#THE LINES LOW GAIN MIX HOW TO#

Now the whole point of this article is to get you all learned up about music terminology, and how to use it. If you lost it, youвЂ™d have a hard time understanding people. Mostly because of the shape of the ear, you can also see from the graph that we hear the 3-4 kHz range the best, which happens to be on the slightly higher end of human speech. The 120 phon contour requires less boost in the low frequencies than the 10 phon contour. You can see on the graph that the phon contour is different for each dB level. Here we introduce a term called a вЂњ phonвЂњ, which is used to describe loudness. The lower frequencies, like the bass guitar at 40-220 Hz, need more sound pressure for us to believe itвЂ™s equally as loud as a sound at 1 kHz. The following graph shows the level that a human ear вЂњthinksвЂќ its hearing, which as you can see is not correct most of the time. Since human ears are not able to hear each frequency at the same level, perceived loudness is different as we move up and down in frequency. Loudness, even though similar to volume and level, is another wholвЂ™nother monster. Now I just need to find a way to rock as loud as Krakatoa (180 dB standing 100 miles away). The SPL scale is shown in dB and goes up to 130 dB (well, infinity, but whatever), which is the threshold of pain for the human ear. Basically meaning we create a measurement scale with zero starting at the lowest threshold of human hearing. SPL is a term calculated from the log of the rms sound pressure of a measured sound related to a reference value. More specifically we use SPL (sound pressure level) to describe sound waves. This term is used to describe the magnitude of the sound in reference to some arbitrary reference. This term is quite ambiguous since itвЂ™s used in so many different places, mainly to mean the actual sound you perceive in your ears, which is not exactly true. So when you turn up the вЂњmaster volumeвЂќ knob on your amp, it simply means youвЂ™re increasing the amount of power used by the amp to increase the signal. VolumeД«esides defining three dimensional space, volume can also be used to describe the power level of a signal. The distortion shouldnвЂ™t hide your skills, but accentuate them. Novices will go into the recording studio thinking their sound is redonkulously awesome, only to have the sound engineer take their distortion down to a 5 or 6 cause they sound terrible. You already know what it does, so thereвЂ™s no point in telling you, but I do have a small tip вЂ“ turn your gain down! Yes, I also love the gut wrenching melodies of face-meltifying solos, but you seriously donвЂ™t need your gain sitting on 10 all the time. On a guitar amp, the gainвЂ™s main intention is to create distortion (as my blood tingles with ground shaking delight). Use the mic at normal sound levels and set the gain knob so that the peaks in sound donвЂ™t send the signal into the red, and youвЂ™re good to go. This button will let you see the actual signal strength by looking at the LEDs on the board. For this purpose, many boards come with a PFL (Pre-Fader Listen) button. YouвЂ™ll want to set this gain level high enough to bring up the level of the signal, but not so high that youвЂ™ll get clipping or distortion in the signal.

ItвЂ™s the first control that the raw mic signal sees, and it will boost the signal to a sufficient level for the rest of the controls to work properly. On the mixer board, youвЂ™ll see the gain at the top of the board. These both mean the same thing as far as electronics go, but serve different purposes in each. One of them is on your mixer board or PA, and the other is on a guitar amp. For the curious, hereвЂ™s the equation to calculate gain:ДЇor all non-rocket scientist purposes, youвЂ™re probably going to see a gain control in two places.

This could be the increase in the raw signal from your guitar or microphone before it goes into any of the other electronic components. This increase is almost always expressed in dB (decibels). Typically when referring to gain, we refer to transmission gain, which is the increase in the power of the signal. So for example, you can have a power gain, voltage gain, or current gain and they all increase those respective values. Quite simply it means an increase in some kind of value. Gain is one of the harder terms to define, mainly because its used in a lot more places than just the audio world. But, itвЂ™s pretty important stuff to understand if you want to get a good sound from your equipment. On top of that, you might have channel volume, master volume, guitar volume, fader levels, guitar amp gain, mixer board gain вЂ¦ etc. Probably because youвЂ™ll see them often, and two or three on the same piece of equipment! That can seriously make your brain want to go flip upside-down and jump into a pool of boiling acoustic particle velocity soup. When working with sound amplification equipment, we often misuse these terms.

The lines low gain mix