Confused about VU / RMS gain staging with modern kick samples
Hi everyone!
I know lots of questions about this topic, but i asked the man himself and i dont think we understand each other perfectly!
I’ve been trying to understand his gain staging proces better and I recently watched a tutorial where this engineer sets a live kick (And most of the other drums) around -6 dBFS. Then he balances the kick around -6/-5 VU and builds the mix from there.
This makes sense (for me) in his context (live/country-style drums), but I’m running into some problems with this approach.
With some kick samples (mostly hiphop/trap/pop), I notice that when the kick is already peaking around -6 dBFS, it’s also already sitting around -18 RMS and basically hitting close to 0 VU.
So if I try to follow the same method from the video and bring the kick down to -6/-5 VU, I have to lower it quite a bit. But then I also have to turn down all my other drums (which I initially balanced around -6 dBFS) just to maintain the relationship between them.
So I’m confused about a few things:
* Is this difference just because some kick samples are already heavily compressed/clipped compared to live recorded kicks?
*Should I even be trying to match this VU targets in this case?
Or should I just keep it around -18RMS/0VU?
*And practically, how would you approach gain staging and setting levels with these types of kicks?
I know maybe im a bit too deep into this, but i want to understand his apporach and maybe apply it to my own! Would appreciate any insight on how you guys handle this!
And i know some of you don't care about gainstaging ITB! But again im trying to understand some of his workflow and approach
The link!: