(This statement does not apply to the people on this thread, who have a good understanding of sound.)
I am always amazed at the confusion between mic preamp
gain and
channel volume. Several times, I have been on "service calls" where problems were resolved by changing
gain at various places. The preamp
gain (or "pad") is there to optimize the
gain of the mic preamp. Too much
gain and you will have
clipping/
distortion. Too little
gain and your
system may appear noisy as you are having to crank the
gain somewhere else. In a
gain optimized
system, the largest amount of
gain should occur in the mic preamp. If you achieving that
gain elsewhere, you are also adding
gain to any noise produce by any of the electronics or cables that come before the
gain jump. Working backwards,
power amps should have just enough
gain to achieve
clipping before the signal clips from the prior device. The same applies to each piece as you work your way back. Although digital equipment is dead quiet compared to the old analog junk I used to deal with, this practice still has great advantages, especially if there are long cable runs. In those cases, any noise picked up on a cable run between processing, crossovers,
etc, will be minimized. Needles to say, the best way to achieve this occurs if each idem in the chain has a
meter. In other words, if the board
meter is up at 0db, then the signal meters on any equipment up to and including the
power amps should also read 0, each piece then having about the same
headroom above that
point. This also tends to minimize noise from accidental hot-patches.
To this day I find myself frustrated by people who believe that if a
power amp is only turned up "half way" that it will only produce half it's rated output! (last argument, 48 hours ago.) All
gain controls throughout the
system should be considered "calibration points" with the exception of the board faders and masters, which provide the user input.
/rant