Speaker volume ??

[Flight 16]

if you are using Active monitors...what is the best level to have them at....i have mine at 6 at the moment and use the sound card volume to control it....

should my monitors be full volume? or very quite?


any advice would be great

 

[darnold]

6 means absolutely nothing to us.

What if i had 34 notches of volume, 6 would mean very quiet.

It really depends on your speakers and amping but where it really should be at is 80-90 DBs at mix position. That is where the human ear hears frequencies at the flattest response (not perfectly but the flattest i can be). So you will get the best bass mid and high end balance here.

Danny

 

[cellardweller]

I remember a post from Bluebear where I believe he said that you should have your soundcard volume wide open and adjust with your volume on the speakers. I can't remember exactly his reasoning, but at the time it made sense to me, and I've been following this advice ever since. I believe it had something to do with "crippling" a digital signal by cutting volume in this way...

 

[lpdeluxe]

Monitor level

1. Buy a test CD with tones on it.

2. Buy an SPL meter (Radio Snack has one for not too much).

3. Set up the meter on a camera tripod, center its mic on your speaker about 3' [or 1M] away, and play back some pink noise through each side, one at a time (left, then right, or, if you're feeling adventurous, right, then left).

4. Adjust the volume control on each speaker to about 80-85 dB. As a bonus, you can the use the other tones on the CD to set subwoofer level, position the speakers and tweak whatever other parameters the speakers offer.

There is also the issue of gain staging, and there's no easy answer to that. Nothing in the path should be turned up all the way or down all the way. Aim for 0dB on the faders, for example. You are looking for a range where the circuits are neither loafing nor working too hard (there's a whole bunch of literature on this subject, starting with Gary Davis' Sound Reinforcement Handbook).

Enjoy.

 

[Farview]

I remember a post from Bluebear where I believe he said that you should have your soundcard volume wide open and adjust with your volume on the speakers. I can't remember exactly his reasoning, but at the time it made sense to me, and I've been following this advice ever since. I believe it had something to do with "crippling" a digital signal by cutting volume in this way...

That is the way to get the best signal to noise ratio. The other reason is that iif you give yourself too may places to change the volume, you will evetually screw up the gain structure. (turning it down in one place and turning it up in another)

 

[kgirl72]

I've been curious about this, and I had learned how to do the speaker, but I was wondering about the subwoofer, as lpdeluxe starts to mention. What kind of test tone do they provide, and I never really knew where I should have my crossover point set. Nor, how loud the volume level on the subwoofer itself.

Thanks, and sorry for being a thread hijacker. but, I bet the original poster would want to know this too!