This was so informative! It really helped me understand gain, how to set it and why. Thanks for sharing so simply and easily that anyone can understand 👍👍👍
which is better , a higher gain from active speakers and lower from mixer or vice versa? i'm using a digital mixer with gain from 12-16db and active speaker with 3 o'clock volume..
I have been a live sound engineer for 15 years and I have never believed into an "average" level, especially when it comes to a singer. Levels from a singer can be dramatically dinamyc at times and I always trusted my ears instead of a meete. Plus using 45db of gain in a live music scenario it will only gives you troubles, especially if you are mixing monitors from front of house. I'd rather have a quiter gain instead of feedbacks. It's a good video, but to me it's very theorical and not very practical.
Thanks for uploading this one bud. For me, one subject not discussed here is speaker placement and this absolutely throws gain into all sorts of trouble. Setting gain when it’s not being amplified is easy when following the ‘get it to 0dB’ but in my experience using Analog desks (mainly the Yamaha MG series), some mics give such a quiet output that you’re driving the gain into the 3/4s area to get a decent PFL level. But as a result, you get terrible feedback because of speaker placement and bad microphone usage. And then you’re in a vicious loop of frustration.
@@PluggedinAV That is the single handily avoided subject in all PA based channels and one of the most asked questions. I know of the illustrious speaker arc and the imaginary line you need to draw and to keep microphones behind but even when you obey that, feedback is still an issue because of gain structure.
@@rhysdavies8947 gain structure has nothing to do with feedback. Possibly speaker placement, possibly your musician, my guess is that it is your overall EQ. That is the point of EQing your PA to the room.
Question once the gain is set an you bring your faders up for mics are whatever an the everything sounds low when everything is going an you turn the mics up but it starts making high sounds like the mics are close to the speakers what to do?
That sound is called feedback. It’s caused by the sound of the mic going out the speakers, getting picked up by the mic again and creating a loop going round and round. You have three ways to fix it. Either move the mic away from the speakers. Or reduce the high frequencies using your EQ. Or reduce the volume so it’s not so loud
I have the allen an health 20b digital is the settings different on what you would set the gain an faders to different from analog an do you have any videos on speaker place that you won't get the feedback?
The last few mixers that I have run, digital ones, Zero is marked with a thicker line next to the number on the meter, but it's not marked with a zero like my older analog mixers. Why use different numbers to indicate what would be the same thing? Why not make them all the same? Zero, or unity should always be marked the same. Just makes more sense.
There could be a few reasons for this. Check what mic you have and what the pick-up pattern is. It could be omni or it could be cardioid. Then make sure it’s pointing the correct way. The humming sound you describe sounds like it could be low frequency feedback. You might need to use your EQ to pull those frequencies out.
Good video. When I adjust gain to as high as 40, this induces feedback. But if I need that gain to achieve the right signal strength, what else could I do to get the level I need?
Sounds like something else in your system is turned up too high, or your speakers are in the wrong place. Try turning your amps down or moving your speakers further away from your stage
I have just found your channel and your demonstrations are really helpful. I am very novice at sound desk work and I have been heading up an AV team with very little knowledge of how to work our mixer's software, not to mention trying to understand all the terminology and aspects of sound engineering. i spent the week between this past Christmas up until now reading up and watching a bunch of tutorials and asking the Lord to really give me a good understanding and grounding in basics of sound engineering and this is where I find myself! You communicate clearly and hand-in-hand with the demonstrations of how Equalizing (previously watched prior to this video) and Gain setting here has help put all the bits and pieces I have been studying together! Now I am even more excited to get to the next band practice and play with the app! Thank you and God bless!
Well explanation. But here we have two kind of gains. on surface an a digital gain. On the digital mixer. I will be nice you explain the difference in the video too.
@@PluggedinAV yes, I mean this, I have first problems to understand this. I have ME 1 Mixers, with trim I can get more Signal for the front Sound, without I to change the Signal for ME1 Mixer. For example by live mixing. The Trimm Signal is relevant for Virtual Soundcheck. I am shure not everybody understands this difference. You have a well kind of explanation. Tipp, I use the Mixing Station App for Tablet etc. She is better a the Apps from Allen Heath. I have an GLD and Avantis. Work in church with X32. Did you know this App? I find to work with X32 a little bit difficult, there is no touch screen. With this App I have a structure with Touch screen and I can work like Allen Heath. I can sort channels on screen. Etc. the App with 6 different Manufakturers and a lot of digital Mixers. You can create a Individual screen.
You say aim for absolute peak level around -6 but and that -12 is nominal. This is incorrect! It depends on the gear! 99% of gear will have a nominal input level of -20 to -16 DBfs which roughly is calibrated to 0Dbu. on a Dbfs scale you should always aim for nominal level for non transient inputs like guitars, synths etc tp -18, and max peak around -10 for transient inputs like drums / percussion. Transient inputs still have rms signal, so aiming peaks to about -10 to -12 leaves the rms still around -18. This will do WONDERS for your mix. The reason you NEED to correct your information is because this directly effects down stream units like compressors etc. Your information in this video is really good, but needs a little more detail as its a little misleading. You also fail to mention what style your metes are in! Its not just about zero! Some mixers like the Allen and Heath Avantis have DBu style meters where zero is nominal which would equal -18 on another mixer that has zero on the top of the meter. 0DBvu = ~ -18 DBfs = 1.23 volts = +4 DBu.
analog units will use dBu scaling.. that has 'zero' as being somewhere from midway to 2/3 of the way up. dBu has room above 'zero' because of the fact that analog gear can be pushed beyond the zero line yet still sound good. with some analog gear, people aim for that because of the harmonics or pleasant distortion that is added to the sound. (for the digital domain, going beyond zero is impossible. the system will simply chop off anything beyond zero--so people often add external effects or filters to mimic that pleasant distortion that analog gear is so famous for.. they call it "saturation"). the comments is 100% absolutely correct. nominal when you're dealing with a digital console that is metering in dbfs (dbfs simply means decibels full scale--zero is the absolute limit. nothing above 0db will be allowed to go through the rest of the signal chain). so the scaling is in different units, but there are rough equivalents because in the end, both types of mixers will split out an electrical signal that is measured in voltage (dBv). doing some arithmetic (that has been done by previous people many many times) will give you an approximate equivalent between dBu and dBfs in which both outputs put out 1.23v. 0dBu = -20dBfs = 1.23dBv. basically the same as 0dbfs = +4dbu = 1.23dbv in other words when you are at 0dBu, there is actually approx 21db of headroom before the signal is clipped. I have tried to explain this to many many DJs. but so many of them have simply gotten used to using pioneer dj equip that they have become conditioned to believe there is only one way that decibels are measured. 🤦♂️ ..."yo sound guy, this Allen and Heath mixer sucks yo! It's not as loud as the Pioneer!" omg ... the number of times of gone up to the mixer and just turned the master volume up so that 90% of those LEDs are finally blinking... and I look at them and I ask "that's not loud enough??" ... they always think they're redlining when they are seeing most of those LEDs light up.. and that's because they're not looking at the scaling beside those LED meters.
digital signals from say a synth are not inherently any louder than an analog piece of gear. they may have different ways of measuring their output but not any louder. digital gear though, is often able to have a better signal to noise ratio, SNR, compared to analog gear. which means that your RMS can approach that 0 dbfs ceiling much closer than analog gear would be able to before distortion becomes an issue.. so in essence, that zero dbfs became both the RMS Target and the peak limit.. this can only be achieved in the digital domain because of a quieter noise floor and only with the proper processing. That's why the loudness wars started a few years back. engineers realize they were able to use the 0 dbfs as both the peak and RMS limit if they tweaked and compressed the signal effectively. hence, highly compressed music that just sounded louder than music recorded in the analog domain. that's why there was that big fad a few years ago where every big artist was re-releasing albums as "digital remasters"... people just kept thinking that digital allowed them to get louder.. but in fact it was just the better SNR that allowed for louder and more compressed signals without the noise floor affecting the output
Guy. This number is different on different mixers. On the Avantis nominal is +4 maybe on some others too but some mixers nominal is -6 on others it’s less. So just be simple. Read your manual. The manufacturer already knows what it is and you need to read your own manual.
In regards to your gain setup,....Where is the “noise” coming from? Are you using ANALOG consoles? Are you using low bit rate summing in a digital console? Enquiring minds.
Hi, we recently installed an SQ5 in our Church. I’ve been doing sound tech for a while here and there. When the guys came in to install the mixer I asked if we should turn down the level of the sends to the front of house to allow for what you’re talk about in this video but they said no. This means my signal for most things is quite low but they’re loud as. What should I do?
Where does your signal go after the mixer? In an ideal world it should go from the console into a speaker processor and then into the amps. If that’s the signal path I would turn the signal down in the processor. If you don’t have that then you should turn the master down or use a matrix
This is awesome! Only issue I have is my main output meter is really low. All my gains are set good but my main output only reached -14. Dont know how to fix it 😢
What desk are you using? TBH there could be loads of reasons for this depending on how the desk is configured. I wouldn’t worry too much about it as output level is very different from input level. As long as you have good gain coming in and it sounds loud enough in the room you might not need to worry about what your output meter are reading
@@PluggedinAV We use Allen SQ7. The issue we encounter is when the signal is sent to another output other than the mains, the receiving end has to turn up the volume which causes a lot of hiss. We direct the main output to other places like an interpreter room
@@Carlos-sy7ye Just went through this on our SQ7 as well. We were setting up a new IEM system, and had very little output through the digital snake outputs. The Trim setting on the SQ7 is interrupted in the manual as digital line strength. I found that while setting gain, start with your gain at 0, turn the trim up all the way, than bring the trim down as you add gain. Same process as this video, although in our situation, we ended up with +15 to +22 trim, and +10 db on gain as an average. Don’t know if this was the correct way to fix the problem, but it definitely helped in our situation tremendously. Edited: This was while setting the gain with channel fader and master level set at unity (or 0).
Question , if you have a vocal on a channel and then all other channels have strong level for instruments, does the instruments defeat the vocal levels on the mix which makes the vocal weaker or low volume? or is it just a sound illusion because you are now hearing everything (all the instruments at the same time), or do I have to lower the gains of the instruments relative to the vocal? or It is just the speaker that cannot produce the mix you want? give me some insights please thanks.
Hey, sounds like you need to look at your gains. You might need to raise the gain on your vocal channel a bit. Watch my video on setting gain to see how this is done
@@PluggedinAV is it correct that the aim in setting gain is to make all inputs/ channels vocal or instrument to make them all same levels as each other for them to blend in the mix? or you are suppose to make a specific channel stronger than the others? thanks
gains are not for mixing...faders are for mixing ....use the gain to set the channels to all have a similar gain meter level to optimise a to d conversion resolution then mix the levels with the faders
Thumbs up! Is this 12dB gain settings is also good for vocal recordings in Pro Tools? Thanks
The best video on gain! Especially for trying to teach others on how to set up gain! Thank you!
Thank you 🙏🏻
This was so informative! It really helped me understand gain, how to set it and why. Thanks for sharing so simply and easily that anyone can understand 👍👍👍
Thanks, glad you found it helpful 🙏🏻
which is better , a higher gain from active speakers and lower from mixer or vice versa? i'm using a digital mixer with gain from 12-16db and active speaker with 3 o'clock volume..
Hey Jesse Pinkman
Best video on Gain structure Soo far. Really indepth within a short time. Thank you Sir🔥
Thank you 🙏🏻
I have been a live sound engineer for 15 years and I have never believed into an "average" level, especially when it comes to a singer. Levels from a singer can be dramatically dinamyc at times and I always trusted my ears instead of a meete. Plus using 45db of gain in a live music scenario it will only gives you troubles, especially if you are mixing monitors from front of house. I'd rather have a quiter gain instead of feedbacks.
It's a good video, but to me it's very theorical and not very practical.
Thanks for uploading this one bud. For me, one subject not discussed here is speaker placement and this absolutely throws gain into all sorts of trouble. Setting gain when it’s not being amplified is easy when following the ‘get it to 0dB’ but in my experience using Analog desks (mainly the Yamaha MG series), some mics give such a quiet output that you’re driving the gain into the 3/4s area to get a decent PFL level.
But as a result, you get terrible feedback because of speaker placement and bad microphone usage.
And then you’re in a vicious loop of frustration.
Yeah, speaker positions can get you in trouble if you are not careful. I could maybe make a video on that in this series if that will help 👍🏻
@@PluggedinAV That is the single handily avoided subject in all PA based channels and one of the most asked questions. I know of the illustrious speaker arc and the imaginary line you need to draw and to keep microphones behind but even when you obey that, feedback is still an issue because of gain structure.
@@rhysdavies8947 gain structure has nothing to do with feedback. Possibly speaker placement, possibly your musician, my guess is that it is your overall EQ. That is the point of EQing your PA to the room.
gain structure has nothing whatsoever to do with feedback you are looking at things with a completely incorrect way of thinking
Great vid, but just one thought, on the X32 consoles it is recommended that the average is -18
Thanks again 👍
Excellent information! Thank You!
No problem
That's well explained thank you engineer i have lent something today
Hi thanks for video. Can i ask where the channel fader and the master fader should be when setting gain
I would have them down quite low when setting gain. It’s quite easy to cause feedback if you have the fader pushed up and you turn the gain up.
Question once the gain is set an you bring your faders up for mics are whatever an the everything sounds low when everything is going an you turn the mics up but it starts making high sounds like the mics are close to the speakers what to do?
That sound is called feedback. It’s caused by the sound of the mic going out the speakers, getting picked up by the mic again and creating a loop going round and round. You have three ways to fix it. Either move the mic away from the speakers. Or reduce the high frequencies using your EQ. Or reduce the volume so it’s not so loud
I have the allen an health 20b digital is the settings different on what you would set the gain an faders to different from analog an do you have any videos on speaker place that you won't get the feedback?
@@jahvin4951 on an analogue desk you set gain to 0dB
@@PluggedinAV on the digital mixer? Analog
The last few mixers that I have run, digital ones, Zero is marked with a thicker line next to the number on the meter, but it's not marked with a zero like my older analog mixers. Why use different numbers to indicate what would be the same thing? Why not make them all the same? Zero, or unity should always be marked the same. Just makes more sense.
thx man, great tutorial...nice studio nook as well..cheers!
Thanks
I always have a problem with using a lavelier mic (button), always humming to the point where it gives feedback.
There could be a few reasons for this. Check what mic you have and what the pick-up pattern is. It could be omni or it could be cardioid. Then make sure it’s pointing the correct way.
The humming sound you describe sounds like it could be low frequency feedback. You might need to use your EQ to pull those frequencies out.
Clear and neat! Thank you! Subscribing...😊
Thank you 🙏🏻
Good video. When I adjust gain to as high as 40, this induces feedback. But if I need that gain to achieve the right signal strength, what else could I do to get the level I need?
Sounds like something else in your system is turned up too high, or your speakers are in the wrong place. Try turning your amps down or moving your speakers further away from your stage
Everything explained so well. Thank you.
So you don't mess with the faders
The faders won’t change your input gain no.
@PluggedinAV so once you adjust the gains what do the faders do.
@@jahvin4951 they adjusted your output level. Gain is the level coming into your mixer. The faders are the level going out of your mixer
Great and easy to follow video on gain setting! Thank you!
No problem
I have just found your channel and your demonstrations are really helpful. I am very novice at sound desk work and I have been heading up an AV team with very little knowledge of how to work our mixer's software, not to mention trying to understand all the terminology and aspects of sound engineering. i spent the week between this past Christmas up until now reading up and watching a bunch of tutorials and asking the Lord to really give me a good understanding and grounding in basics of sound engineering and this is where I find myself! You communicate clearly and hand-in-hand with the demonstrations of how Equalizing (previously watched prior to this video) and Gain setting here has help put all the bits and pieces I have been studying together! Now I am even more excited to get to the next band practice and play with the app! Thank you and God bless!
Great! Glad you find it helpful 🙏🏻
Outstanding presentation!
Thank you
Hey 👋 I’m still learning sound and currently I’m using SQ6 can you do something about pre and post faders....kindly
Well explanation. But here we have two kind of gains. on surface an a digital gain. On the digital mixer. I will be nice you explain the difference in the video too.
@@Jumpy66 do you mean ‘gain’ and ‘trim’? If so, gain is controlling the pre-amp but trim is adjusting the signal post gain
@@PluggedinAV yes, I mean this, I have first problems to understand this. I have ME 1 Mixers, with trim I can get more Signal for the front Sound, without I to change the Signal for ME1 Mixer. For example by live mixing. The Trimm Signal is relevant for Virtual Soundcheck. I am shure not everybody understands this difference. You have a well kind of explanation. Tipp, I use the Mixing Station App for Tablet etc. She is better a the Apps from Allen Heath. I have an GLD and Avantis. Work in church with X32. Did you know this App? I find to work with X32 a little bit difficult, there is no touch screen. With this App I have a structure with Touch screen and I can work like Allen Heath. I can sort channels on screen. Etc. the App with 6 different Manufakturers and a lot of digital Mixers. You can create a Individual screen.
You say aim for absolute peak level around -6 but and that -12 is nominal. This is incorrect! It depends on the gear! 99% of gear will have a nominal input level of -20 to -16 DBfs which roughly is calibrated to 0Dbu. on a Dbfs scale you should always aim for nominal level for non transient inputs like guitars, synths etc tp -18, and max peak around -10 for transient inputs like drums / percussion. Transient inputs still have rms signal, so aiming peaks to about -10 to -12 leaves the rms still around -18. This will do WONDERS for your mix. The reason you NEED to correct your information is because this directly effects down stream units like compressors etc. Your information in this video is really good, but needs a little more detail as its a little misleading. You also fail to mention what style your metes are in! Its not just about zero! Some mixers like the Allen and Heath Avantis have DBu style meters where zero is nominal which would equal -18 on another mixer that has zero on the top of the meter. 0DBvu = ~ -18 DBfs = 1.23 volts = +4 DBu.
So they typical input for analogs are something between -20 to - 16 dbfs ? Digital synths are louder?
analog units will use dBu scaling.. that has 'zero' as being somewhere from midway to 2/3 of the way up. dBu has room above 'zero' because of the fact that analog gear can be pushed beyond the zero line yet still sound good. with some analog gear, people aim for that because of the harmonics or pleasant distortion that is added to the sound. (for the digital domain, going beyond zero is impossible. the system will simply chop off anything beyond zero--so people often add external effects or filters to mimic that pleasant distortion that analog gear is so famous for.. they call it "saturation").
the comments is 100% absolutely correct. nominal when you're dealing with a digital console that is metering in dbfs (dbfs simply means decibels full scale--zero is the absolute limit. nothing above 0db will be allowed to go through the rest of the signal chain).
so the scaling is in different units, but there are rough equivalents because in the end, both types of mixers will split out an electrical signal that is measured in voltage (dBv).
doing some arithmetic (that has been done by previous people many many times) will give you an approximate equivalent between dBu and dBfs in which both outputs put out 1.23v.
0dBu = -20dBfs = 1.23dBv.
basically the same as
0dbfs = +4dbu = 1.23dbv
in other words when you are at 0dBu, there is actually approx 21db of headroom before the signal is clipped.
I have tried to explain this to many many DJs. but so many of them have simply gotten used to using pioneer dj equip that they have become conditioned to believe there is only one way that decibels are measured. 🤦♂️ ..."yo sound guy, this Allen and Heath mixer sucks yo! It's not as loud as the Pioneer!" omg ... the number of times of gone up to the mixer and just turned the master volume up so that 90% of those LEDs are finally blinking... and I look at them and I ask "that's not loud enough??" ... they always think they're redlining when they are seeing most of those LEDs light up.. and that's because they're not looking at the scaling beside those LED meters.
digital signals from say a synth are not inherently any louder than an analog piece of gear. they may have different ways of measuring their output but not any louder. digital gear though, is often able to have a better signal to noise ratio, SNR, compared to analog gear. which means that your RMS can approach that 0 dbfs ceiling much closer than analog gear would be able to before distortion becomes an issue.. so in essence, that zero dbfs became both the RMS Target and the peak limit.. this can only be achieved in the digital domain because of a quieter noise floor and only with the proper processing. That's why the loudness wars started a few years back. engineers realize they were able to use the 0 dbfs as both the peak and RMS limit if they tweaked and compressed the signal effectively. hence, highly compressed music that just sounded louder than music recorded in the analog domain. that's why there was that big fad a few years ago where every big artist was re-releasing albums as "digital remasters"... people just kept thinking that digital allowed them to get louder.. but in fact it was just the better SNR that allowed for louder and more compressed signals without the noise floor affecting the output
Guy. This number is different on different mixers. On the Avantis nominal is +4 maybe on some others too but some mixers nominal is -6 on others it’s less. So just be simple. Read your manual. The manufacturer already knows what it is and you need to read your own manual.
In regards to your gain setup,....Where is the “noise” coming from? Are you using ANALOG consoles? Are you using low bit rate summing in a digital console? Enquiring minds.
Watching this a year later still great information sir thank you
Thank you. And, I can’t believe that video has been up a year! Time flys 😂
Thanks praiae god
Hi, we recently installed an SQ5 in our Church. I’ve been doing sound tech for a while here and there. When the guys came in to install the mixer I asked if we should turn down the level of the sends to the front of house to allow for what you’re talk about in this video but they said no. This means my signal for most things is quite low but they’re loud as. What should I do?
Where does your signal go after the mixer? In an ideal world it should go from the console into a speaker processor and then into the amps. If that’s the signal path I would turn the signal down in the processor. If you don’t have that then you should turn the master down or use a matrix
@@PluggedinAV
It goes from the mixer to the amps, we’re using the graphic EQ/delays on the SQ for our processing
@@zacparnell4019 ok, in which case I would pull the master back. Or better still use a matrix to output to your amps and pull that back a bit
This was right in the analoge days. In digital its different.
Setting gain on the Allen and Heath SQ mixer
11:43
Spiegazioni dettagliate e precise, piacevole ascolto. Complimenti.
Thank you for the resources you are investing around the world for the glory of our lord Jesus Christ. God bless you for this.
Thank you for watching ☝🏻
This is awesome! Only issue I have is my main output meter is really low. All my gains are set good but my main output only reached -14. Dont know how to fix it 😢
What desk are you using? TBH there could be loads of reasons for this depending on how the desk is configured. I wouldn’t worry too much about it as output level is very different from input level. As long as you have good gain coming in and it sounds loud enough in the room you might not need to worry about what your output meter are reading
@@PluggedinAV We use Allen SQ7. The issue we encounter is when the signal is sent to another output other than the mains, the receiving end has to turn up the volume which causes a lot of hiss. We direct the main output to other places like an interpreter room
@@Carlos-sy7ye if you are sending out on an aux bus you might need to check if you are sending pre or post fade.
@@Carlos-sy7ye Just went through this on our SQ7 as well. We were setting up a new IEM system, and had very little output through the digital snake outputs. The Trim setting on the SQ7 is interrupted in the manual as digital line strength. I found that while setting gain, start with your gain at 0, turn the trim up all the way, than bring the trim down as you add gain. Same process as this video, although in our situation, we ended up with +15 to +22 trim, and +10 db on gain as an average. Don’t know if this was the correct way to fix the problem, but it definitely helped in our situation tremendously.
Edited: This was while setting the gain with channel fader and master level set at unity (or 0).
Question , if you have a vocal on a channel and then all other channels have strong level for instruments, does the instruments defeat the vocal levels on the mix which makes the vocal weaker or low volume? or is it just a sound illusion because you are now hearing everything (all the instruments at the same time), or do I have to lower the gains of the instruments relative to the vocal? or It is just the speaker that cannot produce the mix you want? give me some insights please thanks.
Hey, sounds like you need to look at your gains. You might need to raise the gain on your vocal channel a bit. Watch my video on setting gain to see how this is done
@@PluggedinAV is it correct that the aim in setting gain is to make all inputs/ channels vocal or instrument to make them all same levels as each other for them to blend in the mix? or you are suppose to make a specific channel stronger than the others? thanks
@@jaysoncampos28 the gain setting is just about getting the best possible signal to work with. Blending sounds is done with the faders not the gains
gains are not for mixing...faders are for mixing ....use the gain to set the channels to all have a similar gain meter level to optimise a to d conversion resolution then mix the levels with the faders
pls wat is the name of the software you used on the computer
Hey it’s called SQ MixPad. Download it from Allen & Heath website 👍🏻
@@PluggedinAV Apparently mixpad can only be downloaded on android. But how did you manage to download it on your PC or MAC?
@@WBCStudio. from the A&H website
Thank you for explaining some of the meaning of very basic terms. I need that and most videos gloss over those terms as if we already understand them,
No problem, glad it helped