GAIN STRUCTURE

Setting up a good gain structure is one of the most important aspects of insuring
a distortion free and open sounding production. If you overload at any gain point
(where you can increase or decrease volume such as a compressor or eq) you’ll carry that through the chain. An example of poor gain structure is when a mixers master volume is sitting near the bottom and all of the individual faders are crammed to the top. The master buss level may look normal, but there’s very little or no headroom as well as no clarity or dynamic range.
Keep your eyes on the master buss from the beginning and as you add new elements make adjustments. Your master fader should remain at zero. If your mix is beginning to look hot pull all individual faders down equally. (you could ensure this by grouping them momentarily, or if your DAW has a Trim plugin as Pro Tools does you could insert it before the limiter on the Master Buss and drop the level) Do not rely on the buss limiter to fix everything. In fact don’t engage the buss limiter at all until your mix is almost done. The harder you hit it the more limiting will kick in and diminish the dynamic range. Especially if you are using already produced and mastered music material in your promos. Usually these tracks have already been subjected to the “Loudness War” and adding more limiting to them will induce a “crunchy” sound. Better to adjust the individual elements so that your buss limiter is just tightening up the sound and preventing any overages as opposed to sucking all of the life and dynamic range out of your masterpiece. You could set up a separate buss that has all the elements that haven’t been squashed like your VO, drops & sound design and then feed that to the master buss or use light to moderate compression on each individual track then engage the buss limiter just as a trim.