Gain Staging In Your DAW SoftwareTechnique : Recording / Mixing
If you don't understand gain structure, you may be undermining your recordings and mixes without even realising it.
By Matt Houghton
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep13/articles/level-headed.htm
 
As a musician who's trying to understand the engineering side better, I found this article extremely enlightening. Hope others do too.

Thanks for the post.  I need all the help I can get.  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Not just newbies. It's a lesson that I've only learned in the last year: http://forum.cakewalk.com/Hitting-the-red-I-was-wrong-about-this-m3065697.aspx
 

Very glad to hear that from both of you! I found the article extremely helpful and enlightening, but wasn't sure how more experienced users would take it, hence the disclaimer "for newbies".

Bar far the biggest improvements to my mixing in the last year came from improving my gain staging. I'm a big fan of the Klanghelm VU meters (and they are cheap!). I also use the Hornet meter control run in auto-mode as the first insert on every track. It acts as a trim control, so that all of the tracks are leveled out and the Sonar faders stay at 0. I don't like leaving it on though, so after I make a pass with it I manually adjust the Sonar track's trim control to the value provided by Hornet and delete the hornet plug. I then use an instance of the Klanghelm before and after EVERY plug as I mix (I just have a pair in every FX Chain I can move around or turn off) to manage my levels through each plugin.

 
DRAMATIC improvements for me!
 
Thanks for this article - it really confirms a lot that I have been learning...

This is something I worked out years ago.  I'm amazed that all the audio schools I have been too still don't teach this and I'm also amazed that experienced audio engineers still are working this out.
 
Ben

gain staging was one of the first things drilled into me at audio school, and am thankful for it

Yes to date there are many plugins that don't react well to signals above 0dBFS. Either they internally are not using float data everywhere in their internal signal flow, have lookup tables that are not high gain aware or have DSP that is not tolerant of this. Its not that common though, so while its a good practice to be aware of gain staging good practices while mixing you dont have to worry that much about it unless you have a plugin that doesnt handle high gain.
 
A tip to address this. If you notice distortion, drop the input gain (trim) level on the track/bus which is pre-effects and then boost the normal volume of the track/bus which is post fx bin. If the gain with this is insufficient for some reason, remember that you have access to yet another relatively unknown per track/bus gainstage in SONAR by using offset mode! Simply switch to offset mode and adjust the offset volume and you get another 6db of gain available. That should be plenty for most purposes.
 
Take a look at this article and this documentation for some signal flow diagrams in SONAR. 

Thanks Noel. Good stuff is always appreciated!
Michael

Excellent article OP,and follow up Noel,it's something I haven't been aware that was why a lot of my stuff was lacking dynamics,and was getting harshness along the way [some poss, a bit more]it's a vital piece of info for someone like myself who's never recorded digitally until picking up music again 3 years ago.
Bob