TRUTH monitors melting my face....

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Quagmire02

Quagmire02

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OK, I just hooked up my new Behringer TRUTH powered montors to my M-Audio Delta-44 sound card break-out box, and they are so loud that my face is melting. I played something in Windows Media pLayer, and the players volume has to be all the way down for it to stop my ears from bleeding. My M-Audio control panel thingy isnt affecting the volume when I toggle the level faders. Any ideas?
 
Quagmire02 said:
OK, I just hooked up my new Behringer TRUTH powered montors to my M-Audio Delta-44 sound card break-out box, and they are so loud that my face is melting. I played something in Windows Media pLayer, and the players volume has to be all the way down for it to stop my ears from bleeding. My M-Audio control panel thingy isnt affecting the volume when I toggle the level faders. Any ideas?
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You have a problem with your gain staging, it's not the monitors. There is an input trim of +/- 6db on the back of the monitors I believe that you could try first. You also want to recheck your software mixer and the windows play control to make sure the faders are not maxed out.
 
Ditto. You could probably set the input as low as -10dB so long as the outputs on your soundcard will also output at -10.
 
how much were those monitors? how do they compare to m-audio's monitors?
 
339 for a pair. My guess is that they blow the M-Audio monitors away.

Ive brough the trim control down, it hardly does anything.
 
What soundcard do you have? If you have set the trim as low as possible and your soundcard is still outputting at +4 it will get LOUDER. Check the settings on the card. Also the truth monitors, although they are intended as near field monitors, are not intended to run at low volumes. As you likely well know, optimal listening level for audio editing/mixing is 80dB. That's not quiet. As far as the Behringers blowing away the M-audios, since the Truth monitors are basically designed after the Mackie 824's I'm not really sure that they blow away the M-Audios but probably beat them as far as price/performance is concerned. On the other hand there is also reliability to be factored in.
 
If you need to adjust the monitor level regularly - a lot of advice says to mix fairly quiet and then turn up loud once in a while to re-check - a vol control unit is a good thing to have.

To get the M-audio mixer to affect the output, you have to spot the monitor mixer to output 1/2 in the control panel patchbay/router tab, and run the monitors off outs 1/2.
 
Jim Y said:
If you need to adjust the monitor level regularly - a lot of advice says to mix fairly quiet and then turn up loud once in a while to re-check - a vol control unit is a good thing to have.

To get the M-audio mixer to affect the output, you have to spot the monitor mixer to output 1/2 in the control panel patchbay/router tab, and run the monitors off outs 1/2.
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I did that. When they run off WaveOut 1/2, It blows my head off unless its turned all the way down. If I set it to Monitor Mixer in the same column (the H/W Out 1/2) column, it seems normally like how my old PC speakers sounded in terms of volume. However, it doesnt get very loud here. I don't know what the proper configuration is for what I want to do.

If I just knew the proper configuration for being able to:

1)Record direct [through a preamp] to my M-Audio Delta 44 card with TRUTH monitors playing back in Cubase SX
2)Have all playback on my PC, both wave, video game,what-I-am-currently-recording, etc., come through my TRUTH monitors

I would be fine. Keep in mind I'm not using any other sound devices. Can anyone recommend me some help? M-Audio's webiste is junk.

I heard someone say "power attenuator" as like a middle-man volum control device (between outs of M-Audio and ins of TRUTHs). I don't know if this is the way to go. Surely I liked how my mp3s were sounding when I had WaveOut 1/2 selected in the control panel, but it seriously melted my face Manowar style in terms of volume.

If I could just get my WaveOut 1/2 and H/W In 1/2 to playback simultaneously, which I can't right now, I would be fine. But, then I would still have to solve the problem of them both blowing my face off.
 
When it's feeding h/w out 1/2, the monitor mixer should be capable of exactly the same maximum volume as you get when 1/2 is direct from Cubase.
Check you have all the faders actually enabled and turned up on the monitor mixer - you should be able to control the overall volume satisfactorily with the Master faders only.

With the Monitor Mixer setting, you should also be able to listen to any mix of ins and outs you like, but DONT have input monitoring enabled in Cubase, or you'll be hearing the input twice with a short delay between the two that'll make it sound crap.
If you want to hear your inputs with a track insert effect, then you do need Cubases input monitoring on ,but then don't use the Monitor mixer for the output.

With Cubase, you need to have the "disable audio apps use of control panel" option checked or it screws the monitor mixer settings.

Although M-audio consider the monitor mixer of good quality, it is degrading the signal to some extent at anything less than full volume, which is why it's generally thought a very good thing to have a passive volume control instead, but it must be of high quality.
 
I agree with Jim...from what I understand, "all" mixers and volume levels in the digital medium should be at 0db, as a lower volume is actually a bit reduction and actually reduces the quality of the data stream(sound). A passive analog attenuator such as Mackies Big Knob (ha ha) fills the hole quite nicely......um, no pun intended.
 
I picked up a small peavey mixer for about 80 bucks. It now controls my volume output in the hardware sense.

Now, is there anything I need to beware of in terms of output? I've got about 3 different volume controls in this chain with all the software and hardware options...

Right now I have my software level faders at about 75% and my mixer, at listening level, about 15-25%. The gain on the peavey mixer is at 50%, and I notice that it affects volume so that it why I mention it. Is this a safe configuration? Should something come down in favor of something else coming up? I don't want to damage my monitors...
 
Quagmire02 said:
339 for a pair. My guess is that they blow the M-Audio monitors away.
Click to expand...

I was debating between the TRUTHs and bx5's a while ago. I went with the bx5's, I liked them a little better. a few weeks ago I bought some bx8s for really cheap off ebay, and they are awesome! ha.
 
shackrock said:
I was debating between the TRUTHs and bx5's a while ago. I went with the bx5's, I liked them a little better. a few weeks ago I bought some bx8s for really cheap off ebay, and they are awesome! ha.
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this is interesting me....
i have to get some monitors in a bad way, and i'm hellbent on using my student discount to get them since i'm cheap. that siad, my only options are behringer, m-audio and mackie. I really want the m-audio ones but i don't know.
 
lion_tone said:
I agree with Jim...from what I understand, "all" mixers and volume levels in the digital medium should be at 0db, as a lower volume is actually a bit reduction and actually reduces the quality of the data stream(sound). A passive analog attenuator such as Mackies Big Knob (ha ha) fills the hole quite nicely......um, no pun intended.
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Ok so are you saying that the software mixer volume should be at 0db? Right now I pretty much have it at that, but my hardware mixer (set in between the sound card and monitors) operating super low. If I turned it up to 0db on that it would melt everyone's face off. I set it so I can use level fader on the hardware mixer as a "hands on" control. if i move it up like 25% is friggin loud as hell. I like it. Is this ok?
 
I don't see why your setup wouldn't be just fine....Just make sure the mixer doesn't color the sound. If possible, I might see if I could keed the signal from going through any needless EQ sections on the mixer.
 
lion_tone said:
I don't see why your setup wouldn't be just fine....Just make sure the mixer doesn't color the sound. If possible, I might see if I could keed the signal from going through any needless EQ sections on the mixer.
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I have everything set in the middle. All the mixer eq's are dead center and the only time I color the sound is when im listening to mp3's...I simply hit the nifty contour switch on my mixer and it gives a little more of a..well..contoured sound. I turn that off for audio mixing though.

I'm really concerned about how much my monitors can take in terms of volume since I am controlling them with the hardware mixer. I don't want to blow/damage them by pushing the fader up too much (at 0db on my mixer, those things would hurt my ears. I have it around -20db for listening purposes)
 
brzilian said:
$400 gets you a pair of Alesis M1 mk2 Actives. I would take those over something from M-Audio anyday.
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but not when the bx8's were for $200 on ebay! haha.
 
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