Optimal Gain Settings for your Microphone Preamp

Hi can you please share the device and software which you use

Hi, I use an SM7B with a Cloudlifter and Go XLR. How quiet should the noise floor level be when recording voice over? My room/ambient noise hovers around -50 dB, and my normal speaking voice is around -20 to -18 dB, while the peak is around -16 to -8 dB. I want to eliminate as much noise as possible while maintaining the quality of my voice. I can clean it up in post, but I can still hear some lingering noise when I'm speaking. Any help be greatly appreciated!

Awesome video !

GRATE!
Muito grato por mais esse Ótimo vídeo
CONGRATULATIONS
Cheers. :)

Helpful approach 👍

Julian Krause says that SNR does increase as the preamp gain increases? I'm assuming its the total SNR and takes into account the ADC noise and preamp noise is super low noise

Great video

Allow me to introduce a new unit of measurement for sound volume,
which I call vovol* (abbreviated: volume voltage).

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS: You use two pre-stages, one with positive volume values, and the other negative.
For example, so has the pre-step with positive values
a measurement from +0 decibels up to +20, while the one with negative values, has from -0 decibels down to -20 decibels.

The highest voltage occurs when the value is
+20 and -20 decibels (or: 20 vovol),
while there is low voltage, when the value is on
+0 and -0 decibels (or: 0 vovol).

You can possibly also combine two different values with each other, by adjusting the value to +10 -20 vovol, which gives a crisper effect. Have experimented with this myself at work and at home.

The adjustment can of course be set to taste, but the purpose of vovol for me is to equalize the sound volume, so that you better hear weak sounds and at the same time avoid high deafening sound levels (loudness war's).

Thank you for reading this!
Take care of your hearing...

:-)

Awesome video anyway!

thank you!!

Excellent video. Thank you.

Working with some older equipment (Roland VS-880EX), and trying to negotiate the SNR considering its built-in preamps, which I know nothing about their settings or quality. Any knowledge of these old machines?

Great video! Question- how do you see the ratio in the track header?

Could you please help me a bit? I am using: micro Audio Technica AT4033 + preamp Warm Audio WA73-EQ + audio interface Focusrite 2i2. The preamp has 2 button: mic volumn and output volumn. I don't know how to setup these 2 buttons properly. If I set mic volume and output volume at 12 o'clock. And if I stand 30 centimeters away from the microphone, almost nothing can be heard (The signal light on the audio interface is not lit). If I increase the max volume and output volume the microphone sensitivity increases but the sound is very bad. Please help me some idea.
P/S: I am using Studio One, and I didn't adjust volumn in it. Just kept default value.

Excellent presentation. Thank you for this!

This is the most unscientific and amateurish way of setting gain. This is absolutely NOT how an audio engineer should set gain.

1. On many DAWS, there is a global setting that magnify the waveforms within the arrange window. Using your visual waveform concept, the magnify function would lead the engineer to believe he has good gain staging when in fact the level is simply too low.

2. Just because the waveform doesn’t clip, it doesn’t mean the levels are correct. The absolute numbers (and therefore meter readings) are important! A signal can be too ‘hot’ without clipping. Equally a signal can be too ‘cold’ without appearing to have a small waveform.


Why is this important? Well, most analogue processing (and thus consequently the digital emulations) worked their magic most effectively when the signals they were receiving were around 0dBVU. This is the case with a lot of plugins also, because they are emulations of the original circuitry. Providing less signal will increase the noise at each stage of the signal chain. Providing too hot a signal will introduce clipping not just at the preamp conversion, but potentially at each stage of the signal chain too. PROPER GAIN STAGING REALLY MATTERS! Reading meter levels really matters.

Additionally, trying to eyeball the waveform instead of reading the meters properly will be a surefire way to run out of headroom quickly once you start mixing more than a couple of sources. You will end up having to reduce your levels to avoid overloading your master bus.

Guys, you will never ever hear a professional advise you to just eyeball a waveform and hope for the best. There’s a reason equipment and DAWS have meters… it’s because it actually matters.

great, informative video!

Thank you for this

The only prob for me is my GR mic pre..going to watch your vid lesson #23

Sir my mic records low sound vocal i can't hear it properly why is that plzz rply me is the problem of my mic or mobile

RE: bits available..there is a plug in to measure that..but Im never at 16B so I see! Good points on that. Thanks

Finally a video on this topic I can understand!! Thank YOU!

But like what do I set my windows sound recording level setting. No one talks about it. (Bottom right speaker, right click. Recording. Right click mic/mixer then properties, recording level)

Great info, but you really need to get more speakers in the background dude 😂

Thank you so much! I was just sitting in front of my preamps and realized that I have not actually a concept on what level I should aim for... this video gave me a clear understanding and answered my question very clearly!
One question remains: Can I conclude from this, that adding Gain in the the DAW (of course without clipping) has no negative effect on the signal?

Have you covered how Windows or Mac mic volume also interacts with your mic gain/volume in a video? I'm interested in trying to boost my mic enough to get rid of the elements in my noise-floor as much as possible but I wandered how Windows mic volume interacts with the quality or potential distortion of the mic / elevating the noise-floor if that's something worth looking into! I personally have a PreSonus Revelator io24 and a RODE Procaster mic but I find my mic is very quiet and compression settings have been a real difficult thing to try and work out as an amateur - I'm still not sure what some of the settings even mean in the various compressors included in the Revelator io24's preamps but this video definitely gave me some insight into realising that pushing my raw output from the mic as close to 0db as I can without having another preamp like maybe an sE Dynamite DM1 in the signal chain is not helping things when it comes to trying to get my compression settings correct!

What are you recording through (signal chain)?

I have know added a preamp I'm trying to find a good medium between louder and quieter while using it as I'm a quitter person in general

Finally a video that makes preamp gain comprehensible, thank you. I can set and forget the gain now without having to worry about clipping in loud parts and about the noise floor on silent parts of my recordings.

A masterclass that even a beginner could grasp. Great style and info, thanks!

My gain is set to max and it’s too quiet/ low… wtf

Great explanation! Was wondering, the Interface has a Gain knob and then Windows in it's configuration you can also set a Volume Level. How do you know whats the right level to set in Windows?

What preamp were you using during this test?

If you are using a compressor with this level, is the threshold set pretty low?

Great video. Useful info well explained too. There are actually at least four major sources of noise: ADC, preamp, spurious/EMF and mic noise.

Finally best advice so far.

this is really useful

the bigger wave length recording requires at least 80 % gain on an audio interface (ex. 2i2 ) and AT 2050 mic

What is the difference between the input source Of Line level and MIC level
actually im using a ZOOM F8n and a Sennheiser G4 and it's always clipping when they are shouting when im on mic levels

when you say turn up my preamp, are you speaking of the volume knob of the channel of the interface i'm using? I'm using an audient ID44

I’m using a Sudotack ST-800 Microphone and the microphones clips and distorts the audio by itself on a certain dB. Adjusting the gain on the computer doesn’t change anything. Distance mattered but I had to be like 5 feet away from the mic to actually record louder audio.
Is there a way i can adjust the gain using software?

the portion about 16 vs 24 i never knew that. i do know that when saving as 24bit the hdd space doubles but after your explanation i can understand

Great info! But i thought you were going to give me a recording level in dB .. like record your vocal levels at - 10dBFS or -12dBFS or 6dBFS to be above the noise floor to get a clean recording and below full scale not to clip. Yes my session setup is in 24bit. How about sample rate .. which one is better? 44.1 or 48KHz? Thank you for your helpful tips.

Cool