What is “Gain?”

All we want to do in this lesson is understand how to run sound on a Sunday morning in the most basic way possible. To do that, we need to understand sound at their source and how to actually get sound out to the congregation.

Basics of Gain Structure (5:14)

Watch this video from church production training source MxU to understand one of the most vital concepts of sound reinforcement, called gain:

https://youtu.be/1OIbpbJ0Zv4?t=21

Using Gain (9:54)

Watch this by Adam from Churchfront for a better understanding of gain and how to use it!

Gain (9:54)

<aside> ⚠️ Here is Rhett’s easy explanation: Gain is the input volume of a source into the mixing board. This is different than your fader mix, which sets the output volume of a source going to the Mains mix to the PA.

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So how do you set gain for a weekend? What is right and what is wrong? Here are some quick tips:

• Gain is set per source and is different from source to source.
• You need enough gain that a source sounds good, but not too much gain that it clips. Clipping is when too much signal overwhelms the mixing board’s capabilities and it distorts unpleasantly. Clipping can happen when the input source is gained too high, but it can also happen later in the chain.
• Our sweet spot for gain is for each channel on the board to “peak” (the average highest loud spot) between -18dB and -12dB. This leaves enough “headroom” that it shouldn’t clip down the line but has enough gain for us to capture a full, robust sound from that source.

Setting gain starts with the input gain on a mixing board (but can be affected with different processing down the chain) which is set during “line check” before “soundcheck.”