Gain staging virtual instruments MIDI

I am thoroughly confused as to how gain staging applies to virtual instruments (MIDI) - do I need to worry about gain staging when the tracks are still MIDI or only once when I bounce them in place?

Do I somehow have to automate the gain so that it is always at -12 or -18 the entire track?

Sorry if this is a newbie question but no matter how advanced I become in Logic, gain staging eludes me

Gain staging means adjusting the gain in various places in the signal flow so that the signal doesn't clip or distort in any of those places. With software instruments, because the signal is produced inside a 32 bit floating point audio engine, there's no way to clip it until you go back to a 24 bit fixed audio signal, which is at the output of Logic, so there's no real reason to worry about gain staging other than workflow, good practice, and the potential use of any audio effect plug-ins that are level-dependent. such as compressors and other dynamic processors, distortion units and analog modeling effects.

 

It is good practice to avoid having the instrument so loud that your channel strip peak meters go in the red when no all audio effect plug-ins on the software instrument channel strip are turned off. It should stay comfortably below 0 dBFS. There's no magic number though. An electronic music producer may want his kick drum peaking right at 0 dBFS, while another producer may want that faint far-away ambient trumpet at -35 dBFS in their mix.

Ahhhh ok - so if I am only using virtual instruments, so long as each individual track and the master never hit the red, I am good to go -- I just watched so many videos and read articles about how before mixing/mastering that all tracks need to be in the -12 to -18 range that I was confused

I just watched so many videos and read articles about how before mixing/mastering that all tracks need to be in the -12 to -18 range that I was confused

I've seen some videos and articles mentioning this, however that advice makes little sense. If you want to mix a kick drum very loud with a synth very soft, how are you going to do that if both are in the -12 to -18 range? Does that mean you're limiting your dynamic range to only 6 dB?

Yes you got it right: basically as long as you don't hit the red, you're good.

I just watched so many videos and read articles about how before mixing/mastering that all tracks need to be in the -12 to -18 range that I was confused

I've seen some videos and articles mentioning this, however that advice makes little sense. If you want to mix a kick drum very loud with a synth very soft, how are you going to do that if both are in the -12 to -18 range? Does that mean you're limiting your dynamic range to only 6 dB?

 

Yes you got it right: basically as long as you don't hit the red, you're good.

Well, that eased my worries - thank you David