Question about the Mackie 1402 VLZ

  • Thread starter Thread starter Music
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Music

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Hi,

I have a Mackie 1402 VLZ mixer, but I can hear a lot of noise when I turn up the master faders to the maximum. When I turn up the aux returns a bit then, I can hear a hum too, and more noise. I can hear the hum and noise in my recordings when I turn up the volume of the recordings. Does someone know if this is normal what I am experiencing or should the hum and noise be inaudible in my recordings? Should'nt I hear no noise when I turn up the faders to the maximum?

Thanks for your help!
 
First, no board works at optimum when the faders are at maximum. They are designed to be used at or near their "unity" point, which is usually near "0", or about 75% of the fader travel. When you push them further, you add a lot more gain and will start noticing both inherent mixer noise AND any problems with connected equipment.

You didn't mention whether you had anything external connected to the mixer when you experienced the noise - other things that can induce noise are unbalanced inputs whose cables run too near sources of hum, such as "wall warts", those little transformers so many manufacturers use to power their gear - guitar pickups, especially single coil types like on strats and tele's and older jazz guitars, flourescent lights, distortion boxes, computer monitors, etc -

Generally, you need to set your gains so that, with the main faders at "0" (unity, NOT all the way down), input faders near unity, and solid input levels but NOT clipping, you get output bus meters running at or near 0 (all the green LED's, and a yellow or two ), and speaker levels near 85-90 dB SPL. This last should be done with power amp level setting, turned up ONLY after all other levels are correct.

Once you have each stage of your system at optimum, you should find that the noise is gone (unless you have a problem input, or the mixer really IS bad. Doing this setup is called GAIN STAGING, and without doing that you will ALWAYS have more noise than is necessary... Steve
 
Thanks for your explanation steve!

This makes it a lot more clear. I have always set the master fader to high. The only problem I have now that when I play my synths, only 3 to 5 leds blink on my mixer, even when I set the volume to maximum on those synths.

Do you know how I can solve that? I have no clue what to do.
 
Excellent post there knightfly!!!

Yo' music, what is your synth-signal path to the 1402?
 
It's common to need a bit more gain on synths. Either use the mono preamp channels and use the gain pot or bump up the individual channel faders if you use the stereo channels.

You may come back and say "but my keyboards are stereo" and I'll come back and say, "no they are not really stereo and you should record them in mono anyways and add stereo effects during mixdown." ;)
 
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