Pre fader listen vs post fader listen

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to check out an important concept which is part of a proper gain staging setup, a simple check that will save us from having unwanted distortion into our tracks, the pre fader listen!.

By default, all the DAWS are set on post fader metering, meaning that if we are moving the volume fader in one channel, the meter of that channel (and the stereo buss) will rise or reduce accordingly.

The problem is that if the volume fader has as consequence the rise of the volume until a track clips, we don't know whether that channel, that recorded track with all the plugins processing it, is really already in distortion (or if it's too low in volume) BEFORE moving the volume fader (in that case we will have to check out whether there is some plugin that is clipping the signal or if the actual track is clipping).

To solve this problem we can choose in the DAW options (basically in every DAW) pre fader listen (something that is present also in many physical mixers), which swaps the position of the volume fader and the meter in single tracks or in the whole mixer.

What does this mean practically? It means that the volume fader still does its job, raising and lowering the volume, but the meter will keep showing us, regardless of the volume we decided, how hot is the audio track before entering in the volume fader, and whether the signal is already in clip or not (sometimes for example it's already in clip because the track is passing through some plugin, like some Compressor which maybe has a little too much make up gain).

By verifying the input and output level of all tracks (and therefore of all plugins on each track) we can make sure no track is clipping, and this is essential to perform a proper gain staging, thus having a perfeclty clear song.

One final note: press only one PFL button at a time, otherwise the meter will show the combination of all the active channels and plugins (in the stereo buss) and you won't know which one is too high or too low.

I hope this was helpful!

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