Gain staging means managing the level of your audio at each point in the chain: the mic preamp, each track, each plugin and the master bus. Getting it right doesn't make a track sound great by itself, but getting it wrong makes everything else harder.
When recording
Record at 24-bit and aim for peaks somewhere around -12 to -6 dBFS on your DAW meter. At 24-bit you have plenty of room below that, so there is no benefit to recording close to 0 dBFS, and a lot of risk of clipping when the performer gets louder.
When mixing
- Start quieter. Pull faders down and build the mix up, rather than pushing everything louder.
- Use clip gain or a trim plugin to bring tracks to a similar level before they hit your effects.
- Keep the master bus out of the red. Leaving a few dB of headroom before mastering gives you or a mastering engineer room to work.
Why plugins care about level
Many compressors and saturation plugins, especially those modeled on analog hardware, react differently depending on how hard you drive them. Feeding them sensible levels makes their controls behave as designed. A common target is an average level around -18 dBFS going into such plugins.
Quick checklist
- Recording peaks between -12 and -6 dBFS.
- Faders start low; build up from the kick or lead vocal.
- Match levels in and out of every plugin so you judge the effect, not the volume change.
- Master bus peaks below 0 dBFS with room to spare.
About this guide
This guide explains widely used production practice and contains no statistics or product claims that need an outside source. See our editorial standards.
