Reply to A question about peaking/volume..

When you are djing, do you tend to have the channel faders up at the full 100% all the time? I used cruise at full volume when I had a shitty set up with horrible sound issues (Vestax CDX05s and a Numark DXM06), but I recently acquired some pioneers and a Xone 42. I was kind of surprised when I read the Xone 42's manual. The manual recommends keepin the peaks of the VU meter around +3 db. In order to do that, I find that my faders are chilling roughly around 80% the whole time I mix.

I actually really like doing it this way because it sort of makes sense: what if the next track I am bringing in is too quiet compared to the currently playing track? If I have my faders set to 8ish, that means ideally I have 2 dbs of headroom to play with without having to up any EQ knobs.

So does everyone out there cruise at full volume or do you tend to keep it down a notch or 2?