Everything GainKit does.
GainKit is the first thing on the channel: a VU meter you can read at a glance and one gain knob. Here's every way you can set it up.
One meter or two
One needle that reads the louder side, or a meter for each side with its own trim knob. Pick it on the METERS row of the THEME menu.
Low and high cuts, and the long view
GainKit has a low cut and a high cut, off to start. Turn on FILTERS in the THEME menu: on the LOOK page for the window (a drawer with the curve, or a bar), on the STRIP page for the strip (a bar along its bottom). Drag a handle to set a cut and it glides there, so it never clicks. With GainKit Plus running, the strip's bar gets a small arrow: click it and the strip opens into the long view, with the curve right there in your mixer. Click again to go back. The strip grows to fit, and the music plays straight through. The Filter does the same.
Six look presets
GainKit's preset menu, at the top of its window, has six looks after its sound presets. Each one sets the THEME menu for a job; the gain, the trims and the cuts stay where they are. The four track looks put the meter in the track's colour (with GainKit Plus); Master keeps a plain face.
- Mono track — MONO on, and the low and high cut bar in the window and on the strip.
- Stereo track — two meters, with small L / R trims on the strip.
- Bus — two meters, the peak as the window's number, the PEAK light at -3 dBFS, the name on a band.
- Headphone cue — the meter alone in the strip, drag it to set the gain, the gain always showing.
- Master — two meters, 0 VU at -14 dBFS, the highest peak as the window's number, the PEAK light at -1 dBFS, the last high marked by the arc.
- Default look — everything back to how GainKit starts.
Nine ways to sit in a strip
Each strip below is named after the setting it shows.
- Meter + knob — the meter over the gain knob. This is how it starts.
- Two meters — left and right, side by side.
- Meter alone and Two, alone — just the meter, with the STEREO / MONO key under the name.
- Knob alone — the gain knob and its number, for a busy strip.
- Track colour — the meter's face takes the track's colour (with GainKit Plus).
- Name on band — the track's name on a bar in the track's colour (with GainKit Plus).
- Ticks only — the scale without numbers, for a quieter strip.
- Meter as fader — turn on VU DRAG and drag the meter itself to set the gain. The face fills up to show where it's set.
Twenty meter faces
From cream to cobalt. Pick one on the VU row of the THEME menu, or give every meter the same face with VU SYNC.
In the track panel too
GainKit sits in the track panel as well as the mixer. Make a track taller and it grows with it. The EMBED row of the THEME menu moves any of the seven between the mixer, the track panel, or neither (GainKit Plus does the moving).
Your track's name and colour
On REAPER 7.81 and later, GainKit prints its track's name by itself. Add GainKit Plus and every GainKit also takes the track's colour and icon, and the master shows your project's name. Click the middle of the meter in GainKit's window and type a name: with GainKit Plus running, that renames the track itself.
Stereo or mono
The STEREO / MONO key folds the track to mono in one click. Don't need the key? Hide it with the ST/MONO row, and a mono track shows a small dot instead.
What each one is for, and what the knobs do.
Every knob in plain words, and where to try it first. The numbers are starting points, not rules: turn until it sounds right.
Four of them have a drawer: the strip along the bottom edge of the window drops it, and with Floatter running the window grows for it. Saturation's CURVE, the 3-Band EQ's band display, Stereo Width's STEREO FIELD, and the Filter's CURVE, below.
Filter: clean up the low end and the top
A high-pass takes out everything below its setting: rumble, mic thumps, the low mud a vocal or a guitar doesn't need. A low-pass takes out everything above: hiss, fizz, a harsh top end. Each knob runs from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, and the sweep is smooth, so you can ride it or automate it for a build.
The knobs
- HIGH PASS: all the way down is off. Turn it up until the low end gets clean, then back it off a touch.
- LOW PASS: all the way up is off. Turn it down to soften the top.
- 12 dB / 24 dB: how steep the cut is. 12 is gentle and natural; 24 cuts harder, for a clean line.
- The lights switch each filter off, and back on where it was.
- CURVE, the strip along the bottom edge, drops the response with a dot for each filter: drag it sideways, or scroll it a semitone at a time.
- In the mixer it's the two knobs. With GainKit Plus running, the arrow in the strip's corner opens the long view with the curve.
Try it on
Vocals, guitars and keys: HIGH PASS around 80 to 120 Hz. Overheads and room mics: higher, 200 Hz or so. A harsh or hissy track: LOW PASS down to 10 or 12 kHz. A build: automate the HIGH PASS up and let it drop on the downbeat.
Saturation: warmth and weight
Saturation adds the thickness you get from pushing analog gear a little too hard. Quiet details come up, the loudest moments get rounded off, and the track sounds fuller and sits further forward.
Tube or solid state? Closer to solid state, or tape. A tube bends the sound unevenly and gets sweet and fuzzy. This one rounds off the top and the bottom of the sound the same way, so it stays tight and clean even when you push it.
The knob
- DRIVE: 0 is clean. Around 20 to 40 % it just thickens. Past 60 % it gets dense and loud, and the peaks round off hard.
- The light next to DRIVE switches it off and on, so you can hear what it's doing.
- CURVE, the strip along the bottom edge, drops the transfer curve under the knob: a straight line is clean, and the more it bends, the more it saturates. In the dock a CURVE chip pops it over the knob.
- Louder in, more effect. A quiet track barely changes. Turn up GainKit in front of it to push it harder.
Try it on
Drums and bass, for weight. Vocals and a vocal bus, to bring them forward. A dull synth or a DI guitar, for life. The master, set low, for a little glue.
3-Band EQ: quick, musical tone
Three wide bands: LOW under 200 Hz, MID from 200 Hz to 2 kHz, HIGH over 2 kHz. They overlap gently, like the bass, middle and treble on a good console or amp, so it's hard to make it sound bad. With every knob at zero the sound comes out exactly as it went in. It's for shaping the tone fast, not for hunting down one bad frequency.
The band display
The strip along the bottom edge drops the band display: the curve, a dot per band you drag (up and down for the gain, sideways for the crossover; the MID dot slides its whole band, and the wheel over it widens or narrows the band), and the two crossover lines to drag. The crossovers show their frequencies live, and the filter comes in two voices: CLASSIC, LOSER's original band split, and SMOOTH, EON's stacked shelves that turn exactly on the crossover lines.
The knobs
- LOW: body and boom. Up for weight on kick, bass or a thin guitar. Down to clear mud out of anything that isn't the bass.
- MID: where vocals, guitars and snare live. Down a little for a boxy or honky sound. Up to push a part forward in a busy mix.
- HIGH: air and bite. Up for brightness on vocals, cymbals and acoustic guitar. Down to tame a harsh or hissy recording.
- LEVEL: the output. A boost also makes it louder, and louder always sounds better, so match the level before you judge.
- Every knob goes 24 dB up or down, and each band has a light to switch it off and hear the difference.
Try it on
Every channel, as a first tone pass. A dull room or overhead mic: HIGH up. A muddy acoustic guitar: LOW down. A bass that needs more weight: LOW up, MID down a touch.
DDC: a fast, clean compressor built for drums
DDC, the Digital Drum Compressor, is a clean, fast compressor in the VCA style: it controls the hits without colouring the sound. You decide how hard it grabs, how long it holds and how fast it lets go, so you set how much punch and how much ring every hit keeps. It's named for drums, but it's just as good on bass, vocals and whole buses.
The top row
- THRESH: how loud a hit has to be before it starts working. Lower catches more of the sound.
- RATIO: how hard it squeezes. 2 to 4 for gentle control, 8 and up to slam drums, 20 is close to a limiter.
- ATTACK: how fast it grabs. Slower, 20 to 40 ms, lets the stick through first, for more punch. Faster, under 5 ms, catches the hit itself, for a smoother, flatter sound.
- HOLD: how long it keeps holding before it lets go. A little hold stops a snare from pumping.
- REL: how fast it lets go. Fast brings up the room and the ring between hits; slow keeps it even and tight. The meter on the right should settle back before the next hit.
The second row
- KNEE: how gently it starts. 0 is a hard edge; higher eases in, more natural on vocals and buses.
- MIX: blends the squeezed sound with the dry one. Slam it hard, then bring MIX down to 30 to 50 % for a big drum sound that keeps its punch.
- SC HPF: stops the low end from driving it. On a drum bus, set it to 80 to 150 Hz so the kick doesn't make the whole kit duck.
- LINK: how much left and right move together. 100 % keeps the stereo picture steady.
- L.AHEAD: lets it see a hit coming, up to 5 ms early, so it catches even the sharpest attack. REAPER keeps everything in time.
The rest
- RMS: 0 reacts to every peak. Higher reacts to the average loudness: smoother, good on vocals and bass.
- OUTPUT and AUTO: AUTO turns the level back up for you, so you hear the squeeze and not just a quieter track.
- FEED: FF is modern and precise. FB listens to its own output, like many classic compressors: smoother and more forgiving. SC listens to another track instead: put DDC on the bass, send the kick to the bass track's channels 3 and 4, and the bass ducks out of the kick's way.
- DET 2x: the level detector runs at double rate, a sharper ear for very fast settings. The sound itself isn't resampled.
- A trick: set RATIO below 1 and it works backwards. Hits that cross the threshold get bigger, for extra snap. Watch your levels.
Try it on
- Kick: ratio 4 to 6, attack 20 to 30 ms, release 80 to 150 ms. The click comes through and the tail tightens.
- Snare: ratio 4, attack 10 to 20 ms, a little hold, release with the tempo. More crack.
- Drum bus or room mics: ratio 8 to 20, fast attack, fast release, MIX at 30 to 50 %. Big and exciting, and the hits are still there.
- Bass: ratio 3 to 4, attack 10 to 30 ms, release 100 to 200 ms, RMS 10 to 30 ms. Every note the same size.
- Vocal: ratio 3, KNEE 6 to 10, RMS 20 to 50 ms, attack 5 to 10 ms, release 100 to 200 ms. Steady, and still natural.
De-Esser: takes the sting out of S's
A de-esser listens for the harsh S, T and SH sounds in a voice and turns down only that part of the sound, only while it's there. The rest of the voice stays as it was. The screen shows the voice from low to high, with the band it's working on marked.
The knobs
- THRESH: how loud an S has to be before it acts. Lower catches more.
- FREQ: where the harshness lives. Most voices sit around 5 to 8 kHz; deeper voices lower, brighter voices higher.
- BW: how wide the band is. Narrow for one sharp whistle, wide for a general hiss.
- RATIO: how much it turns down once it acts.
- LOOK: lets it hear the S coming, up to 5 ms early, so the very start of it gets caught too.
- TIME: how quickly it reacts and lets go. FAST is the hardest to hear working; SLOW is smoother on a hissy recording.
- TARGET: BP turns down just the band around FREQ. HP turns down everything above FREQ, like pulling down a treble knob for a moment.
- MONITOR: plays only what it's catching. The fastest way to set it: turn MONITOR on, sweep FREQ until you hear just the S's, turn it off.
Try it on
Lead and backing vocals, voiceover and podcasts. Also harsh hi-hats and cymbals, bright overheads, or a fizzy synth.
Stereo Width: wider or narrower, the middle stays put
Width turns the stereo spread up or down. What sits in the middle, the kick, the bass, the lead vocal, stays where it is; only the difference between left and right gets louder or quieter.
The knob
- WIDTH: 0 is mono, 100 % leaves the sound untouched, 200 % is twice as wide.
- CORRELATION: near +1, it will sound fine in mono. Around 0, it's very wide. Below 0, parts of it will vanish when the song plays in mono, on a phone or in a club, so back the knob off.
- The light next to WIDTH switches it off and on.
- STEREO FIELD, the strip along the bottom edge, drops a live picture of the stereo signal with the correlation meter above it.
Try it on
Widen pads, backing vocals and room mics. Narrow a busy stereo synth or the overheads so they stop fighting the vocal. Put it last on the master and turn it to 0 to check your mix in mono.
Free, all seven.
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