From the course: Digital Audio Foundations
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Gain stages in the analog domain
From the course: Digital Audio Foundations
Gain stages in the analog domain
- Every signal path, even a relatively simple one, has one or more gain stages. A gain stage is any point at which the signal can change volume. That is someplace it passes through an amplifier or attenuator. Analog audio passes through more gain stages than you might expect. For example, a microphone signal going into this mixer might pass through as many as three or four gain stages before coming out. Setting the volumes in a signal path is called gain staging, or setting a gain structure. It's important to adapt the gain structure to the situation to minimize noise and distortion. If the signal going into a gain stage is too strong, the amplifier will hit its maximum output voltage in each direction, positive and negative, and be unable to trace accurate tops and bottoms of the waves. The shape of the output is then distorted by flattening out the peaks and troughs. To prevent this distortion, we can attenuate, or turn down, the input signal so that the amplifier has enough head…
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