Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Geoff Doane]

Believe it or not, there is an ideal setting of the HA control that will make a mic work better. What is better is dependent upon your own definition. If you need better feedback stability, there is a HA setting that in conjunction with the mic will improve stability. If you need more grit and room from the mic, again the HA setting will have a spot where it does that. For the majority of us who run monitors form FOH, it is bad practice to " mix with the HA's ".

I don't believe it. 

We've covered this topic many times here.  Gain is gain (assuming you're not clipping anything or are way down in the mud).

You need to do more 'splaining Luke.

GTD

[Matthew Knischewsky]

Hey guys - Just throwin this out there...I read an article recently in a trade publication that advocated the "mixing with the gain knobs" approach to setting up console gain structure.  The approach was:

- gains all he way down
- all faders and output masters up to unity
- bring up gains one at a time until that channel is loud enough

I was always taught that this was bad practice and that gain controls were always adjusted according to input signal level (PFL).

Any thoughts?

Not this again....

The discussion is largely academic as we have come to expect modern electronics to have a dynamic range of more than 100dB. Keep the signal in-between the two extremes (noise and clipping). Make sure the audience can understand the presentation/performance and avoid feedback. Have fun. Get paid. Sleep well at night.

WHATS MOST IMPORTANT: (imho)
Set up the gain structure of the entire system so that while avoiding noise and clipping the controls of the mixing console are in a range that's expected and contributes to the system's ease of use.

[Tim McCulloch]

Not this again....

The discussion is largely academic as we have come to expect modern electronics to have a dynamic range of more than 100dB. Keep the signal in-between the two extremes (noise and clipping). Make sure the audience can understand the presentation/performance and avoid feedback. Have fun. Get paid. Sleep well at night.

WHATS MOST IMPORTANT: (imho)
Set up the gain structure of the entire system so that while avoiding noise and clipping the controls of the mixing console are in a range that's expected and contributes to the system's ease of use.

^^ Hell yes. ^^

Now that this topic has been reduced to 1 sentence, can we all go to catering?

[Stephen Kirby]

One of the things that came out of the great ITB OTB (in or out of the box summing) debate in recording is that digital summing is not the same as analog.  Much of what the OTB adherents were avoiding were summing errors from folks using the analog practice of maximizing s/n by keeping each channel as hot as possible.  Once word length got better than 14 bits, folks accidentally found out that the master bus summing sounded much better when all the channels weren't at -3dBFS.  Nowadays folks tend to track at -16dBFS or even lower.  Using the same concept on my SC Expression live seems to reduce that congested sound in a dense mix.

All faders at unity never made sense to me.  What else are they for?  It makes more sense to me for the fader positions be a visual representation of the mix.  Maybe from years of running mixes from the stage while playing.

[Don T. Williams]

Not exactly what is being discussed here, but I still find people that adjust all of their channels levels when mixing using the gain controls.  These are not house engineers, but bands running their own sound from the stage.  To say they usually have monitor issues is an understatement!

[Luke Geis]

HA's are not linear devises. The mic you use will have a sensitivity that changes where the HA will eventually be set to acquire your desired level of gain. There is a point where the HA gain and the mic sensitivity will achieve the best signal to noise ration, the best GBF, or the best grit / distortion ( if you like cooking the HA's ). Again depending on the sensitivity of the mic, the operating point of the HA will be different for each mic model.

I have found that where you acquire gain, can influence the stability of the system especially for monitors and Wireless lav mics. Typically using a lower HA gain and making the gain up later, either with the send level, master level, or even amplifier level, can increase the GBF by a couple db or more.

This can more easily be noticed with wireless lav mics. You can set the sensitivity and output gain of most modern RF lavs these days. One would think that you would desire to set the sensitivity of the mic to get more signal in right? WRONG..... That is not always the case. You can often times get more GBF by setting the RF sensitivity to its normal position and using the mics gain offset, or output gain instead. This in conjunction with the HA gain setting does and will have an effect on the GBF potential.

I am more in the camp of get the best GBF and signal to noise ratio you can. I tend to set the HA's level so that the signal just tickles the mixers reference level: I.E. 0db or -18dbfs or there about. When I run monitors with a system I am not as familiar with, I will do a little trick. I will set up two mics. with one set with the HA on the low side and the other cooking the HA. The one that gets me the most GBF wins and is the gain structure I will use. Typically I find that it ends up being the one with the colder HA setting that I can get more stability and GBF with. Some mixers bode well with running hotter HA settings and work just fine either way.

It is something I play around with a bit. I try not to get stuck in the " I have been doing it this way for X years " mantra. You don't really know until you try it sort of thing. I can tell you as an owner of both an Behringer X32 and a Midas M32, that the HA's behave differently even though they sound relatively the same. The Midas M32 does do better with hotter HA settings than the X32. The X32 is a mixer I have found to be one which is best ran with a cooler HA setting to get the best GBF. Noise does not seem to be a problem with either of them even with higher than usual HA settings.

[Jerome Malsack]

The other reason bands mixing with gain controls is because the more me and amplifier wars on stage.  As the guitar turns up his gain the FOH mix has to turn down that input gain to compensate and reduce the chance for the feedback.  Same was true for the bass player Turning up his amp because he can no longer hear it also.  And now the vocals are not heard in the monitors. 

[John Roberts {JR}]

HA's are not linear devises. The mic you use will have a sensitivity that changes where the HA will eventually be set to acquire your desired level of gain. There is a point where the HA gain and the mic sensitivity will achieve the best signal to noise ration, the best GBF, or the best grit / distortion ( if you like cooking the HA's ). Again depending on the sensitivity of the mic, the operating point of the HA will be different for each mic model.

I have found that where you acquire gain, can influence the stability of the system especially for monitors and Wireless lav mics. Typically using a lower HA gain and making the gain up later, either with the send level, master level, or even amplifier level, can increase the GBF by a couple db or more.

This can more easily be noticed with wireless lav mics. You can set the sensitivity and output gain of most modern RF lavs these days. One would think that you would desire to set the sensitivity of the mic to get more signal in right? WRONG..... That is not always the case. You can often times get more GBF by setting the RF sensitivity to its normal position and using the mics gain offset, or output gain instead. This in conjunction with the HA gain setting does and will have an effect on the GBF potential.

I am more in the camp of get the best GBF and signal to noise ratio you can. I tend to set the HA's level so that the signal just tickles the mixers reference level: I.E. 0db or -18dbfs or there about. When I run monitors with a system I am not as familiar with, I will do a little trick. I will set up two mics. with one set with the HA on the low side and the other cooking the HA. The one that gets me the most GBF wins and is the gain structure I will use. Typically I find that it ends up being the one with the colder HA setting that I can get more stability and GBF with. Some mixers bode well with running hotter HA settings and work just fine either way.

It is something I play around with a bit. I try not to get stuck in the " I have been doing it this way for X years " mantra. You don't really know until you try it sort of thing. I can tell you as an owner of both an Behringer X32 and a Midas M32, that the HA's behave differently even though they sound relatively the same. The Midas M32 does do better with hotter HA settings than the X32. The X32 is a mixer I have found to be one which is best ran with a cooler HA setting to get the best GBF. Noise does not seem to be a problem with either of them even with higher than usual HA settings.

Gain is gain but.... Midas has a soft limiter on their mic preamp so the gain is no longer "linear" when you drive above the limiter threshold.

Old news... Mic preamps without limiters built in (like everybody else)  are LINEAR.

JR

PS; read my sig

[Chris Grimshaw]

I have found that where you acquire gain, can influence the stability of the system especially for monitors and Wireless lav mics. Typically using a lower HA gain and making the gain up later, either with the send level, master level, or even amplifier level, can increase the GBF by a couple db or more.

Are you sure?
I've heard another tech mention this, but to me it makes no sense.

If the mic puts -40dB signal levels into the desk and we use the preamp to add 40dB of gain, channel send at unity, then the output will be at 0dB.
If we only add 30dB of gain at the preamp and push the channel send to +10dB, then the output will be at 0dB.

Why should one of those give us feedback, but the other will be fine?

Chris

[Steve M Smith]

Are you sure?
I've heard another tech mention this, but to me it makes no sense.

If the mic puts -40dB signal levels into the desk and we use the preamp to add 40dB of gain, channel send at unity, then the output will be at 0dB.
If we only add 30dB of gain at the preamp and push the channel send to +10dB, then the output will be at 0dB.

Why should one of those give us feedback, but the other will be fine?

Chris

I had an argument on a Facebook page about this.  Someone was sure that running a mic preamp with too much gain made the microphone more sensitive and prone to feedback, even if the gain was reduced further down the chain to compensate.

His argument wasn't based on more gain being the issue, but that the extra gain changed the response of the mic.


Steve.

[ProSoundWeb Community]