[geek post]Took the day off work last Wednesday to go on the "mixing techniques" course run by Mark Payne at SFL in Reading. I had been on his "basic acoustics for sound engineers" course earlier this summer and found it very useful, not least just to get you to stop and think about what was actually physically happening to the sound in a room when you position your speakers in a certain way. (Have had some really positive comments about my sound since I went on that course)
Having not really been on any proper training on mixing techniques, I found the course very useful, both encouraging (confirming correct theory and techniques I have built up over the years) and challenging (suggesting alternative "best practice" techniques to correct bad habits I had picked up)
The main area of challenge for me was setting the gain structure of a desk... there seems to be two schools of thought on this. I had always been told that when sound checking a channel, you should first set your gain/trim pot to give a full (but not clipping) signal, then bring up your faders as required. (I first learnt on a desk with no pfl, so you would bring up the gain until the clip light lit, then back off a few dB). This can result in your faders being all over the place when mixing depending on what's on that channel (like in the picture above). Mark suggested that this was not the way pros would run a desk, and that if you looked at their desks, all the faders would be at a similar level (almost a straight line). This would be achieved by first setting the fader to 0 or perhaps -5dB (depending on the desk and how much headroom you required) and then adjusting the gain until that channel was as loud as required (not simply relying on the meters - except to check that the gain setting required wasn't clipping).
Now I'm not sure which is right, I had been told that one advantage of doing it the way I was doing it was that all outboard and monitor sends were being sent a similar level (due to all gains across the desk being set similarly, then only faders adjusting relative volume in the main mix.) However, if this isn't right, I guess I will have to try and practice the other method (feels a bit cumbersome at the moment) and get those faders in a nice straight line in the future!
Will welcome any comments/advice - especially if you happen to do sound for one of the biggest rock bands in the world ;)
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Checking out the PSW study hall it appears that this is quite a contentious issue and that there's advantages and disadvantages of both methods eg positions of faders giving you instant visual feedback of the levels of each channel vs. ease of returning faders to a known position (0dB). Also there would always be times - eg CD player or hi hats where there's shed loads of level on the channel requiring only a few milimeters of fader movement to get enough volume, where adjusting the gains down and the fader up would allow you to get a more useful amount of fader movement.
pka pka pka...
Do the sends not have their own volume controls? Or is that not the point?
Yes Martin, however the level of an input coming into a desk is set by the gain/trim control (called different things depending what make of desk you are using) - and this affects the level of that signal from that point on within the desk - i.e. adjusting the gain will affect the level in the monitor and FOH.
Apart from certain sources (as stated above) I would rather use the gains to get each of the signals coming into the desk at roughly the same level (maximising signal to noise ratio whilst ensuring no clipping), then use the aux pots to adjust relative loudness in the monitors and the faders for FOH...
Other than for cases of channels with loads of level (which are few and far between), what reasons do advocators of faders-in-a-straight-line give? I've always done things in the set-gain-to-max-without-clipping way, like you, for reasons you've mentioned.