Wow I wish I would have found your website years ago. I have been involved with church audio for about 5 years and all this time I have been doing EXACTLY what you said not to do. And its strange because, being an electronics guy, ham radio operator, etc. I didn’t feel right to me. with my gain up past 12 o’clock in many cases and my faders looking like a single track mountain bike trail well below the unity point. Currently I’m involved with a church plant doing “Church-in-a-box” and we hold service at a children’s theater with a great sound system (tuned for voice however not live music) My bigist problem is trying to get a good mix from the enclosed sound booth. I have an open window but its still a big pain.

So do any of the principals you talk about with unity gain change depending on the board your using? (analog vs digital for example)

Thanks

John

I do end up using processing to control my system gain most of the time. This is partly due to the fact that many PA’s are powered boxes so it’s the only option and partly because it’s hard to be accurate with the gain knobs on some amps. Especially if you’re in a one-off show situation where you need to dial it in fast and don’t have time to tweak 20 gain knobs on the amps.

I run our Venue pretty hot, usually around +10 Peak. I like to keep it in the yellow on my output meters during the bigger songs. Dave, how do you run your Venue at 0? The last time I mixed in there it was all red lights! Ok, sorry, had to say it.

But, in all seriousness, I haven’t seen any of the guys I respect who don’t have their faders sitting around unity when their mix is up and happening. There are several benefits including higher resolution on your fader moves while mixing along with easier recall of your baseline mix.

One thing I’ll say, though, is this isn’t something I grasped right away because I wasn’t directly taught it; I picked it up from guys I respected. If you haven’t been trained to do this, it takes time to make it work, but I believe it will pay off in the end for those who master it. The digital side can complicate it a bit if you are trying to maximize console resolution, but I don’t know of any excuses to not do this if you’re in the analog domain.

I’ll also chime in on Matt’s question. I’m with Tim on running the console hot and attenuating at the amplifiers. I try and optimize the system so that the master meters on the Venue are bouncing around 0 dB RMS when we’re at the average SPL we like in the room.

Tim, how do you handle things now with your new d&b rig? I can’t remember if you are running digital into the amps? Do you know if you attenuate the d&b amps, does it do digital attenuation or does it attenuate on the analog side?

The alternative (and there are others who use this successfully) is to run the amps wide open and dial back gain, if its necessary, somewhere else like the crossover output or the console output. Not my preference but it is another way to do it. If you can’t run the faders at unity and still have plenty of individual channel gain while also mixing them well, there is a gain structure problem somewhere else in the system. I can’t stand systems where I can’t drive the console hard because the system processor or amplifiers are set too hot.

So…in order to dial this in, I would set the faders near unity, build a mix with the channel gains also mixed well so that there is lots of level in the mixer, then dial back the amps for the maximum level I want to be able to push in the room through the PA.

Anyone else want to chime in either for or against this philosophy?

This is a great point. In my experience, one of the biggest differences between a good mix and a poor, lifeless mix is the gain structure…the added control that a good gain structure allows (due to the precision of faders when closer to unity) reinforces the need.

Overall gain structure is an interplay between all of the different gain stages, so I did have a question for you: how hot do you run the master on your board? How does the output bus level on the Digidesign boards affect the overall sound (if that makes sense).