Tips from a Recording Engineer: The Critical Difference Between Gain and Volume

[CoreyT]

Did any of you see this on the PRS blog from 9-23?

http://www.prsguitars.com/index.php...the_critical_difference_between_gain_and_volu

 

[nico44]

Good stuff, thanks for sharing. Gain vs volume has always confused me. This is a very simple and elegant way to explain it, and remember it. From the article:

> Typically, gain is the control for what comes "in" to a piece of gear.

> Typically, volume is the control for what comes "out" of a piece of gear.

 

[kingsleyd]

It's helpful to remember that the same principle applies everywhere in the chain between your fingers and the speaker cone of your amplifier.

One of the things a lot of the players who are known for "great tone" have in common is a solid understanding of how to set things so the connection between what you do with your fingers and the sound that comes off the speaker cone is optimized. To oversimplify what I mean: I want the amp to behave one way if I pick softly, and another way if I pick hard. Same thing as if I was playing a trumpet, you know? Blow softly, nice clear warm sound. Blow hard, more punch, more overtones, more crunch.

The most common mistake I see is to have too much gain in some parts of the signal chain and not enough in others. (which often starts with hitting the strings too hard, too much of the time)

FWIW, I almost always do the basic dialing-in of pedals and amp with my guitar volume on 8. That way, I always have a little headroom for when I want a bit more of whatever it is I'm getting, sound-wise. But I always pay attention to where that puts me if I back off to 4 or 5.

I also have a strategy for setting my amp controls that I learned from Steve Kimock, which doesn't involve the guitar at all. It's just a matter of listening (carefully) to the sounds of the amp as you turn the knobs WITHOUT a guitar attached. It works beautifully once you learn the idea.

 

[László]

It's helpful to remember that the same principle applies everywhere in the chain between your fingers and the speaker cone of your amplifier.

One of the things a lot of the players who are known for "great tone" have in common is a solid understanding of how to set things so the connection between what you do with your fingers and the sound that comes off the speaker cone is optimized. To oversimplify what I mean: I want the amp to behave one way if I pick softly, and another way if I pick hard. Same thing as if I was playing a trumpet, you know? Blow softly, nice clear warm sound. Blow hard, more punch, more overtones, more crunch.

The most common mistake I see is to have too much gain in some parts of the signal chain and not enough in others. (which often starts with hitting the strings too hard, too much of the time)

FWIW, I almost always do the basic dialing-in of pedals and amp with my guitar volume on 8. That way, I always have a little headroom for when I want a bit more of whatever it is I'm getting, sound-wise. But I always pay attention to where that puts me if I back off to 4 or 5.

I also have a strategy for setting my amp controls that I learned from Steve Kimock, which doesn't involve the guitar at all. It's just a matter of listening (carefully) to the sounds of the amp as you turn the knobs WITHOUT a guitar attached. It works beautifully once you learn the idea.

Great post!

Because I play single-channel amps I usually set them up with my guitar volume on about 6, so I have a lot of room to go gainier or cleaner, but the principle is the same as you've suggested. Namely, music is a game of emotion, and having a good dynamic range for your playing only enhances your ability to emphasize the emotional response of the listener.

Steve's method of setting amp controls by listening to amp noise is a good one, but works better with some amps than others - my amps, for instance, have very little hiss and noise! So I like to set the controls with my guitar attached, playing a few licks that are familiar enough to give me a good idea of where I stand with the amp's controls in mind.

Easier to listen to amp noise, say, with a Mesa, than with a single channel PRS amp which is a very quiet beast!

One caveat here might be that for the heavy metal guys, there are probably other good ways of setting up an amp (since there are fewer issues about dynamics with an amp that is in very high gain mode), but not being a metal player, I have no idea at ALL what those are!

 

[Boogie]

Easier to listen to amp noise, say, with a Mesa, than with a single channel PRS amp which is a very quiet beast!!

And, your hearing has to be acute enough to register that noise shelf. I doubt mine qualifies anymore.

 

[kingsleyd]

And, your hearing has to be acute enough to register that noise shelf. I doubt mine qualifies anymore.

Trust me, my hearing has definitely been abused over the years. You can hear the noise shelf if you turn the master up enough.

 

[kingsleyd]

One caveat here might be that for the heavy metal guys, there are probably other good ways of setting up an amp (since there are fewer issues about dynamics with an amp that is in very high gain mode), but not being a metal player, I have no idea at ALL what those are!

I'd guess it's not that different. I think there is still a desire to be able to control the dynamic and harmonic spectra with your fingers. When you do the Kimock "listen to the blow" test, you find there are thresholds throughout the gain curve.

 

[kingsleyd]

OK, here's what Kimock posted on the Gear Page. This is what I referred to in my first post here.

OK, how to dial up a Dumble? I do it the same way I dial up ANY amp, which begins by listenting to just the amp, not the guitar through the amp.

1. Plug in your guitar, turn the guitar volume off.

2. Turn the amp control off, everything all the way down.

3. Get right down next to the speaker.

4. Open up your post effect master 50-75%. Listen to the amp blow through the speaker, anything?

5. Open up the front master a little bit, listen to the blow.

6. Open up the gain to 1

7. Open up the tone controls to 2 or 3

8. OK, now you should hear something. Hissshhhhpopshhh etc.

9. Rotate the input volume. Listen, you'll hear when the control starts to respond. At different places around the rotation of the pot, you'll hear the amp come on.

Most volume controls exhibit similar behavior, but the exact place they start to become active varies with the individual pot, taper, value, and circuit.

The first sweet spot is where the amp goes from nothing at all happening, to a little blow that normally starts at a pretty high frequency and then begins to pick up a little volume and low end. Take note of that orientation of the pot and remind yourself that that setting is a threshold setting, on one side one behavior, on the other side a different behavior. With whatever voltage you get from the output of your guitar, backing off on your right hand touch or digging in should give you a little change in the way the amp responds. See where this is going? We're looking for settings that exhibit this threshold or touch-sensitive behavior. That first mark on your input volume is going to be almost ridiculously low, but don't discount it yet. If something is happening there, and the amp is telling you that it is, you can exploit it in combination with the other controls.

So anyway, you get a mark around 1 or 2, or between 8 and 9 o'clock chicken head time if that's your knob. Keep going. You should hear another change in the blow coming through the speaker at around 10 o'clock chicken head. This is a real sweet spot on the Dumble, and in a very narrow range around this spot are the only good overdrive tones when you stack the gain. Much past that is just fuzz box.

Keep going!

Up around 1 or 2 o'clock will be another location on the pot where if you sweep back and forth a little you will hear the characteristic oooh-waaa of one behavior of the amp above the spot and another below. This is the territory I do the majority of my clean playing in. I can back off with my right hand and be using a wonderful clean sound or dig in and get the amp to sing, not high gain mind you, but two different sounds.

Keep going!

Past 3 o'clock on my amp the sound doesn't change much but does pick up in volume. Some amps or maybe preamp tubes will actually go into oscillation at this point, and the volume will go down, so pay attention when you get to the higher gain stuff, to check to make sure the control is doing what you think it should.

Now pick anyone of these "threshold" locations and go through the same process with the tone controls. Listen carefully for the blow to change as you work each control through its rotation by itself and in combination with the other controls. You might be surprised what you learn.

This approach will let you know when the amp is "doing something". Regardless of tube type or guitar, etc... the amp can't hide from this kind of scrutiny, and it can't lie to you either, so do it, and center your efforts in those areas where a little voltage swing from your guitar will move the amp around a little.

 

[László]

As I said, I do realize the potential value of Steve's theory (I've spoken with him and tried several of his suggestions), but I have a couple of issues with it that I'd like to discuss briefly.

Steve is using the amp's noise floor, thermal noise and what have you, as a substitute for pugging in a white or pink noise generator. Such noise is often used in audio in useful ways. I used it to help position my studio monitors, and position my room's sound treatment, for example.

However if I'm going to use that technique, I'd rather use white noise run through an amp in a controlled way, via a noise generator with the amp set to safe volumes.

Sitting in front of a guitar speaker with an amp cranked loud enough for his technique to be useful means that an accidental noise - and we have all experienced a variety of accidents of one kind or another with guitars and amps if we've played for a long time - presents a significant hearing risk. It takes only one mistake, one "Oh my goodness I forgot to..." for one's hearing to be permanently altered for the worse. A loud pop or other noise coming from a maxed out amp you are sitting with your ear close to is not a good recipe for hearing.

One can generate white or pink noise with software or a synth. Plug it into the amp's input, and you don't have to have your head in front of the speaker of a maxed out amp to hear how the controls work.

Some might question the necessity of even this. We don't set a mic preamp up without a mic plugged in and without the mic actually operating in front of a vocalist or instrument. We don't EQ a track without, you know, the recording that we're thinking of EQing.

While I concede that Steve's method does cause a player to learn something about his or her amp, I'd rather see what it does with a guitar signal at the volumes I intend to use it at. So I plug a guitar in and set an amp up that way.

Steve's a brilliant player, and a great guy, so this isn't to knock him. I'd just rather not take too many chances with my ears.