Redlining - how bad is it?
Redlining - how bad is it? Posted on: 12.04.2013 by Olin Easley In addition to common sense, I've read multiple times that redlining is generally bad for the sound system and in the best case scenario you'll end up with worse sound quality. However, I keep seeing popular DJs hit the reds and noone does anything about it. Can anyone clarify what the actual effects of redlining are? | |
| Syreeta Piela 16.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by mdcdesign
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| Doreen Schurle 16.04.2013 | I had a related - although different - situation last evening
. Turned up at the venue to play (it's a pub which gets converted into a sort of chill-out room for the main venue at evening
), and there was no PA whatsoever in place. The DJ I was covering for normally rigs it himself with gear the club provides. So I went upstairs, sorted out what gear I needed, and lugged it downstairs with the help of the manager. Plugged everything in, set all the levels appropriately, and it sounded wank. No redlining, no clipping or anything like that (was checking the meters on the soundboard and the amp the entire way through); was just a case of crap speakers. Spent about 30 minutes fiddling with the EQ trying to get something more reasonable out of it, to no avail, so eventually just decided "screw it", and just got on with the mixing. Half way through, the volume randomly dropped significantly, and all of a sudden the balance was MUCH better. I went over to investigate, and realised that one of the speakers woofer had cut out completely; horn tweeter still going strong, hence the better treble/bass balance between the two speakers combined (the other one had a duff/rattly horn). So I went over and told the manager, and we tried swapping out the duff speaker with a new one, which was ALSO duff. At that point, we called it a evening and packed up. I was worried I'd get a bollocking for blowing up one of the speakers, but I made it clear I'd kept all the levels well below redline and his response was just that the speakers were crap and it was only a matter of time before they went. Luckily, I still got paid. I suppose the moral of the story is, even when you're not redlining, stuff can still break, but it's less likely you'll get blamed for it lol. |
| Dorie Scelzo 16.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by KS2
IMHO, though, it's a good idea to tell someone if you can. Blowing a sound system can get expensive, espeically when you add all the unsold drinks, potentially refunded tickets, and lost reputation to the gear costs. I'd want to make sure I at least had something resembling a verbal acknowledgement that I wasn't at fault. |
| Arnulfo Morten 15.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by No Left Turn
Originally Posted by mdcdesign
turn up the booth monitor if you can't hear yourself. stay at 0db and if it's not loud enough its not your fault redlining is terrible. that is all |
| Beckie Spitler 15.04.2013 | The big issue starts at sound chek (if there even is one), generally when I play or am running sound I start with the Dj pushing out almost a maxed out signal but just below clipping (red) then so do the same on my board. This way The DJ has all the headroom in the world and dosn't start clipping the mixing board inputs half way through the set when things start to turn up. Gain structure is crucial once you start playing on bigger systems. Clipped out sound distorted, is harder on the ear and overdrives the sound system, generally there are a lot retards out there who don't have a clue and end up with shitty sound due to their ignorance. |
| Emelina Chillson 15.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by Shishdisma
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| Nancey Inderlied 14.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by KS2
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| Latina Samon 14.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by No Left Turn
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| Shery Bergson 14.04.2013 | Reminds me of Baauers set yesterday at Coachella, the whole time it was at MAX like it didn't even dip. It just stayed at full red bars the whole time, that and his set wasn't very good either. |
| Dorie Scelzo 14.04.2013 | Hilarious. Yeah. One of the weirdest things I've seen was a gigantic amp stack for a 6000 person club with all the levels maxed out. I asked about it, and they said "it's easiest to see when something's set wrong". The amps they were using were pretty simple beasts. And everything important happened in the board. I asked about their gain staging and got a free drink out of it while he explained that, yes, they were doing some things very wrong but that in a world of songs with basically no dynamic range and digital audio with a basically inaudible noise floor, it didn't matter. |
| Nancey Inderlied 14.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by mostapha
Fun fact: I have only heard a newer DJM clip once. The mixer's meters would have to be at the equivalent of the edge of the faceplate (look at a picture of a DJM) to actually hit the absurd 18db of headroom. If you hear clipping with an 800+ in the chain, 9/10 times it isn't the mixer clipping, but it's probably the mixer's fault. Fun fact 2: The normal "balancing" output level of a DJM is "3 yellows," at 4db IIRC. This is because the mixer and input can be balanced at "3 yellows," a respectable level, then have the attenuator (that about -5 people know exist...) set to max, and thus people can effectively play at peak meters while still keeping the nice "3 yellows" output level. As long as whoever's in charge is whitegloving the master knob wholesale (that effing knob, that has a fucking guide printed on it, has damaged more gear than all the beer in the world). |
| Dorie Scelzo 14.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by DISaS73R
Your ears are going to be shot by the end of the evening . If you don't take care of them (read: wear earplugs any time you go to an event, whether performing or attending), they're proably already suffering. If there's a sound guy you can talk to, talk to him. If not, aim for green. People (managers, patrons, bar staff, etc.) will let you know if it's not loud enough. Make sure it's them telling you to risk damaging their system and sounding terrible and not just you doing it because you don't know what you're doing. And if you're lucky, you'll be loud and sound good. |
| Emelina Chillson 13.04.2013 | Por serio. Stay clear of the red on your channels. Its just like mixing down a tune. Give yourself enough headroom on the master so you dont peak. If you need the monitors and/or PA to be louder inform the sound tech to adjust the levels (in most cases you can easily adjust the monitors yourself via the booth knob on a pioneer). |
| Alphonso Deitchman 13.04.2013 | Your ears aren't going to tell you when you're hitting the limiter or clipping slightly. Stay out of the red unless the sound tech says otherwise. |
| Olin Easley 13.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by mostapha
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| Doreen Schurle 13.04.2013 | There's another problem that nobody on here has mentioned yet; some clubs actually TELL you to set all the gains to max, simply because their amps are set too low for you to have acceptable volume, and they can't be bothered to go into whatever distant room the amps are in to crank them up. |
| Dorie Scelzo 13.04.2013 | Without knowing which scale they're using, dB numbers don't mean much. "Red" means even less than that. You can hook the mixer up to an osciliscope if you really care, but here's what it boils down to: DJs don't understand levels. Digital audio made it even worse. Meters are made to compensate. Some more so than others. If you hear distortion, start turning things down. In general, it's worse for channels to hit red than outputs because your mixer is still doing processing (EQ, summing, possibly effects). And all of that processing is affected by its input level, sometimes drastically. Mixers have wildly varying output levels. For example, on some xones, it was correct to run them just below the clip light to feed the next gain stage correctly: it appears the designers knew that DJs were idiots, so to ouptut a nice line-level signal that was relatively noise free, you had to run them so they looked like they were cooking everything. I have no idea if the modern ones are the same. My uk-made xone:62 (sold a while ago) was like that. And at a big show/club/event 99 times out of 100, the mixer is going into direct boxes that feed a bigger live sound console anyway. When that happens, the DI takes the mixer's output down to microphone level, and it's re-amplified to a line level signal by people who know more about sound than the vast majority of DJs anyway. Then, as long as the DJ doesn't clip the summing bus or the output stage, it'll be the right volume in the end. And any issues you're getting are dynamic range issues (very minor with insanely compressed music) and gain staging issues (somewhat mitigated by using good gear with really low noise floors). And some mixers (some Pioneers, Eclers, etc., though I'm not sure exactly which ones) have attenuators built in that can further reduce the level before the output stage (probably pre-DAC on the digital ones as well) so the meters mean even less...just to compensate for people who believe the clip light means "almost loud enough". When they're set up like that, pegging the red all the time is the correct thing to do. Unfortuantely, those mixers have helped the problem. And for those times when you actually do see a realistic digital meter that tops out at 0dBFS (digital zero), keep in mind that running close to it is kind of like running a console at around +50dB. Nothing sounds good like that. |
| Delila Vandommelen 12.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by loverocket
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| Tommy Thiner 12.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by loverocket
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| Meg Reinoehl 12.04.2013 | There are really only 2 scenarios that explain why ANYONE would ever be running the reds. 1) You believe that louder is better. Not only are you the DJ, but you're also the sound engineer. You've taken it upon yourself to make sure the club is as loud as possible, completely disregarding the fact that you did not set up the sound system. 2) You're playing after one of the aforementioned "DJs" and can't drop lord knows how many dB to save the DJ mixer/sound system without killing the energy in the club. I find myself in scenario #2 quite often and with the sound engineer nowhere to be found. In my 12 years of DJing, I've only ever spoken to the sound engineer maybe 5x. Those were the best sounding shows I've ever played. They made sure that as long as I was playing at a medium level (2-3 yellow/orange) that they'd have me nice and loud on the PA. |
| Jerica Salava 12.04.2013 | one red=ok / two red=no good / three red=no no |
| Alphonso Deitchman 12.04.2013 | If you're within headroom and fully below the limiter there's no loss of quality. It's only bad when your transients get squashed and you start compressing your sound. |
| Kathe Stump 12.04.2013 |
Originally Posted by makar1
It's because popular DJs usually dont know what they're doing |
| Alphonso Deitchman 12.04.2013 | Most modern digital mixers have enough headroom and a limiter on top which stops the most serious problems caused by redlining. |
| Yajaira Harang 12.04.2013 | Of course, it's not good for the music quality, but, i don't believe it's bad for your sound system... I believe no one would say to a popular DJ that he his redlining, but it's not good so.. |
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