gain stage hh

by Gooooose

gain stage hh is a simple, yet missing tool for audio mixing in Ableton.

As you might already know, many audio devices have their prefered input level, if the input signal goes beyond that level, unwanted distortions would be created during processing. Although sometimes these distortions are desired, and that's exactly why we usually have a gain knob on guitar pedals - to make sure the input level will drive the circuit heavily and create predictable distortion and extra harmonics.

In the area of audio mixing, although some distortion might sound interesting or desired after specific devices, we usually would want to avoid distorting each and every device in a long processing chain. For example, many analog emulation plugins prefer an input level of -18db, we would want to make sure the input level is under -18db for each of those plugins to avoid undesired distortions. In short, with gain stage, it become much easier to keep a clean and pristine signal flow. In fact, if you check their manuals, almost all plugins would have their prefered input level.

Apart from the level control, a gentle one pole filter and a phase flipping section is added in front of the meter. A one pole filter, or a filter with the cutting slope of 6db per octave, would generate much less phase distortion and sound much more natural to most of the ears. The initial state of the filter will low pass 40K hz and high pass 0 hz and create a very wide and clean band pass filter. However, you can create a notch filter when the HP number is higher than the LP number.

The phase section, as you might expected, would flip the phase of channel L or R or both, color White and Red represent Left and Right channel, as we can see on typical RCA cables. Channel R's phase is slaved to L, so when you change the phase of left channel, the phase of L and R will be flipped together. Constantly paying attention to the phase polarity of your low end are usually one of the key to create more solid and punchy bass drum or bass lines, simply flip the phase of the whole track and feel the difference. For more nerdy readers, a 10ms slope is added to the flipping process, so unlike many other devices, no noticable annoying "click" will be heard during the process.

Other essential functions such as extreme gain or monoing a track could be found in Ableton utility, thus not included in this device.