Gain staging and bulding the foundation · Mastering.com Members Club

Gain staging and bulding the foundation

I'm watching Fix the Mix series, and I have a really confusing question about gain staging.

When I build the foundation, I make the kick and snare hit around -5 dB after processing. But when I add the beat and the vocals (I make lo-fi hip hop, so I usually sample songs), I only have about 2 dB of headroom left on the stereo out.

How should I gain stage my beat and vocals in this situation? Also, how much headroom should I aim to have on the stereo out before mastering?

Another question: if I want my sample to have more bass by adding R-Bass or a similar plugin, should I apply the VU gain staging method to the sample before processing, or is the VU method unnecessary in this case?

Also, what level should I aim for when recording or gain staging my vocals? I don't usually have many layers in my mixes.

A typical session for me consists of:

Soul sample
Kick
Snare
Hi-hats
Percussion
Maybe a bassline
Vocals

What would be the proper gain staging approach and target levels for a simple arrangement like this?

Also, how should I approach mixing the sample? Since it's usually taken from an already mixed and mastered song, I'm never sure how much processing it actually needs.

Should I treat it like any other instrument and gain stage it first, or is there a different workflow you recommend for samples?

Thanks

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Gain staging and bulding the foundation