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

Gain Structure ?

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musicman7722:
Hello

This weekend I had a gig and our old sound man was there with is girl friend.  He mixed us for 3 years and is now just doing our larger gigs.  I asked him to tweak the system and showed him how the ipad and software worked.  He did a good job but one thing he did was turn down most the the channel gains as he said they were peaking.  Except for the kick and snare I don't recall seeing them peak much at all.  When he did this he was forced to run most of the channels near max.  So my question to the group here is is do anyof you run your board a bit hotter than other boards?

I seem to have lost a fair amount of headroom/volume now.  I run QSC K10 tops and a single KSub.

Thanks

Chris

Greg C.:
When you say "peaking", do you mean actually lighting up the red LEDs on the inputs?

musicman7722:
I am saying that I rarely see them hit red so the answer is yes (I think).  If and when I do seem them in a consistant manner I will slowly back them down and then increase the channel volume accordingly.

Greg C.:
According to the specs, the lights actually go red at 3dB below actual clip. Based on that, tickling them once in a while is probably ok. One of the things that drives me bananas on the Avid Venue consoles is that the default clip indication is on their channels and buses is 6dB below actual clip which really does eat into your "apparent" headroom. The first thing I do when I get on a Venue is set the clip indication to "0dB" where it should be. At least for me, I want to know when I'm actually clipping rather than lied to.

In any case, if you feel that you've lost headroom as a whole and aren't comfortable with occasional red lights on your inputs, by all means increase the gain at your speaker processor/amp/powered speaker inputs to compensate. I do that on my setup when I switch between mixers that have different max output levels. As an example, if I'm using a desk that has a max output level of +21dBu like the DL vs. +24dBu max out on my Venue, I'll boost my speaker processors' inputs by +3dB to compensate so that I'm not hammering the mixer to get max output of the speakers when needed. Conversely, If I have a Mackie analog mixer plugged into the system with +28dBu max output, I'll attenuate the processor inputs by 4dB to keep things matched up.

WK154:
Hi Guys, are we inventing a new Mackie view of gain structure?
"I seem to have lost a fair amount of headroom/volume now. "
This is a digital mixer and Clip is at 0 dB FS which in the DL is 21 dBu. When you lower the preamp gain as in your case you increase headroom not loose it. You also decrease S/N ratio, a bad idea. The RMS of your music should be around 0 on the channel scale which on the DL leaves you 21-6 dBu or 15 dBu headroom in theory. The problem as I pointed out before is that Mackie's representation of signal values can be off as much as 10 dBu depending on where on the scale you are. The amount of headroom that is required depends on your music. My experience in recording Bands, Orchestra's and Choirs indicates a crest factor (the difference between RMS and Peak value of you music) of no more than 12 dBu. That should leave you 3 dBu before you will ever reach clipping. Read Bob Katz's view of the Loudness wars. This of course depends on mic placement and ultimately your instrument balance. If you exceed 15 dBu then you need to look elsewhere for the problem. P.S. volume is for beer.

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