Increasing gain from trim pot & fader

[Nitsuj]

This probably sounds noobish but its been bugging me for a bit. If the guitars were tracked and averaging at -18 and I needed to increase its level by bringing up the fader during mixdown, where is the gain coming from?

If its coming from the DAW's audio engine, wouldn't the sound be better if I increased gain from plug-ins rather than just bringing up the fader?

 

[Joematthews]

Do it with whatever you want, the biggest problem you'll have is background noise. I think (but I'm not 100%) that gain is a relatively easy process to do to audio, so there is not much difference (if any) between DAW gain and plug-in gain. The only reason why some people think DAWs sound different to each other is that they use different summing processes (combining everything together).

so yeah... do it with what you want, faders are easiest though and dont take up CPU. so yeah... Faders ftw.

Joe

 

[-Noodles-]

Gain is making something audibly louder by turning a pot - or adding 3dB of processing gain, so yeah; faders are creating gain in set increments by the user.

It's not introducing noise and all the artifacts that come with analogue and external devices though - thanks to the digitization of the signal.

Joe's right though.. DAWs sound differently with their audio engines and the way they sum signals. That's the mathematical processes which are summing, and processing the audio - so, like engineering, there's a lot of different ways to produce effectively the same outcome [eg; tracking a guitar with a mic]; but the way you do it can affect the sound massively.

[edit; If you use processing power for gain, you may introduce artifacts associated with the phase shift of the plugin (even if bypassed) so raising a fader is a lot easier and probably cleaner (depending on DAW) than adding a plugin.]

 

[Nitsuj]

[edit; If you use processing power for gain, you may introduce artifacts associated with the phase shift of the plugin (even if bypassed) so raising a fader is a lot easier and probably cleaner (depending on DAW) than adding a plugin.]

That makes sense. Thanks for the insight and clarification chaps.

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

I'm pretty sure all DAWs have an option somewhere to adjust the gain and then bounce the track (replacing the original) - in Sonar it's under Process>Audio>Gain...

If the whole track needs to be louder, it's easier and probably better to do that as it uses no plugins, no automation and no processor cycles once it's done.

Steve