Record Level Too Low - How To Adjust?

Engine DJ Hardware Standalone Controllers
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82

Ok, but you’re saying that in a way that’s still making it sound like 12 o’clock on the gain/trim knobs even matters. It doesn’t. You don’t just leave the gain/trim knob at 12 o’clock. That’s not even its unity point, anyway, which if was would cause you to run the gain/trim knobs way down awkwardly all the time with digital inputs from the X1800 or the P4’s internal players. Forget unity on the channel gain/trim knobs or trying not to touch them. The channel gain/trim knobs are entirely a means to an end… the end being the channel level as represented by the channel meters. The channel gain/trims must be considered for every track individually in reference to their respective channel meters.

Yes, that habit of not ever running the fader all the way up is a bad one. This isn’t a live sound board for running a band through. If it was, it’d have a 0 or U mark like 2/3 the way up the fader that would be very obvious, and you would easily see that when the master volume is at its unity, the fader at its own unity would cause the master meter to be the same as the channel meter for a single given open channel.

The master knob and the master meter matter because if you put the master knob at “0” it will probably tell you the record level, assuming there’s nothing wrong with it, as well as prevent you from doing goofy things on the channel meters or even the zone or booth outs, assuming you don’t push those other unmetered outputs past their knob “0” unities, either. And AGAIN, zero on the dBVu meters on the P4 is -18 to -20dB below full scale clip. Don’t be afraid to peak a little above it.

83

Hi all. I’ve been following this thread with interest, and sometimes amusement if I’m being honest, over the past few days but today is the first time I’ve had chance to fire up my P4 and do a little test myself.

I loaded a banging techno track into deck one, this is because the kick on a techno track is usually the loudest part, not always, but it would do for this test to prove a point. I then put the channel fader up full, as I always do, found the loudest part of the track as per the waveform, then increased the gain until it was juuuuuust starting to hit the blue max LED. I know I could have given it a tiny bit more, a touch more, but I didn’t, you’ll see why shortly.

Due to my own curiosity I wanted to see how far I could push the master knob until it started to peak on the input of my Scarlett audio interface. This has no bearing on the recording at all by the way, all will become clear… it started to show red on the Scarlett LEDs at roughly -4dB. How do I know this? If you look at the Master knob, it has markings showing you that each ‘notch’ either way is 4dB. Interestingly, that point is about ‘twelve o clock’. More on that shortly.

I then recorded about ten seconds or so of the track on the P4. Stopped it, and copied the file to my Mac and loaded into Adobe Audition.

Loudness%20Radar
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In this screenshot, you can see I loaded up the LoudnessRadar plug in. Also if you pay close attention to the right, you can see a tiny bit of the waveform of the file and that is peaking at roughly -7.6 dB.

This is exactly what I would have expected with the channel gain just under the blue LED. As I mentioned earlier, I could have pushed it a little more as well.

Last%20Second%20Waveform
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This is a screenshot of about a second of the track. Not flat tops, so no brick wall digital distortion, it’s fine. Again, just as I expected.

Remember I mentioned the Master knob? It was set to roughly -4 or 5dB before it started to hit the red on my Scarlett inputs. Again, as I expected.

My thoughts? The P4 is performing precisely as I would have expected it too. It gives you a bit of headroom so even if you push it too much into the max, you still have a little to play with before it actually goes too far and distorts the sound. As you have read, I took it a little under the max, and it gave me a bit of extra headroom, that’s as it should be as far as I’m concerned. So… if the level is too quiet for you, turn your channel faders up until just under the blue is my advice. Once you have your recording as a wav file and you still think that -4 or 5 dB is a little too quiet, normalise it, no big deal!

My test is only my test. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s my findings and I hope it’s helped you all in some way :slight_smile:

85

Thanks.

Interesting, though not totally conclusive, as you’ve already said, especially since you went into the Scarlett using analog. Also, as people have already determined, the master knob does not affect the on-board record feature directly, though having it somewhere other than its “0” can compel improper levels on the channel which does affect the record level.

This is probably the most applicable part of what you did:

That’s consistent with there being nothing wrong, but that second to last LED encompasses an 8 to 10dB spread of headroom. So it could have been anywhere between just under clip to as much as -8 to 10dB below clip. If you push it into clip (the top channel meter LED) does it actually hit full scale max in the recording?

You didn’t manage to make a video of you doing the on-board recording part of your testing, did you?

Also, does the Prime 4 have a built-in interface besides the two DVS input channels? When you plug it into your mac, is it fully coreaudio compliant and shows a bunch of ins & outs?

86

It wasn’t an analog recording. It was recorded ON the P4.

No it doesn’t. Not at all. I’ve done two further tests this morning. One with the Master knob set to 0dB and one with it set to nothing at all, all the way to the left. Results were exactly the same.

Yes.

peak
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When I altered the channel gain so it was just touching the blue max led it was fine.

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Just for you… this is the second test I did this morning.

Video

For everyone else, to summarise… It doesn’t matter where you have your Master knob set, it has zero relevance to the recording level. What does matter is to have your channel fader up full, and to ensure that you only just touch the max blue LED. That way you’ll have a nice loud recording that doesn’t peak.

This is the last post I’m making on this thread, my work here is done.

Have a good day everyone, have fun!

1 Like
87

Had a look at the video. That’s the channel gain nearly maxed out to get decent record levels right?

Unexpected behavior is confirmed.

For the sake of science…if you connect the P4 to a laptop via USB and use Audacity to record how does it sound? With your normal gain staging…not the max.

88

It’s good that you tried it. A key point, I think, is that IF master knobs were ALWAYS supposed to be set to a single particular level, then there wouldn’t be an adjustable knob for the level.

89

Absolutely! I was just pointing it out that the Master knob has no bearing on the internal recordings, it’s all about the channel gains.

90

Thanks for making the video!

My comment on analog levels was in reference to this passage:

I know you said the pic of the waveform you posted was from off the Prime 4’s own recording.

Unless we’re discussing compressors, we’re really concerned with peaks in this case, not loudness. Just touching the top blue LED on the channel meter with the channel fader all up and crossfader off should show at least a few clip peaks into 0dBFS… unless they have a limiter or a pad on the recording section. It looks like from the pic where you say…

…that would be the case. A few peaks are just barely clipping… as expected with just touching the single blue top channel LED. That would tend to indicate the recording levels are fine.

A master volume knob is a convenience, but the meter that’s monitoring it is also your only post-mix-bus level reference. If you put the master knob at less than unity, it’s possible to run the booth or zone into clipping and not know it… to say nothing of not getting the most out of the master section’s S/N ratio, but that’s another matter. If you put the master knob at greater than unity, you’re going to be compelled to possibly run your channels in a less than optimal manner, particularly for recording purposes as some people have discovered… lower than normal channel metering or faders not all the way up. If you put it at its unity, you’ll always know the record levels and assuming you never turn the zone or booth past their unity marks then you’ll never clip those without knowing, either.

Yes, I’m saying that the +10 boost past unity available on all the output knobs on these Prime mixer sections was probably a mistake, but it’s there so people need to be aware of it.

91

Again, the position of the gain/trim knob is the wrong thing to focus on for the record level issue. Just adjust them to get the channel metering appropriate for each track. There’s no one right universal position for the channel gain/trim knobs.

If you have many normal tracks that you can’t get loud enough on the P4 with just the gain/trim knobs, that’s another matter. You shouldn’t be running out of clockwise rotation just to get one or two white LEDs on peaks for many tracks. Ditto if people were always having to run them REALLY low such that it became touchy (Rane MP2015 has this problem). Then you could take such an issue up with InMusic as to how much pad’s on the inputs. The exact pad amount on the digital inputs of the X1800, for instance, was just changed for the better, IMO, though it might be nice to have the option to change the input attenuation levels, too. X1700 has that option. Anyway, none of this is really a record issue.

Tobes appears to have decent enough, normal levels on the P4 recording when he’s peaking somewhere within white LEDs, depending on the oomph needed for the particular track. If you really want a super hot recording, then just keep it out of the top blue channel LEDs and top blue on the master (assuming you put master knob at 0). I would recommend people stay out of the top white +10 channel meter LED on the P4, too, because that encompasses a pre-clip headroom, and once you’re in it you really don’t know how close to clip you are until you’re actually clipping and the top LED (the only blue one on the P4) lights… which by then is too late. Then I’d take that recording and bump it up by 6dB in an editor later assuming I never actually went too far into that +10 LED. Easy enough to check in an editor.

92

Yep! All of the above :wink:

One point of note though, bear in mind that test was only for one channel playing. What I’d do, is turn down the channel gains a little until only one, maybe two of the channel faders white LED’s are lit up, because when you mix two channels together, no matter how good you are, it’ll be louder in places and therefore max out and clip on the recording. So yes, the master, set to 0dB, along with the channel fader gain knobs set correctly is near as dammit the best recording you’ll get without clipping them. If it’s still too quiet (it shouldn’t be though as long as everything is setup correctly) then do what Reticull said, put the wav recording file into an editor and normalise it!

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93

Right.

I should mention on the X1800 I firstly stay out of blue (because +10 is also a blue LED) but also try not to use up all the white LEDs except on the most dynamic tracks that need the juice, so to speak. In your case, the P4 top white is the same as the X1800 bottom blue.

I’m beating a dead horse here, but I probably said it before in posts that were longer that some didn’t read… You’ll get less math errors if instead of normalization you just double the volume by single 6dB increments in an editor. It doubles the sampling levels by multiplying each by 2. No errors. Following these guidelines, doing that once should also still give you, assuming you stayed out of the +10 LED aside from the rare occassional accident, another couple dB of headroom from full scale clip, which is what Apple recommends you leave to prevent intersample clipping later when things get converted to MP3 or uploaded to a streaming site. Such processing likes up to 3dB of headroom to work.

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94

I also experienced an issue at the weekend when I recorded a full 5 hour set at a mates birthday doo. I normally only DJ out for a 1 hour booking, but as it was a mate he asked if I’d do a full night of dance music at a local venue (= hard graft for me!) so thought I’d record it to the SSD internal drive.

When I played it back the next day, after 2 hours in the recording stared crackling in the background continuously. And about 20 mins from the end the recording went completely quiet for about 2 minutes then came back, and yet I certainly didn’t turn the levels down to nil on any dials during the whole night. Strange.

I’ve recorded an 80min mix before now and that’s been fine (apart from the overall low volume of the recording). Not sure why the crackling and drop outs?

95

I haven’t recorded for that period of time, but will test it out soon. Possibly something going on with how it’s trying to write to your SSD drive.

Is your drive formatted Exfat or Fat32?

Keep in mind that Fat32 can’t handle file sizes over 4GB. Your file size may be coming close to that limit for a 5 hour set and having issues.

96

I think I set mine up as ExFat. I’ll check next time I hook it up to my Mac. It’s only 250gig in size but has less than 1000 songs on it so plenty of room still.
I wouldn’t normally record a set that long and just tested it out for a bit of fun. Typically it would be 80 mins recording for me which seemed ok Cheers.

97

reading these last few posts made me wonder a CPU meter would be beneficial on the Prime 4 screen. There is quite a bit of knowledgable guys in this thread alone so if you think it would, put it in the request zone.

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98

What a thread! : ) But glad people are super-helpful here! Recording levels are definitely too low but (and sorry if I missed anywhere else) but the EQ curve also seems off. Anyone else noticed that? I haven’t been overly bothered by any other this because I bring it into Logic anyway and it’s all an easy fix, but no doubt would be super helpful to have a recording meter and way to change.

99

What do you exactly mean by this?

100

Same here I did a recording session yesterday and I found it to be low. I know they can add a level gain on the prime 4. Guess might be in next firmware :thinking:

101

Almost like the highs were cranked up! I had to adjust the file by pulling down everything from around 7k and up!

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102

Interesting, I haven’t noticed that, but interesting find.