In electronic music, a gain staging is essentially a point in an electronic signal path where the mixer can make slight adjustments to the frequency, such as with a fader on an analogue mixing board or a digital DAW. Gain staging can also refer to the effects of these same slight adjustments, ranging from boosting a certain frequency range to cutting off some unwanted frequencies. Learn more about gain staging in this article.
Gain staging is typically helps with understanding how to set gain levels for recording in order to create "clipping." Clipping, however, is not the same thing as "gaining" gain, as it is the same thing as raising the frequency of a signal. Compression, however, can raise the signal's level by lowering its frequency - the difference being that with clipping, the compressor does not affect the actual sound and merely raises its level.
This combination of compression and gain is the most popular method of achieving this effect. Compression helps to achieve the desired amount of signal suppression, while the gain creates a higher signal frequency.
Although this method has been used for a long time, its application as an effect has only recently become popularized and more widely utilized by audio engineers and other musicians. Because of the many uses of gain staging, however, it is important to understand how this effect works.
To understand this process, it is important to understand how our computers handle signals by the use of its sound card and amplifier. The hardware components of the sound card and amplifier will control the amount of signal that is sent to our computers, which then interprets this data and determines what to do with it.
For instance, the sound card and amplifier will convert any analog signal to a digital one - which means that all analog signals can now be converted into digitally-readable signals, including those that have been transformed through the use of distortion. These digitally-readable signals will then be sent out to a mixer that will apply the appropriate amounts of compression or gain depending upon the input signal that was generated. To put the final touches on the signal, it will then be processed by our computers before it is sent to a user interface for playback or recording purposes.
There are many different ways that the signal can be processed in order to achieve different effects, but a common way to apply compression to an audio signal is to use a compressor and an equalizer on the computer's processor. This will compress the signal as much as possible, resulting in the creation of a lower volume. Equalizers will usually offer three settings, which include a normal setting, which offers no compression; a high setting, which offer very little compression; and a medium setting, which provide a medium level of compression.
The equalizer's output is then fed to the compressor, which will again apply the appropriate amount of compression or gain as needed. To achieve the desired effect, both the equalizer and compressor must be used at the same time in order to produce the desired result. Check out this post that has expounded on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixing_console.
