High or low volume into interface for DAW?

  • But other than these two points gain staging is not important anymore - that is if you are not using an older Protools version ;)


    Finally someone wrote it clear enough to understand. I didn't find the right words to explain.
    And that's exactly what I'm doing since many years without any problems, preserve the original dynamics as much as possible with no clipping. No gain staging on my side since ages.


    Cheers,
    Martin

  • Gain staging is more of a workflow thing for me. The faders have their best resolution around 0dB. If you track everything at -3dBFS the master is going to start clipping like hell very fast, which means that you have to start pulling down faders and lose fader resolution. 24 bit recording has 144 dB of dynamic range, losing 12-18dB of that really doesn't make a difference. In addition to that most AD converters give the least amount of distortion around -12dBFS. Several interfaces have soft clippers which start clipping before the interface actually hits 0dBFS, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you're after. But for me that's generally a bad thing. I find that tracking at -12dBFS peak gives me levels which are a lot easier to work with, and workflow is sooooo important.