basic gain, the front gain+fader knob) rotates to an off position.

Cheers,

Roland
 
Wow, thanks guys! This helps a lot. Is there an efficient way to make everything even in editing (I'm using DaVinci Resolve 15) besides boosting the gain and just manually bringing the peaks down?
 
What does 'even' mean? If they are singing one of the common songs, you simply have to have this light and shade.

Quite old, but this clip starts (oddly) very loud, and the end of the song is very quiet. This is typical of the range of musical theatre. It's totally different from other music genres.
 
"Isn't this what a compressor is for?"
- Yes, but excessive amounts are detrimental and they ain't smart, kind of like an insect.
You may want to try some manual leveling with volume envelopes.
Otherwise the Jeroen Breebaart 'JB Broadcast Processor' does a decent job,. It's auto gain is not as audible and annoying like those POS AGC functions on cameras and such. it also has multiband compressors, limiters. Setting it though may be a little confusing for non-audio folks.
This is a VST plug-in, not sure if or how DaVinci Resolve handles audio plug-ins..
 
Compressors suck the life out of a mix, and for musical theatre - which is a very wide dynamics genre of music, it's the audio equivalent of full auto on a video camera and leaving the camera to do its own thing. Compressors in my studio on ly ever get inserted onto things that need them to stand out in the mix when just shoving a volume fader isn't the solution. They compress dynamic range for hopefully, a reason. Amateur recordists slap it automatically on everything, because nowadays, you can - and you can destroy a mix or singer with them so easily. I've an intense dislike on compressor use on the wrong sound sources. In fact, gentle compression often helps a mix settle down, but most people treat compression like a Spinal Tap effect - turn it up to 11! Most newbies to recording cannot hear gentle compression. It's not like eq, or reverb and effects where you can hear it working, compression alters the ratio between loud and soft, and in some types of music, there is no loud and soft - you just want loud, but you'd not want to slap one on a person in a church playing the flute - it would make it sound wrong.
 
??? virtually every record ever made and every film and TV production uses compression so to totally dismiss them is missing the reality of their usefullness.

Try listening to anything with a 100db dynamic range and in the case of feature films you will struggle to hear the dialogue most of the time and there are numerous cases of TV drama being mixed to feature film dynamics and then the end user struggling to hear the dialogue once it is on a 3 inch TV speaker.

In music compressors are used all the time and especially on vocals, your radio mics have compressors and when you listen to anything off i-tunes or spotify it is compressed.

If used with care they don't suck the life out of things and can mostly help to achieve a balanced mix that is more listenable to the end user.

As a bassist Paul I would have thought that you would know that compressing a bass can still keep some dynamics but prevent nasty peaks and overload when the player goes into full slap mode.

Hey we even use automixers in TV but the ones on the Calrec Apollo are excellent and they are all over our output at SKY most of the time.

I would love to hear of any person mixing to R128 and not using compressors or any feature film guys who don't use them to make sure their dialogue conforms to Dolby dialogue specs. Maybe their don't bother with EQ either as it colours their precious location sound???
 
Last edited:
Gary - you're dead right, and this morning in the studio I've got compressors all over the place - The snag here I think is that he's trying to not compress in the music sense, he's trying to level the entire piece up because in some parts (musical theatre) they're singing very quietly and in other sections they're belting - and here compressors do the job terribly. A bit like the continual arguments with Optimod on radio 3 vs classic fm - where classic FM is loud and listenable in my van, and radio 3 isn't. That clip I posted is what I meant. It's meant to be very loud, then end up very quiet. Musical theatre where the FFF section is F, and the ppp section is p - gives a very small difference between p and f. with individual tracks then compressors can make things sound louder and mix better - but unless I misunderstood him - he's finding the riding of faders tricky and wants to automate it - which I always hate.
 
Compressors are wonderful tools but they are not "to level out the mix", at that they pretty much suck.

Mostly the answer is to ride the level in post, but again not too much. Bring up the too quiet bits and maybe clamp down a bit on the peaks and leave the rest alone. Assuming some level of "quality" in the performers they are setting the dynamics mostly where they should be, it's theatre not a pop song compressed for AM radio.

RE: riding gain. Assuming you don't have everyone individually mic'd you need a gentle hand. You will be riding the general ambience up and down with the content so you do not want any big moves or it will sound bad.

The closest "cheat" that can sometimes work when time is a problem is to boost so the lowest parts you need to hear are audible and clamp down the peaks with a limiter. Though this is a lot like using a compressor it tends to work better since you are only dynamically affecting the loudest parts.

The other "cheat" of sorts is to ease up the straight dialog parts since it is important for people to understand the dialog. But leave the music mostly alone. How many songs have you heard where you hardly know any of the words but the chorus? Quite a few. Songs are generally about more than just the words so you can let the performers do the balancing to a great extent.
 
I agree that Optimods etc such the life out of anything and most radio has a One db dynamic range these days.

When I think about it even on my sources at SKY I have numerous compressors in the chain to do different things but ultimately I want to peak +6db and that seems to be perfect for R128.

On the mic channels I have the radio mics doing what they do a 2:1 on each channel coming in at +3db with a +2db make up and then the mic group has a 3:1 at +4db and a limiter at +8db. The main outputs also have a limiter at +8db but that is just part of the default set-up.

That seems to give me the sound and control I want and I have similar on the OS sources and VT's but it is all about control and keeping to R128 but still having a reasonable dynamic range. News is crushed harder but that is more scarry as you have all sorts of stuff coming in at all sorts of levels and quality.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top