Getting more gain out of the gainer?

I have been using the gainer module to increase the volume of my samples (one-shot, individual drum-hits from the awesome “200 breaks pack”).

Occasionally I have found that moving the slider fully to the right still does not yield enough volume, especially with really quiet hi-hats.

I noticed that there is the “0.000 db” box in which I may type a value.

What is a good value to type just to get that extra volume? (like, what are the maximum and minimum values?)

Or should I leave that box alone and just increase the amplitude of the sample itself in the sample editor?

I think it’s just down to personal preference, right? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong value because it only has meaning relative to everything else in the mix. I believe that’s one reason mixing and mastering are typically done separately. It wouldn’t be my preference, but there’s no reason I know of why you couldn’t use two gainers if that’s the way you want to go. Personally I’d be looking for other ways to “make room” when mixing before boosting one sample or track so much.

What is a good value to type just to get that extra volume? (like, what are the maximum and minimum values?)

The min/max values are the same as when you move the slider far left and far right (iirc: -inf up to something like 12.04dB).

Personally, I like to make as little destructive editing to samples as possible (other than cutting or trimming) while producing. In general, for me it seems a good philosophy to leave the raw material as untouched as possible. But whether using a gainer or normalizing, I don’t think it matters sound quality wise (truly negligible). Chances are you will have to put a gainer (pre-chain gain-staging) early in the chain in any case, so why bother normalizing anyway.

Why not just add gain to the samples themselves in the Sample Properties area? You can select them all at once and boost the gain for them all…

as for “how much,” that is completely program dependent! There’s no rule or law, totally depends on the initial volume of your samples – the rest is all about good mixing / gain staging!

-M

You can add more than one gainer to a device/sample fx chain and you will get the sum of those gainer outputs. You could then render that sample and have an amplified version of that sample to use without fx.

You could also sequence the sample more than once on the same line (adjacent column) in the pattern editor, or keymap duplicates of the same sample on the sample editor to the same key. You also have a volume control on the sample editor page (up to 6db extra gain)

Great advice, thankyou.

more than 1 gainer, normalize, adjust sample volume, or use instruments global volume.

ah, Im sorry I missed that…the value in the box is just for setting the slider more accurately by typing in the value.