Gain staging¶

Why Gloopy's faders read 0 to 1 instead of decibels, and what that means for keeping a mix clean.

Faders are normalized, not decibels¶

A track fader, a mixer fader, and a track's volume are all a single number from 0.0 to 1.0, applied as a linear amplitude straight onto the signal. There's no decibel scale and no hidden taper curve — the number is the multiplier:

Fader	Effect	≈ decibels
1.0	Unity — the signal passes at its own level	0 dB
0.5	Half the amplitude	−6 dB
0.25	A quarter	−12 dB
0.0	Silence	−∞

1.0 is unity gain: the track plays at exactly the level its instrument or audio produced. Faders don't boost above unity — they attenuate from it.

Why normalized¶

One number, shared everywhere:

The fader, an automation point, a MIDI-learn mapping, and the control API all speak the same 0–1 value — a script setting a level and a hand moving the fader do the identical thing.
It's predictable: no dB-taper maths to reverse-engineer, no surprise where the knob "feels" linear but isn't. Halfway is half the amplitude.

The trade-off is that you do your own gain staging — which is the next point.

There's no automatic level control¶

Gloopy does not limit or normalize the mix for you. Tracks sum, and if their combined peak crosses 0 dBFS the master clips — a harsh digital distortion, not a gentle one. So:

Leave headroom. Aim for peaks a few dB below the top of the meter, not pinned to it.
Pull down, don't push up. If the master clips, lower individual faders rather than raising everything — there's no room above unity to fix it later.
Add a limiter deliberately. If you want a hard ceiling on the master, drop a Limiter as the last effect on the master strip. It's a normal insert, off by default, because a surprise limiter changes your sound.

The meters (post-pan, with a clip LED you click to reset) are how you watch this — see Add insert effects and balance a mix.

Panning keeps the loudness¶

Pan uses a constant-power law: a centred track sends about −3 dB to each speaker, and sweeping left↔right holds the perceived loudness roughly steady rather than getting louder in the middle. So panning is a placement decision, not a level one — you won't have to re-balance a track just because you moved it in the stereo field.

Groups scale, they don't re-route¶

A control group (VCA-lite) fader scales its members' faders — it's control math layered on top, not an extra gain stage in the signal path. Pulling a drum group down multiplies every drum fader by the same factor, so their internal balance is preserved. (A bus, by contrast, is real routing — see Route to a bus.)