question about gain knob vs volume fader

[JRIII86]

I was working on a guitar track with my friend today and he kept saying he wanted me to turn up the gain on the mix channel to overdrive the signal a bit, cause he wanted more overdrive than what he'd recorded out of his amp. From my experience with Reason though, the gain doesn't seem to do anything different from the volume fader in terms of changing the tone. That is, if I turn up the gain knob but turn down the fader then I just end up where I started. Sure enough, that is what happened when I tried it on the guitar track. He kept insisting that gain is different from volume, but I think his main experience with that is as it applies to guitar amps, and he has very little experience with DAWs. I too thought gain was different from volume, but at least from my experience as it applies to the mix channels in Reason, there doesn't seem to be any. Could anyone clarify for me the relationship between the two within Reason?

[Wickline]

In reason they are basically pre and post volume. On a analogue mixer, you can drive the gain to saturate the signal like your friend is talking about. In reason there are no physical parts to abuse lol. Same reason a guitar amp sounds different (better) at high gain instead of simply louder.


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[MannequinRaces]

If I remember correctly this video about levels and clipping covers gain staging and I believe answers some or most of your questions:

[Wickline]

I guess my answer wasn’t as clear as I meant. You can over drive it, but it clips digitally on the output to your interface and that’s not a good thing.


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[Loque]

Use a limiter with high input.

[JRIII86]

I guess my answer wasn’t as clear as I meant. You can over drive it, but it clips digitally on the output to your interface and that’s not a good thing.


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Yes, that's what I was trying to tell him! Like it's the same kind of overdrive you get from just turning up the volume fader too high. He didn't seem to believe that I knew what I was talking about though, so I'm glad to know I did.

[Wickline]

I guess my answer wasn’t as clear as I meant. You can over drive it, but it clips digitally on the output to your interface and that’s not a good thing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, that's what I was trying to tell him! Like it's the same kind of overdrive you get from just turning up the volume fader too high. He didn't seem to believe that I knew what I was talking about though, so I'm glad to know I did.

Yep. That’s why we have things like the softube saturation knob. To mimic analogue gear. Good luck with your friend lol!


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