For those of you who have tickled a Xone

[MrPopinjay]

Why would you want to adjust the master volume knob but not see an adjustment to the master VU meter?

I've been eying a rane empath rotary and have been trying to work out the vu meters on that one.

Why would you want to see the volume knob effect the VU meter? There's no situation in which that would be useful. Unless instead of using the EQs to reduce volume when playing two tracks you use the master, but that seems like a very clumsy way to mix to me.

[Mylestec]

Why would you want to see the volume knob effect the VU meter? There's no situation in which that would be useful. Unless instead of using the EQs to reduce volume when playing two tracks you use the master, but that seems like a very clumsy way to mix to me.

Its really just a matter of preference.... I used to use the master volume knob / fader for dynamic volume adjustments within a particular track.... as an example 3 Heads mentioned having to play after DJs that push levels well into the red... In those cases when your not in front of the main PA seeing the VU meters helps with these adjustments when you can't easily hear them. With the 92 and similar mixers you have to rely on the knob position only

[MaxOne]

Its really just a matter of preference.... I used to use the master volume knob / fader for dynamic volume adjustments within a particular track.... as an example 3 Heads mentioned having to play after DJs that push levels well into the red... In those cases when your not in front of the main PA seeing the VU meters helps with these adjustments when you can't easily hear them. With the 92 and similar mixers you have to rely on the knob position only

Exactly

Also I play in a bar with quite a thumping system with a DJM but no way of seeing an "amp VU meter". They wack it up full at the amp and then it's up to me to control the volume for the night.

I can play it loud but there's a tipping point where they ask me to turn it down.

As I start at 10am and go on till 2am the volume has to creep up from warm up set to full on raving. As everyone knows, you find you start to tweak the gains a bit on each mix and it can all get a bit louder and louder.

It's easy to get ear fatigue and stop hearing the music volume accurately and i can use the master VU to visually know where the upper limits are. And can just adjust the master volume till I can visually see that it's back to proper levels.

With out the master VU meter it would be tricky

[MrPopinjay]

Not really since with the VU meters it works the same as the channel meters- with the master turned all the way up (the fader fully open) the VU meter is exactly what's coming out the mixer. The rest of the time the master knob is just a multiplier for what is shown.

[fullenglishpint]

I start at 10am and go on till 2am

Wow, a 16 hour marathon gig!

[MaxOne]

Wow, a 16 hour marathon gig!

That's how I roll

[mostapha]

Okay…so…little preface.

I've been doing live sound since I was 14 and my chorus director said "we're micing this one…figure it out." And I've worked in a high-end studio.

I see two issues that we're discussing…

here's the first one I want to address:

The Master VU meters work the same way as (I presume) Pio does, you really have to crank up the master gain to make it light up, which means you've got a pretty low "resolution" unless you want to blow your eardrums out.

What the hell are you talking about?

Mixers are not volume knobs. You should always be peaking below but near-ish 0dBFS. On a digital mixer, peaking lower is essentially bit-crushing your audio. On an analog mixer, whatever you're doing after it (amplifier, recording, etc.) is amplifying your noise floor.

Peaking too much lower than that is just throwing your dynamic range out the window.

It's not that big of a deal with modern dance music, because most of it is compressed to all hell anyway.

It's also less of a big deal with digital mixers because the noise floor is so quiet that you kind of don't have to worry about it. It's better to mix a little quiet than risk clipping in just about every way…but it's so easy to use meters correctly…why not?

In an analog mixer, you're contending with an analog noise floor, which is a lot louder than a modern digital noise floor. If you train your ears, you can hear it with music playing (it's not that hard).

By using your master output control as a volume control, you are doing absolutely nothing but making your audio sound worse, no matter what quality of gear you're using. There's no reason to do it.

Here's the weirder issue that makes even less sense to me:

Why would you want to see the volume knob effect the VU meter? There's no situation in which that would be useful.

Wrong. Just plain wrong. Exactly backwards, in fact.

That's an amazingly efficient way to destroy a PA system in a good venue. Like…the making components explode version of destroy.

Mix your way, turn your master down at the beginning of the night. If there's a sound guy (like there would be in a good venue), he probably understands gain staging a lot better than you do and has his processing gear set up for just a bit of gain overlap (aka, mild overdrive) somewhere that it sounds good.

And, either he's running his amps wide open (less likely) or they're set for their optimum level (meaning that 0dBFS will be loud but still be in their linear response range…basically as loud as they can do without clipping). You'll be turning things down and when things start picking up, you'll both be turning volumes up.

And because you're sending such a cold signal to his FOH mixer, he probably will have already done that some, since sending too quiet a signal to amps makes them respond weird.

So, you're grooving along, playing your set, things are getting louder like they should because the sound guy is keeping up with it, probably while wearing really nice earplugs, so his ears are fatiguing slower than yours, if at all.

Then…*shit*…you realize that your master is only set at 25% near the peak of your set. Your ears are starting to fatigue and cognitive volume shift is taking its effect, and you realize how quiet everything sounds without it actually being quiet at all.

Your peak is in a couple tracks. What do you do? Start turning your master up. So, you were peaking at about -20dBFS, but your meter didn't show it. Your sound guy has his mixer cranked to get any sound at all and has started boosting the mid EQ and can't figure out why you're so damn quiet.

Then, over the course of a track or two, you tripple the power you send his mixer. A transient happens…probably the first drop after a breakdown because you want to make that drop really epic after an awesome buildup.

Boom.

Capacitors in amps blow, speaker cones tear apart, and you get a bill for 5 or 6 figures.

There is no damned reason to have pre-master metering on a DJ mixer.

The only thing that should be determining final volume is the last gain stage before your crossovers/amps. And it damn well better have post-master metering unless you want to spend a lot of money fixing gear for no reason.

Think it's far-fetched? I've both seen it happen and stopped it from happening in clubs.

I stopped it one night because I noticed the meters on the FOH console and the DSP (crossover, EQ, etc.) weren't making sense. Drank for free for a month after that one because I saved the club like 20 grand.

When I saw it happen…a speaker ended up catching fire when a cap in the crossover exploded too close to a crappy paper cone. (whatever…it was a crappy speaker anyway…at least no one got hurt in the resulting fire and stampede)

[djAB3]

hey xone users, sorry for disturbing but I need answer fast

http://forum.djtechtools.com/showthread.php?t=47298

[MrPopinjay]

mostapha, that entire situation you described would only happen if the sound engineer and the DJs were idiots and set the master output too low at the start of the night. Anyone with a brain would have set it to a suitable level. Additionally that situation also means the VU meters would have been totally useless for actual metering since they would have had such a small resolution throughout the entire night.

Honestly I don't think that mixers in clubs should even have a master knob. Should be locked to the desired level and left for the sound engineer to sort out the volume further down the line- DJs can't be trusted.

[fullenglishpint]

Honestly I don't think that mixers in clubs should even have a master knob. Should be locked to the desired level and left for the sound engineer to sort out the volume further down the line- DJs can't be trusted.

Except for venues with no sound engineer where the DJ handles the master volume. Which is a lot of them.