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-- The Order in which you Turn your Equipment On and Off and Mixer Levels

The Order in which you Turn your Equipment On and Off and Mixer Levels

Hi two questions for yall,

I FINALLY completed my setup when my Behringer djx700 came in a couple of days ago. I briefly worked at a club doing the lights, as a "light jockey" =P and I remember that there was a specific order in which you had to turn the equipment on and off.


1-Right now, all I have are my two pioneer cdj100s, technics rpdj1210 headphones, behringer mixer, and I'm using ghetto ass 2.1 computer speakers, because I don't plan on playing outside. What order do I turn them on and off?


2-I hear that you are not supposed to let your mixer "red line." I have the "trim" for each channel turned down ALL the way, which keeps me in the lower green. In order to hear the music at a decent volume, I've got my channel faders as well as the master fader above 5, the middle "level." Is this how it's supposed to be, considering i dont have an amp and nice speakers that need an amp? I don't know anything about speakers really, but I just DONT want to damage my any of my equipment.


Also, any advice is appreciated, thanks! I love this mixer, it looks wikked too!

mixer - imputs (tt or cdj) - amp and the other way around to turn them off

The most important about that is the mixer. N�ver turn your mixer off when your amp is still on, and never turn your mixer on when your amp is on. I can cause your speakers to clip and eventually blow.

yea the order is, turn everything else on before you turn on the amp or whatever is the last item before the speakers. Clipping and blowing sux ass. getting a blowjob, however, is awesome, but that's a different story.

you shouldn't be using the faders to control dB limits. Use the gain knobs to keep the channels within limits. The VU meter that matter most for your equipment protection is the one that monitors the master/booth out, or the output before the amp. You shouldn't have to change master volume while mixing, only the gains, to match the track volumes and stay within limits. the master out is like your final (emergency) volume limiter.

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=105314

quote:

Originally posted by Nabistai mixer - imputs (tt or cdj) - amp and the other way around to turn them off

sorry off topic here but your avatar has the nicest ass i've ever laid my eyes on. *DROOL* lol

Re: The Order in which you Turn your Equipment On and Off and Mixer Levels

quote:

Originally posted by xCxStylex 2-I hear that you are not supposed to let your mixer "red line." I have the "trim" for each channel turned down ALL the way, which keeps me in the lower green. In order to hear the music at a decent volume, I've got my channel faders as well as the master fader above 5, the middle "level." Is this how it's supposed to be, considering i dont have an amp and nice speakers that need an amp? I don't know anything about speakers really, but I just DONT want to damage my any of my equipment.

yes you generally don' want your mixer to redline when it is going strait to your amp.
you should keep the gains and master out at a certain low level so you can turn the faders all the way up to a certain level when you mix.

normally on big party setups things are a bit different. sometimes you will have your mixer going into anoter mixer before it hits your amp. in this case, you turn down the volume and the gains on the amp and mixer to the desired levels you don't want to surpass. on the mixer you turn everything up the the max. you set up so that you can turn the mixer to the max, but you still have alot of room in your secondmixer and amp set up so that yo udon't blow the speakers.

quote:

Originally posted by TwiloNYC sorry off topic here but your avatar has the nicest ass i've ever laid my eyes on. *DROOL* lol

Amen to that

Re: Re: The Order in which you Turn your Equipment On and Off and Mixer Levels

quote:

Originally posted by montie yes you generally don' want your mixer to redline when it is going strait to your amp. you should keep the gains and master out at a certain low level so you can turn the faders all the way up to a certain level when you mix. normally on big party setups things are a bit different. sometimes you will have your mixer going into anoter mixer before it hits your amp. in this case, you turn down the volume and the gains on the amp and mixer to the desired levels you don't want to surpass. on the mixer you turn everything up the the max. you set up so that you can turn the mixer to the max, but you still have alot of room in your secondmixer and amp set up so that yo udon't blow the speakers.

Well yes and no, but blowing the speakers is not the main concern if you drive your mixer in the red.

You see, all audio equipment has a "sweet spot" by design. If you run the equipment in that sweet spot, you are ensured that you get the most out of it, and the cleanest possible signal that particular device can provide. For mixers, this "sweet spot" is 0 dB.

If you run your signal way below that spot, it may sound good, but you won't get the most out of it, because you'll be closer to the noisefloor (that's noise induced by the electrical components, the better the components, the lower the noise). If you run the signal over the 0 dB, you risk distorting the signal. Most mixers have a reserve built in, called headroom. It means if you exceed 0 dB, the sound will still have some margin before distorting. But sadly most people think "if the room is there, why not take it, and drive the signal constantly in that space". The point is, headroom is there to allow occasional peaks (well, not so occasional, don't forget there are peaks in the signal that are too fast for the meters to detect) to be "absorbed" without resulting into distortion.
Again, the better your mixer, the more headroom it will have (and believe me, a lot of manufacturers "embellish" those specs). A Xone for example, can be driven much harder without any sign of audible distortion than a Behringer.
The problem is, most people only start talking about distortion when they really start to hear that characteristic harsh sound. Sadly, it starts earlier than that. Many dj's drive their mixers in the red, because it sounds "crispier". Well that's already distortion. The signal is starting to saturate, and the effect is similar to mild compression (which makes it punchier and edgier). Nothing wrong with that you say... The problem is, if you would look at a waveform of that signal, you'll see it already gets deformed quite badly. In real life this means the sound will be more tiring to the ears (same thing happens with commercial cd's nowadays, overcompressed, and then again a loudness maximizer over it. Try to find an old cd from the seventies and compare it with a cd from now (preferably in the same style, to have a decent comparison). The newer will tire your ears much faster.

Now you would think, in clubs, usually they have protection not to get any LOUDER (end limiters, maybe the dj mixer gets routed to a PA mixer, whatever). So imagine you are driving the dj mixer way into the red. The dj mixer goes to a PA mixer input, so the engineer can "compensate". He will adjust it to get the right loudness. But don't forget, the dj mixer is outputting a distorted signal, and there's nothing the engineer can do about that (except slap that dumbass dj and tell him to crank it down). The signal won't be technically louder, but it will be more tiring (and damaging) than a clean signal, even if that clean signal is slightly louder.

So the general rule is, AVERAGE at 0dB on your meters, occasional peaks over that are allowed (if I want to be really precise, you shouldn't run an old mixer with needle vumeters at 0, but more between -9/-6 VU, with peaks allowed over 0, depending on the average level of the music, and on the other side mixers like Dateq GPRM/XTC which have very fast reacting meters, PEAKING at 0 dB).

How you use your faders varies. But there are two main schools of use. The most used is, channel faders up all the way, and gain/trims turned that way that your signal hits at the right spot (so, best case, average at 0 dB).
The second school of thought is use the faders like in the studio. Faders at 70% and trims adjusted that way it hits at the right spot (like above). This is handier with longthrow (100 mm faders) because you got more room to play. That's the way faders are used on pro recording/live/broadcast mixers. You got a good signal with the fader at 70% (usually there's the 0 mark), but still got some room if you need extra volume (singer starts to talk quietly in his mic), without reaching your arm each time to the trim pot that is miles away (on big pro mixers, you need LOOOOONG arms).

As turning your equipment on and off.

ON : just narrow it down, sources first, then where it all comes together = mixer, then the next part of the chain (maybe that PA mixer from the above examples), etc. And end with the output (the amp or the powered speakers).
OFF : exactly the opposite. Start with the last part of the chain (the output) and work your way up to the sources.

PS : the cleanest signal theory can be prolonged quite far. You can even apply it to amps. Most people I see, drive their amps at the limit of clipping (even when their mixer levels are adjusted right), because you get all the available signal then. But clipping on amps is WAY more dangerous than the mixer distortion (amp clipping with no protection whatsoever means the signal gets converted to a square wave. That wave has 2x the power of the normal signal, your speakers may not like that very much). The cleanest option on the other hand would be to align your amp to your mixer. Send a test tone through your mixer, and adjust it that way, that the clip indicator (if available of course) is starting to light up. Then just crank it a little bit back. So your mixer is on the brink of clipping. Now with that level still running through your mixer, do the same to your amp : adjust it that way that it's on the brink of clipping (mind I remind you preferably not to do this with speakers attached to the amp, or without hearing protection!). So now, if your mixers starts clipping, your amp starts clipping. It's maybe not that loud as full open. But now the amp has the full headroom range of the mixer to use also (so those "undetectable" peaks I spoke of before won't clip your amp either).

PPS : a little trick some of you may know already. Used in PA to get more out of your amp, safely. The amp draws power from the outlet, but you can make a difference between positive and negative. Let's just imagine the power outlet consisting out of two reservoirs, a positive one and a negative one. Let's assume we have a kickdrum hitting. In normal use, when the kick hits, it sends a positive signal to both channels (as the kick is usually centered). So both channels will draw power from the positive reservoir at the same time. The reservoir needs to fill up again, and sometimes the current available on the outlet is barely enough (especially with the big amps). On a negative peak, both channels would draw power from the negative reservoir, resulting in the same problem.
One smart guy once thought :"what if I wired my system that way, that when a positive pulse is sent through one channel, the inverse would be sent through the other?". He did that, but of course he found out that the signal coming out of the speakers was completely out of phase (if the left speaker cone moves out, the right one moves in). Out of phase sounds bad (loss of frequencies, bad sound). But then he thought about reinverting the wiring AFTER the amp once again. And that was it. So basically, we invert polarity on one channel before the amp, and we reinvert it after the amp to solve phase problems on the speakers. Now when a kickdrum hits for example, channel A draws from the positive, while B draws from the negative. And they get power each in turn, the strain is much less. After the amp, we Now it seems that that strain relief helps the wattage. Gains of 10 to 17% have been measured with oscilloscopes. It's definately worth a try, because you aren't doing anything harmful to the amp (it doesn't care if it gets a positive or negative pulse, it just reacts accordingly).

The second method can be done on decent pro amps (which have real bridge), switch your amp to bridge mono, and reverse the polarity on one channel after the amp. With this method you don't need to invert the phase before the amp as this is exactly what bridging does (invert polarity on one channel, and if you only use the mono input, the amp is tied to that load. But you can still use the second input, and basically this results in just the polarity switch).
In other words your amp kinda gets more headroom, and it's mostly used in amps driving low frequency drivers (as that's where the most power gets used).

yeah.....what Dr Thy said. that was good man.

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