so recently i’ve been mixing with limiter and auto gain off… and -10 on master/main gain.
my question is, is it ok if the fader channel meters are hitting red but the master/main gain meter isnt? or should i be keeping the channel fader meters out of the red completely? I notice that a track “sometimes” would be hitting the red while playing in the middle of the track every now and then.
I ask because I want the track to be at its highest gain for quality but out of red due to clipping.
You want both ends to not be hitting red, Red means your clipping your music, Even if you don’t notice it you will be either overdriving or cutting precious sound quality.
Autogain is random, I turned it off so I could have more control. You can gauge most of it from the waveform anyway. I’m getting a more precise volume level this way.
As far as hitting the red goes, it doesnt matter.
By that I mean its ok to go 1 or 2 bars into the red, dont worry about that. Every mixer has headroom and you should use some of this headroom. I always aim to have my tunes peaking at 1 in the red.
Now what you shouldnt do is beat the shit out of the mixer and light up all those red LED’s. But you already knew that.
if the gain on the track is high, is it ok to not go full all the way with the channel fader or is it better to run the channel fader fully up and control the gain down in order to get the best out of the track?
Set the “correct” levels with the gain knobs, and live the faders at max, then you can use the faders creatively (such as slowly fading in one track, or do an “echo scratch” or whatever you feel like).
weird thing happened today when i was mixing. the channel meters were correct, all blue not even 1 red, but as i was bringing in the channel fader fully up, the sound was starting to distort wtf? master/main gain was not red either.
So I have auto gain turned on but usually end up twiddling with it myself. I have an S2 with standard mapping and whenever Traktor sets the gain the lights on the S2 start hitting into the red. What’s the use in auto gain at all if this is going to ruin the sound quality? To be honest I never actually notice it affecting the quality but all this clipping talk makes me wary. I’d like to be able to trust the software a bit more here if it’s possible.
Limiter off.
Auto gain on, but as part of my track prep procedure. When I grid the track, and set cue points, I also play the track and adjust the gain till there are no spots in the track that go into the red on the channel meter. Then I right click the track, select edit, and enter the new gain value in the auto gain box. Now the track will load with the correct auto gain everytime so I don’t have to think about it while mixing.
you’re doin it right. I wish I had this much patience; I grid and listen but rarely tweak the auto-gain values and wind up having to mess with it while playing. Which generally isn’t that big a deal - I find autogain is mostly pretty reasonable - but the way you’re doing it is best so that you know your values are spot on and don’t have to worry about it.
@DJproben I wish I would have done this from the beginning as I still have quite a few tracks that need it done. I use the grid lock to keep up with what tracks are prepped and which are not, and I spend about 30-40min each session prepping the back log.
I also find that Traktor gets the auto gain right maybe 25% of the time. Usually it’s way too high of a value.
Yup, I have a few sub-heavy minimal techno tunes that traktor decided to ramp up to +9. And I wondered why it’d light my xone channel faders up to the red… with -5db master level.
Seriously though, at one point I wondered whether the auto-gain would set a different value depending on the headroom setting, it’s quite random. It’s mostly in the ballpark often times but I’d rather not have to touch the hardware gain at all (even when the xone’s is nearly imperceptible).
