Church Production Magazine: In the glorious analog days, distortion worked for the sound guy like it did for the guitarist. Once we reached the digital age, it changed. Now signals are clipped and go straight from “Hey, that sounds amazing!” to “What just happened?” in a dB or two.
2 comments:
I wholeheartedly agree with the author that a unity gain structure is the best and fastest way to a clean, high quality mix. I think I would even take it a step farther than he would and say that if distortion is what you’re going for, there are better ways to do it than compromising the gain structure. The mixer should be for adjustments, not artistry. If you want distortion, there are a wide range of tools and tricks to get there. If you want something harsh like digital clips or specific, there are filters for that that give you more control than just clipping your equipment. If you want something more subtle like an analog ‘soft’ clip, there’s a wide variety of options, from digital filters that mimic the effect to running the sound through an analog preamp (or even a guitar amp, depending on your setup) and clipping it the same way musicians do.
This is a weird trend within sound engineers that I have noticed recently. People really vary in their preferences of how they set their gains. After the first time I was told about the practice of setting everything to be at unity at 0, I decided to take notice of what the engineers around me were doing. Some just adjusted as the sound check went on by just riding the fader, however at my job a neat organized board was key. I have always been curious to the artifacts that are left by the amplifiers of the gain and the fader. I have generally thought that the gain is more damaging the the sound quality, although in reality is something I need to research further. I do not think the attitude of this person is very helpful, they blame others on faders moving. I feel although in the unnecessary examples brought up there was a bigger issue at face.
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