u/Jeffaklumpen

I've been mixing my own stuff for about 10 years but never really dabbled with gain staging, kinda late to that. But I've decided to try it out.

I have a guitar track with Guitar Rig 7 on it. After that I added the Plugin Alliance SSL 4000E and tried gain staging. I increased the gain so that the VU meter sits at around 0.

Then I tried adding mvMeter2 since I heared that's a good VU meter, and there it shows the VU meter getting completely crushed almost always sitting at +3.

I'm really confused on what to look at here. Should I trust the VU meter inside the SSL or mvMeter2?

I've been working on this track for a while now and I think I'm getting close to finishing it. I haven't gotten that much feedback on my mixes, but I hope I'm doing something right. Would love your thoughts on what I've done right and what could be improved upon.

The track is called "Static Bliss".

Thanks!

https://voca.ro/1lNgHjF5aOyY

EDIT 1: I've done some tweaking after reading the comments, hope I'm on the right track and haven't made things worse https://voca.ro/18OOSrUQGLUW

EDIT 2: I can't thank you all enough, all the feedback I've gotten has been a goldmine! I've done some tweaking. I've added some more saturation to the drum bus, I've added a dynamic EQ with high Q at around 11,6KHz on the vocals and lessened the cuts at around 400-500Hz. I also boosted alot at around 1000Hz on the bass and did some cuts at the same frequency on the guitar. I also boosted around 1db between 200-2000Hz in the mastering chain. On the first upload I had a 1176 compressor into an LA-2A, but I removed the 1176 to keep the transients. I also made the toms less boomy. Hope it sounds better, heres a new link 😄 https://voca.ro/14tLABvXUSPr