Question about audio meters

Hey guys so going back to the Ean's Fundamentals article a while go he discussed making sure your audio levels are matching when your bringing in tracks so you can match the energy level. I'm a little confused by traktors audio meters though. So you have the master volume meter, and the channel volume meters. My question is if your adjusting the gain why do the channel meters go up or down, but turning up the channel faders doesn't affect those meters at all? Also if your cueing a track, what are you hearing, the master volume output or the channel output? It just seems like i'm using the gains alot and I know that the article suggests against having both volume faders all the way up.

The channels meters are there to show you that your deck isnt clipping, Its not effected by the position of the volume fader because you need to know if the deck is clipping at the gain stage at whatever position that volume fader is at.

The channel meter goes is effect by the gain because you need to use the gain to make sure that the percieved loudness matches the percieved loudness of the other track at the gain stage, that way you dont lose any volume when you crossfade over to the other track if both volume faders are in the same position. At the same time you have to make sure the gain isnt too much that the audio is clipping. So the volume faders will only effect what you see on the master meter.

If cueing a track that means that you can hear that channel in your headphones, this is done so you can prepare the material to enter the mix.

So does it really make a difference if i leave my volume faders at the same amount and just use the gain to match volume levels.

It does matter, its bad workflow - gain knobs were not designed for mixing like that.

Heres what your workflow should look more like:

1) You load up a track on the empty deck while the other deck is playing out.

2) You cue that channel that you just put a song onto and beatmatch the deck

3) Now you adjust the gain of that deck until the volume level of the song you just loaded matches the volume level of the track thats playing when.

4) Now you EQ the new track

5) Now you have the choice of leaving the channel fader down, the crossfader in the middle then bringing your channel fader up, or you can set the channel fader at you desired volume level then mix in with the crossfader.

At no stage are you only tweaking the gain and not touching your channel faders - both have their own purpose. The only other time you touch the gain is if you need to correct the gain level because turning the volume all the way doesnt give you enough volume, or the deck volume meter is clipping.

You should be using your volume faders alot more than your gain knobs.

I have one caveat to Bento's workflow.

The first two stages are fine with me.

The 3rd and 4th, however, I think should be done in unison. While you get the gain levels normalized (so they resemble matching) you should also be EQing. The main reason I say it this way is because while you are EQing the readout will change. The best way to do this is to have both tracks playing in your headphones at once and taking note of which is louder and softer and why, and tweaking the EQ as needed.

While blending, though, you should listen to what he's saying. If you use the crossfader you should also keep note of the volume fader so that you can keep the next track from getting overwhelming. In fact, what I've started doing, for longer mixes, at least, is leaving the volume fader lower on the incoming track, and as I fader over I raise the volume slowly so I can note when it gets loud enough. :)