If you're setting gain just so all of your faders can sit at unity after you dial in your mix, you're doing it wrong, and it’s probably hurting your sound more than you realize.
We recently covered this in a live stream review where Cade explained the real purpose of gain. Some people think the goal is to set gain so that all your faders can sit at zero when you have the mix you want. But that’s not the purpose of gain.
The gain knob exists so you can get all of your instruments and vocals operating at the same level before they travel through the rest of your mixer.
Think of gain like the front door of your mixer, or like a water faucet. Every instrument is sending you a different flow of signal. The electric guitar might be sending a louder signal than the bass guitar. The goal with gain is to get everyone at the same level before they go through compression, gating, and EQ.
The last stop on the mixer is the fader. On your gain level meter, where the green lights meet the yellow, that’s where you set the gain for every instrument and vocal. Doing this gets them all on the same playing field before you touch any other processing.
Setting gain just to get all your faders at unity is the wrong approach. It’s not the right use of gain, and if you want great sound, you can’t do it that way.
Gain sets the maximum level for each channel. The goal is for every channel to hit your mixer with a consistent amount of signal before any processing happens. Your fader then acts like a final volume trim. Unity on the fader represents the total signal level based on your gain. Drop below it and you’re cutting volume. Push above it and you’re artificially boosting it.
Some people say they like the visual reference of having all faders at unity. But honestly, that doesn’t make much sense. You get a better visual reference when gain is set consistently and the faders reflect what’s actually happening in your mix.
When your gain staging is solid, you’re not boosting anything above unity. That means better signal quality and less chance of feedback.
Also, make sure your speaker amps are set correctly. If you’re not sure whether they’re dialed in right, check out this video.
Click here to watch the full Live Stream Review that this content was pulled from.
