Mixer Terms 101.

GAIN

When you use Studio 6, one of the first things you see on the mixer is the slip of paper telling you what settings to keep each control knob at.  The very first one at the top is the black knob labeled gain. 

Some people think that gain controls the "volume" of the microphone.  It doesn't.  "Gain" is actually an electrical term used to describe the amount of amplitude (i.e voltage/currant/power) of the audio signal being sent into the mixer. Gain measures the ability of the electrical circuit to increase the power or amplify the signal from the input (mic) to the output (your Digital Audio Workstation).  If you feel like Wikipedia'ing it to read more, you can continue to scratch your head while looking at all the amazing formulas that are used to express gain!:

Yea....no.

Basically, when you play with the gain knob,  what you're actually doing is determining how much signal  is flowing from the mic, through the mixer, and into the computer - in this case, Sound Waves that have been turned into electrical sine waves.  This is why if you turn the gain down really low, you don't visually see as large of a sound wave in your digital audio workstation (i.e. Audacity, Garage Band, etc.) as you would if the gain was up really high. 

However, a really strong signal isn't always the best signal.  The higher the gain settings, the more likely you are to pick up ambient noise in your recording or cause feedback. Ideally, you want your gain input and output at the same voltage level, achieving Unity Gain. 

Now that you know what that word Gain means and what it does, check out this video from sound engineer Landon Gace's How to Record YouTube series.  This is a great intro, how-to video explained in simple terms as he goes step by step while showing you how to set up & optimizing gain settings.

  Happy recording!