Oct 28 (edited) • Audio 🎶
Ideal Fader Levels 🎚️
Hey everyone,
I thought I would share a conversation I was having with a coworker today. They asked me why you’d ideally want your faders near unity. Here’s my response:
- Granular scale of control. Faders are adjusting decibel levels and the decibel is not a linear unit of measurement. Every 3dB increase or decrease of gain represents a doubling or halving of signal strength. Input faders adjust the decibel level of an input signal that among other potential destinations, usually gets sent to your master output or matrix. Your master fader(s) adjust the decibel level of your output signal that gets sent to your speakers or some other destination (e.g., a recording). The fader positions are also not demarcated linearly, which means that there is an equal fader distance between -10dB to 0dB as there is between -60dB to -30dB, but as you may have noticed, the former is a difference of 10dB, while the latter is a difference of 30dB. This means that any changes you make with your fader between -60dB and -30dB will be drastic, while changes made between -10dB and 0dB will be more subtle. Subtle signal adjustments are ideal because sudden drastic changes can be startling for listeners and lead to unintended signal levels for operators.
2. SNR. In both cases, your fader position determines your ‘signal to noise ratio’ (SNR), which is the ratio between your desired signal and unwanted noise. In every signal there will inherently be some amount of noise. The threshold at which this unwanted noise is audible is called the ‘noise floor’. The noise floor is both an absolute and relative value. It’s absolute in the sense that there is some signal level at which noise is audible, which is a fixed value. But it’s relative in the sense that it is lower or higher relative to your signal level, in the same way that the floor of a room seems lower or higher relative to the height of the ceiling, even if it’s just the ceiling that’s changing. So why do you want your fader to be near 0dB (unity)? Because this is the ideal signal to noise ratio. It means that the same absolute amount of noise will be masked relative to the strength of the signal. It means the noise floor is lower relative to the signal level. More signal clarity. Less noise. Important for input faders because they affect the outputs that are receiving input signals, and important for output faders because they affect the speakers and other devices that are receiving the output signals. This is a crucial concept in every audio application but especially recordings.
Feel free to ask questions or post comments!
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Ideal Fader Levels 🎚️
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