If you use plugins to mix audio, whether that’s for your music, spoken word or anything else, it’s essential that you use this technique. The technique is called level matching plugins. In this video, you’ll find out what it is, why you should be level matching plugins, and how to do it in your mixes.
Level matching plugins (or loudness/gain matching) means setting your plugins input and output levels so that they’re the same.
So your audio track goes into a plugin (like an EQ or a compressor) at a certain level and the audio gets processed by the plugin. The thing is, most processing of the signal is going to cause either a reduction or an increase in the level of the signal.
You can probably imagine why this is with a dynamic processor like a compressor. A compressor is normally used to reduce the level of peaks, so the overall level of the signal is likely to reduce. Or if the compressor has auto makeup gain it might increase the signal. But EQs and other effects cause changes in loudness too.
So you know what level matching is, but why do we need to do it and how can you do it? Find out in this video!