In this article we’re covering an important topic for audio gear – how to set the gain for a microphone, on different types of mixers.

To see and hear some of these examples, check out the corresponding video on our Learn Stage Audio channel!

What is Gain and Why Does it Matter?

The gain is what turns the microphone on, what gives it level in the mixer. Gain is an amplifier before anything else - the amount of amplification that is applied to a signal.  

It is important to set the gain level correctly so that the signal is not too loud (which risks distortion) or too quiet.

Analog vs Digital Mixers

On some older analog mixers, you could run the gain up into the clipping – in other words, making the red light at the top blink. That could sound really good, you’d get a bit of nice analog distortion.

But on a digital mixer, you want to stay completely out of the red. If you drive it into the red on a digital mixer, you’ll hear a nasty crunchy digital distortion. 

Where should you set the gain level?

If the gain is set too low, the signal will be too quiet. This can make it difficult to hear the audio, and hard to mix your instruments. If the gain is set too high, the signal will be distorted. This can make the audio sound unpleasant.

It’s generally best to have a healthy amount of level, while making sure you’re not clipping – that’s it in a nutshell.  

If you’re mixing on a console, for good gain structure, try to have most of your instruments at a similar level, whatever that may be. If you’re too low, you may pick up some noise that wouldn’t be there at a higher level. Too high, of course, and clipping can happen. Having gain levels all over the place makes it hard to compare levels of different instruments.

My recommendation is to run a little bit high. Why? On some mixers, like the one in the photo below, you can see everything really well.

But many times, on a control surface you may have a 3 or 4, or 5 to 6 segment meter that can only show so much. You need an idea of how much level is coming in from each instrument or microphone, to make the best decisions on the mixer. Don't be afraid to bump that level up. 

Set the gain level high enough to easily see on the controller, but not so high it’s in danger of clipping with normal use – I find that going up to a -6 to -3 at most, sounds really good.

Conclusion

To summarize – set your gain so that it's loud enough for what you need, loud enough so you can see it clearly on the meter, but not so loud that it's going to clip. Because if that happens, you've got problems because it sounds real bad and your job as the sound person is to make it sound real good!

For more tutorials like this, plus gear reviews and more, check out our Learn Stage Audio channel on Youtube.