Use the volume setting in the Live instruments or plug-in for this. The same goes for presets of MIDI instruments. A lot of the clips shipped with the Live Library or available for purchase are very loud and need to be adjusted. That’s because the volume comes last in the signal flow. So if the signal comes in too hot from a clip, simply turning down the volume won’t cut it. Finally the sound goes through the mixing element with volume and panning before it is routed out to either the master track or whatever track is chosen in the Audio To setting. Then it goes to the device chain in the track (as displayed in the device view in Live) into the device on the left (or right after the MIDI instrument on MIDI tracks), then through every audio effect in the track from left to right. In MIDI tracks of course, we only get audio once the MIDI data is converted into sound in the MIDI instrument. The signal in a track originally comes from either a clip or an input source (external instrument or mic, rerouted track) when it’s audio. The signal flow in a track in Ableton Live I noticed that this is something a lot of users aren’t really aware of. The Signal Flowīefore we talk about gain staging, we should quickly go over the signal flow in Live. Think of gain staging as giving you a safety buffer to avoid clipping and an overloaded, too hot mix. There, clipping produces anharmonic distortion which sounds sheer ugly. Yet, while analogue clipping could sound quite good, this is not the case in the digital domain. These days, the noise floor is generally so low, there’s rarely a need to carefully balance the signal-to-noise ratio.
In the days of analogue mixing, you’d have to find a balance between getting the sound as high above the noise floor as possible while leaving enough headroom to avoid clipping. Quite frankly, this probably is the source of the myth that Ableton Live doesn’t sound as good as other DAWs. It’s no surprise if you overload the effects whether it’s the native ones or plug-ins. Most people simply turn down the master and call it a day, but then wonder why the mix sounds so crappy.
It’s either clipping on the master or even worse, already clipping in individual tracks. However, 80% of the time I’m mixing someone else’s work, I get a mix that’s way too hot. Have you ever noticed that a sound is different when you run it through effects at a high or low level? That’s one of the reasons why gain staging is so crucial.
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