Should you push volume through the mixer or speaker?

[soundinmotiondj]

I never understood why people did this (Have their volume fader below the max). Surely that's what the gain knobs are for?? Set the max volume using the gains, and then you have the full length of the fader to control the volume.

I have never gotten into the habit of adjusting the gain on every new track. On one of my first mixers, the gain knob was switchable to a filter...and I did that. I found that the filter was worth more to me than the gain.

But, fair enough. If you are going to use the gain then follow these steps:

Play your quietest song you might actually play through the system.
Turn the channel all the way up.
Turn the gain up until just before the channel clips (it may go all the way up without clipping).
Turn the master up until the mixer just barely clips.
Turn the amp up until the system is "too loud."
Back the gain off until the system is "about right."

That will give you the maximum signal/noise through the signal path, and should allow every other song that is "louder" to just dial down the gain.

Personal preference I guess, as long as you know the volume coming out is acceptable for you then that's fine, but I'd hate to have to make sure my volume fader was on 7 instead of 8 or 6. In the heat of the moment, I want to push it to the top and know that the volume coming out is the max volume. If it's slightly too low, increase the gain slightly.

I tend not to "slam" the faders when mixing...so hitting a "middle" point is not an issue...listening and using the meters to confirm the overall mix works for me. I am not aiming for a particular setting on the fader, I am aiming for an amount of sound in the room.

In the rare cases where I want and aggressive in/out of the channel...I use the crossfader with an aggressive roll off curve selected.

[robdquick]

Fair enough, as I said if that's what you're used to doing and it works for you then then there's no problem

[Jester]

set up your ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM levels during your soundcheck, i can attest to this after we blew 2 speakers and an amp at one of our first gigs ... needless to say we didn't get paid for that one ... speaking for myself it is best to set up your mixer for maximum crankage (drunk dj= inevitable redlining!) and make your adjustments through the mixing desk and PA, our sound guy even slapped some tape over the master gain fader to stop us idiots pushing it too much .. we hardly push our wharfedales above 30-40% power.

[makar1]

id let the amp do most of the work...thats what its there fore, but make sure you're not sending a signal that is clipping

Variations in gain staging do not change how much "work" the amplifier does (assuming final output volume is the same).

The amplifier always amplifies by a constant ratio, and the output level is merely determined by how strong the input is. There is no "power" control on an amplifier.

[soundinmotiondj]

set up your ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM levels during your soundcheck, i can attest to this after we blew 2 speakers and an amp at one of our first gigs ...

The ONLY reliable way to protect speakers from overpowering is to have a hard limiter in the signal chain, typically just before the amp. ALL other methods for controlling the maximum signal sent to the cabinets are not reliable. If you own the PA, you would be a fool to let anyone else play through it without a hard limiter.

I have one hard limiter in every PA system I own. I have two hard limiters in rental systems...just in case they find one of them and decide to turn it up to "11."