Redlining DJ's Rant.

Yeah, It’s crazy.

I have a staff meeting for an event I’ll be performing at hopefully next time round as the event launch as a full line up. I’ve said to the organiser that I’ll be happy to be the sound guy for the night. The venue has been known to have blown speakers.

I’m tempted to put a sign up warning about Redlining. Probably even talk to management and have a Redlining Penalty policy, Each time you Redline you have to pay £5 – That’s one way to sort the issue 😀

I guess using a DVS is a saving grace for some, Because those who are genuinely unaware of gain staging will just leave the gain knob alone. Thus Traktor or Serato or what ever has auto gain will hopefully stop redlining, But then you get some that’ll turn up the gain because they’re stupid idiots.

DJ BRUAEL, post: 36864, member: 8505 wrote: I actually have a question about gain staging and redlining. Are we supposed to watch the software VU meters on the screen or the hardware VU meters on our controllers, or are they both conveying the same information?

I also don’t understand the concept of gain staging fully. What will be put me into the red the quickest? Is it increasing the master output volume, the individual gain (trim) knobs on the individual channels or something else?

I use auto-gain on ITCH but find that the red-light limiter comes on when i am not even past 50% on gains.

In the case of using software, it depends on how the software and controller interact, I know the DDJ-SX and Serato have it’s own VU Meters, but are totally independent – As well with it’s own Gain. I’d quickly just look at both.

The Gain Knob is the the biggest factor, because that single handedly will affect everything else. Your gain is like a maximum volume, Then your Channel fader has the range to that maximum volume as well as your EQ. Hence you can be playing Deck A with the fader up everything going well, and then bring Deck B up and it totally cancels out the other deck because it’s way too loud.

The Master output is the overall output, So you can have your channels gained correctly, but still redline and clip your master – Vice versa.

Below is a perfectly setup mixer (and really how it should be for everyone!) (THE 0dB RULE)

The VUs are at 1 Yellow as well as the master which is 0dB. That is the perfect set up, Your not loosing sound, and your not loosing quality because of redlining. Your getting the best you can out of the system. Pushing a nice clean signal to the amp to process to the speakers. Even though you may go double yellow or even 3 yellow. While that’s not as bad as redlining, It’s still saturating the signal a bit.

If it’s too quiet, All that’s needed is to turn up the Amp 🙂 Gain staging is really that simple. Just turning the gain knob down or up so that the peak of the track is at 1 Yellow / 0dB with the EQ knobs all centered.

and most of my gain pots are usually at either the 10PM position or 11PM. I don’t think I’ve ever had it 12 (50%) or past.