Thread: Are You In The Red?

How many times have you walked into a club and noticed that brittle harshness attacking your ears? Defiled by utter ignorance and bleeding ears, I've made it a point to educate those who haven't been smacked around enough yet.

If you are one of those DJ's who consistently throw the gain of each channel into the red, you deserve to die. Well, that's a little harsh, but that's how I feel when I see and hear you do it! By pushing the input gain on a DJ mixer, you are actually increasing the signal to a point beyond it's dynamic range, causing the output of that channel to be distorted and unpleasant to the ears! That's what an amplifier is for! Proper gain staging is getting the maximum output without clipping at each point in the signal chain. The RED leds on your mixer are telling you that you're in a bad place and you need to back off. For some reason, there's a lot of people out there that LOOOOVE being in a bad place, and you're putting everyone else there too. If what you are hearing is not loud enough, you need to tell whoever is running the sound system to turn up their amps after you have come to the conclusion that your gain settings are where they need to be. Don't be the ass who turns up each channel or the main output of the mixer because it's not loud enough. Ear fatigue is not my favorite past time.

I was at a gig recording the output of the mixer and everything was fine until the next guy got on and instantly turned both channels up to a solid red to make it louder in the club. He later asked me for the mix and I told him his entire set was royaly screwed (distorted) because of his own expertise in the field of the 1-D-10-T error.

I encourage every one of you who doesn't already understand what I'm saying to go buy a book on Live Sound and educate yourself.

And all of you (which is hopefully most of us) who do "get it", please don't let these "superstar gain masters" ruin our experience! Pass along the helpful hints.

nice! been telling my roommate this for years.

Amen, Ahman!!!

sing hallelujah!

nothing worse than a great track distorted through a decent system.

i cant tell you how many parties i've played where i had to spend the first few minutes of my sets tweaking the sound. not a great place to start.

further, i've seen MANY djs mix using the gains and not the faders. why? i'll never know.

dood seriously....good one. i used to just go up to the mixer and fix it for them....if i had been the person who had set up the sound....i'd usually warn them once and then inevitably it would be pegging red again so i'd just adjust for the dj. i dj'ed at a show in arkansas and they had the gains and master all the way up on the mixer. i tried turning it down, they turned it back up. i'm pretty sure i suffered some permanent hearing loss after that, it was so bad, i should have just stopped playing. either way, i tightened up the ol' contract after that!

distortion rocks!!!



I use it on all my guitars!!!














oh, wait... I don't play guitar.

cough cough trancefactor cough

Originally Posted by ahman

How many times have you walked into a club and noticed that brittle harshness attacking your ears? Defiled by utter ignorance and bleeding ears, I've made it a point to educate those who haven't been smacked around enough yet.

If you are one of those DJ's who consistently throw the gain of each channel into the red, you deserve to die. Well, that's a little harsh, but that's how I feel when I see and hear you do it! By pushing the input gain on a DJ mixer, you are actually increasing the signal to a point beyond it's dynamic range, causing the output of that channel to be distorted and unpleasant to the ears! That's what an amplifier is for! Proper gain staging is getting the maximum output without clipping at each point in the signal chain. The RED leds on your mixer are telling you that you're in a bad place and you need to back off. For some reason, there's a lot of people out there that LOOOOVE being in a bad place, and you're putting everyone else there too. If what you are hearing is not loud enough, you need to tell whoever is running the sound system to turn up their amps after you have come to the conclusion that your gain settings are where they need to be. Don't be the ass who turns up each channel or the main output of the mixer because it's not loud enough. Ear fatigue is not my favorite past time.

I was at a gig recording the output of the mixer and everything was fine until the next guy got on and instantly turned both channels up to a solid red to make it louder in the club. He later asked me for the mix and I told him his entire set was royaly screwed (distorted) because of his own expertise in the field of the 1-D-10-T error.

I encourage every one of you who doesn't already understand what I'm saying to go buy a book on Live Sound and educate yourself.

And all of you (which is hopefully most of us) who do "get it", please don't let these "superstar gain masters" ruin our experience! Pass along the helpful hints.

Nicely put!!!

If the meters too high for ya' get outta da' club"

lol
j/k

expert advise to always be ignored by da' noobs. green is for you peen, yellow is mellow, red is DEAD.

gotta have headroom
esp before mashin it down into an mp3

yeah. When a DJ pounds the mixer in the red, I can only assume that 1) The DJ really has no clue what he's doing technically... or 2) The club's soundsystem is inadequate, and that's ONLY if it's really not loud enough.

I have been in a situation where the club can not bring their levels up anymore on the amps and the music just has to be louder for the crowd. However, if you reach the point where it's distorted then you should not be playing at all (which normally won't happen on a decent mixer unless your gain levels are turned up to far as well).

Excellent post.

although for the most part the orignal poster is correct, and people that completely max out a mixer destroy the integrity of a track, let me play devil's advocate on a few points.

1) mixer distortion is (for the vast majority of mixers) analog distortion, which at low levels has actually been scientifically proven to be pleasing.

2) tapping the red to get appropriate loudness without hearing audible distortion IS possible.

and 3) as Roos mentioned, there are cases when you have to choose between too soft and slightly distorted. I usually compromise.

just as an aside, i think djs should be in charge of the amps as well. if they're retarded and blow them, they should pay for them. i can understand why most clubs do not allow this, i would just prefer to have control myself.

Originally Posted by Left

and 3) as Roos mentioned, there are cases when you have to choose between too soft and slightly distorted. I usually compromise.

mmm. not exactly what I said. I won't play music if it's distorted at all to the human ear. However, I will go in the red IF I have no other choice and IF it causes no distortion.

I make sure I am in the black always.