'Effects For Violin' is a video/blog series designed to teach bowed strings players about all the different kinds of available effects, what they sound like, and how to use them.
While this is the beginning of a series on effects, before discussing any effects at all, we must first cover a topic that will make or break your sound, and which must be understood and applied each time you add another stage to your signal chain, and that is gain staging, also called gain structuring. Gain structure is the relationship between gain levels throughout a signal chain, and is used to minimize noise and distortion while maximizing your signal strength.
Your signal chain is the path that electrical current takes all the way from your instrument's pickup, through cables (or wireless systems), preamps, effects, to your amplifier, mixing console, DAW. Even if you are only plugging an instrument directly into an amp, gain is an important consideration for tone and loudness.
So, how do you know if your gain setting is suboptimal? Here are three signs that your gain structure needs work:
- Noise:Signal ratio -- Your signal is weak and/or there's a lot of noise or background hiss.
- Your dynamic levels aren't linear, i.e. adding/subtracting bow pressure or speed doesn't increase/decrease your volume as expected (your electric instrument should respond to dynamic change much like your acoustic does).
- Clipping -- You hear unintended clipping or distortion, which is what happens when your signal exceeds your system's headroom and the tops of wave forms get clipped, producing an ugly, scratchy sound.
Below you'll learn how to fix these issues, and how to properly set your gain for each stage in your signal chain.
Finding the Goldilocks Gain Setting
This diagram shows the amplitude parameter of a circuit. When setting your gain level, your goal is to find a level such that your nominal operation (the normal full dynamic range of your playing) clearly exceeds the noise floor while staying within the circuit's headroom (aka without bumping into the ceiling).
Whenever you plug your violin in amplified, you'll notice a low level background hiss (the noise floor). This is a normal component of any amplified circuit. If your gain is sett too low, you'll notice that you can still hear the noise intermingled with your playing. We need to bump up above this, without going too high...
To find the Goldilocks setting, you'll want to choose a starting point and play your instrument as loudly as you ever expect to in performance; this is referred to as your 'anticipated peak' above. The best way to test the upper level of your dynamic range is to play double stops, which pass the most signal from your instrument. If you play your loudest double stops hear clipping or distortion, you'll need to dial down your gain setting and try again. If at your very loudest you are not hearing any clipping, then you should test increasing your gain a small amount, since you may have more 'headroom' with which to improve your signal-to-noise ratio.
Repeat play-testing at loud dynamics and adjusting your gain until it is as high as it can be without clipping. Once you clip, back off slightly to give yourself a little extra headroom for safety or unexpected peaks, and now you've found this Goldilocks zone...at least for this piece of equipment. Now you have to repeat this process for the next piece of equipment you add to your chain.
Watch the video
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