Unofficial Mackie User Forums > DL1608/DL806/DL32R/ProDX Mixers

Gain Structure ?

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musicman7722:
Thank you each and everyone :)

prosoundco guy:
Something I've noticed: you will get a peak indicator light on the iPad channel strip, then when you look on the board at the clip light by the trim/gain knob, it's not clipping at all. Guess that's to get you attention, but I may start to ignore it. I run pretty much all channels in FOH roughly at unity gain. The master stays at r just above unity. 

WK154:
That's because the visual bar is at 10dBu and clip is at 19dBu. All screwed up. I think Elvis had a song for that.

musicman7722:
Gents

Well it happened again so let me review what I think is correct and then you can congratulate me or correct me.  First off in this scenario there is no comp or gate on on any channel nor on the master outs.  Again this weekend a tech mixed us and the first thing he did was zero out my trim pots.  Meaning he turned the trim pot on every channel to U which to me means all the way counter clockwise.  I flipped out and actually had words with him.  I have been nursing those trim pot settings since the last guy zeroed them out.  I only use the mixer for my band.  So he did the usual line check for each channel until they peaked (on the channel strip not the physical trim.  A little history as well, he is the guitar players 21 year old son and fresh out of sound school, whatever that is.  He is full of "dude that isn't going to happen" sort of comments.   I shrugged and played the gig.  I reviewed the settings today on my board and the sob had the gain on my bass channel at U.  Wow he sandbagged me :(.  anyway he had the trims so low that he was running the kick and every vocal above 0, wow.  So who is right on this board, them or me?  If it's them I am going a need much louder tops then 2 K12s and 2 K12 subs.  Incidentally for this gig we had two QSC KW12's.  Heck it was even tough hearing my IEM because the gain was so low on my bass.

Please educate me. 

TY

WK154:
First send the "dude" back to a better audio school. The equipment is well matched unless your doing some heavy metal or similar stuff. Venue size will determine whether you have enough power and that of course varies. You need to understand the equipment before you can adjust it properly. The DL has issues with what you are really looking at. Let's start with the preamp (trim pots) adjustment. The meters on each channel are input PPM meters. What does that mean? The meter bar is indicating the peak loudness level not the average and reaction time is in milliseconds (refresh rate of meters actually). I once asked Mackie to provide a red line for max peak with a duration of 1-3 seconds persistence, like many other programs such as Audacity. The trim pots (your point of contention) should be adjusted once for the mic or other gear with the expected average loudness that you would encounter with the respective artist. The average should be at scale of "0" this gives you 15dBu of headroom (actual measurements). Yes lots of yellow and some red, you can't see this without an oscilloscope. This is something for rehearsal or extensive sound check. You can't do this with stupid "Check..Check...Check" or any other phrase I hear so often. Professionals set this once for the artist/equipment combo. It is not for mixing! This is why I and many manufacturers place less value on trim pots being automated especially with a single Band with the same artists. You should find your best settings in rehearsal and mark them, channel setup done. This also goes for eq's and any gating and compression. An important aspect for this to work consistently is mic placement. It needs to be consistent as well.  These settings have nothing to do with room acoustics, that's for output channels. If you're using IEM's I would recommend using compression as a limiter for those surprises you didn't expect. Then of course comes the balanced mix (faders for this) along with output channels and those settings for room acoustics. Main fader near 0. K series attenuation/gain adjustments will determine room loudness.

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