Hello guys and gals. Uses for Clip Gain?

[Terry Wetzel]

I've been holding off posting since I'm new to 12.7 and still finding my way around. I was on 9.6 before and some of the changes made don't make much sense to me like adding the ability to purchase plugins right there on the screen. I guess Avid sensed that plugins are now the big $$ attraction. Anyway, here's my first question. What is the proper use of clip gain? By that I mean, when you click on the little symbol at the bottom left of the clip and the little fader appears, what are you supposed to adjust the dB level to? -10, 0, or other? Do you set all to the same dB level? I know that sounds dumb but that's where I'm at. Any response is appreciated. Thanks

[Meads]

With clip gain basically what you do is determine what level hits your inserts. Volume automation happens after your chain of plugins, clip gain happens before that.
There is no "set everything to x and you're good"-rule (as in almost every regard).

[Sugarnutz]

An example is a vocal line in a song where the words are uneven in level. You can separate the words and adjust the clip gain for each word individually.

[djjazzy41]

Originally Posted by Terry Wetzel

I've been holding off posting since I'm new to 12.7 and still finding my way around. I was on 9.6 before and some of the changes made don't make much sense to me like adding the ability to purchase plugins right there on the screen. I guess Avid sensed that plugins are now the big $$ attraction. Anyway, here's my first question. What is the proper use of clip gain? By that I mean, when you click on the little symbol at the bottom left of the clip and the little fader appears, what are you supposed to adjust the dB level to? -10, 0, or other? Do you set all to the same dB level? I know that sounds dumb but that's where I'm at. Any response is appreciated. Thanks

If you were on 9.6 before, you were able to do the same thing clip gain provides, just in a much more inefficient manner. In earlier versions of ProTools, you could highlight a section of audio, separate it (thus creating a "clip"), and then with that section highlighted go into your audiosuite processing menu and find "gain". A little gain adjustment bar would show up on the screen, and you could adjust the gain up or down on that section of audio. When you clicked "process", the piece of audio was rendered to that new gain level. With the new clip gain feature, all of those steps are built into that little gain bar you see in the corner of your clip of audio, and it is much easier to adjust it up and down without having to re-render the audio each time you made an adjustment. You may not have ever used the audiosuite gain functionality in 9.6; for those of us who used it frequently, the addition of clip gain was a great timesaver to have added to Pro Tools' functionality. Hope this helps!

[Terry Wetzel]

Thanks. I've been using a compressor, say for a vocal track, (VocaL LEVELER) and trying to have the compressor ride gain to even out the levels between phrases. It's a hit and miss way and most times I wind up going through the entire vocal and redoing it. This method sounds great and I will certainly use it. Thanks again.

[leftalive]

Originally Posted by Sugarnutz

An example is a vocal line in a song where the words are uneven in level. You can separate the words and adjust the clip gain for each word individually.

It's also especially great for surgical removal of plosives and sibilance. I love it for that.

[noiseboyuk]

Being as I really started with 10, I cannot imagine life without clip gain. Actually more than that - clip gain was a primary reason why I finally switched to PT (I used to dub on Pyramix). It still boggles my mind that PT got as far as 10 without it.

Clip Gain is about the single most fundamental tool there is. I routinely work with audio that's massively too loud or massively too quiet. Clip gain gets everything in the right sort of range, so you can mix with faders in roughly the right position. Without it, it's just a mess, or you have to use loads of tracks with different gain structures. Yuk.

[PMF Media]

A much under used/undiscovered feature of clip gain - and another way PT out shines most of the rest - is the clip gain line, you can add break points just like in automation and utilise a "rubber band" type gain staging for super fine control pre anything else, great for de-essing, controlling plosives and levelling hard vowel sounds.

Right/control click and select from the clip gain menu.

[The Weed]

Clip Gain is real time AudioSuite Gain.

You can use the little fader at the bottom left of each clip, or show the Clip Gain Line and use that - just like the Volume Line it can be automated and the nodes added, removed and nudged - or just highlight a clip or part of a clip and, depending on how you set it in Preferences (the default is 0.5 db) use the keyboard modifiers and the scroll wheel on your mouse to move the Clip Gain Line up or down by your Preference. And no need to make the area a separate clip.

I did find out yesterday that nudging Clip Gain at least, only seems to work on individual tracks, not Grouped tracks.

We now have 4 ways to affect gain: AudioSuite gain, Volume, Clip Gain and the Trim plug-in. And the latter three are all automatable - at the same time.

HTH

[CygnusX-1Bk2]

I love clip gain. On instrument tracks or tracks that are overtly dynamic I will enable the clip gain line (View>Clip>Clip Gain Line) I will select segments within a clip and adjust in the same way as track volume so I don't have to have a bunch of small clips so that I can set the overall volume of a clip later at the clip gain level. You can do the same thing with a bunch of clips selected but it's a little cleaner. If you need to ride that track during the mix that can be done at the fader level, but using clip gain this way generally reduces the need to ride or reduce the ride moves or the extremity of the rides. But it's great for keeping the level into inserts fairly even.