First of all you have the mixer going through the speakers, not the other way around. ;) Just a semantic point, I know what you meant but it's best to learn the theory and lingo behind what you're doing.

SSL has an autogain feature that, while not perfect, is pretty good for getting your tracks in the same general intensity (volume) range. You could look into getting a compressor/limiter to keep things from going above a certain threshold. Here's an example:

www.pssl.com

A Comp/Lim is nice to have in your setup to protect your speakers anyway, though many mobile guys don't include one.

I hope some of this helps, if you'd like to know more respond here or PM me.

dbx driverack

+1

About a week ago I just bought the " DBX Driverack PA + " with the RTA mic
-and it has greatly improved my overall sound.
(compressor, limiter, crossover, EQ, feedback elimination, sub-harmonic synth, with outputs for up to 6 power amps/speakers)

How do you make the Driverack autolevel the sound? Last time I checked it would compress it / clip it if it's too loud but if you go from a loud track (say peaking the Driverack) to a quiet track, it just comes out quiet..

perhaps a sonic maximizer is closer to what djLou82 is looking for?

Honestly, adjusting channel gains and using a compressor should be enough. It's really not that big of a deal to adjust those kind of things.

sonic maximizers will probably do more harm than good.

try using your gains you noob. How lazy are you?

you need to learn to eq my dude. No short cuts to that shit my dude. I know sometime when I get really going and excited I tend to not even eq my track and bring them in....then bam I get a huge reality check cause that shit comes blasting out the speakers. EQ my dude it takes like 5 secs

This isn't even EQ work... this is just minding channel levels. Headphones, graphical meters on mixers, good ol' ears - there are lots of tools to handle the job.

There is something that does automtic sound levelling. It's the audio tech that's mean mugging you for being in the reds on every single mix and keeps you turned down on the main board. The little red indicators do NOT mean "Maximum party hype mode"

"My dude" x3 haha

if there was an automatic way... they would need us.

please elaborate, as I don't have one in my rack... I'm wondering of their benefits or lack thereof, (I've heard differing arguments on either side)

I could imagine the only way to compress/expand sound in real time would have a time delay (i.e. imagine the breakdown of a house song and it's waaaaaay up there in gain and then the song hits, and it's even louder so the compressor kicks in)...

The only truly viable way to do this properly would be to have a significant processing delay (maybe a 3-4 second delay) to allow for compression/expansion to occur. The only place I've seen this is in radio, where they use compressor/expanders to automatically fix output level.

I see, so the dynamics of the music would be lost (squashed) so the quiet parts of a song are just as loud as the very loudest peak.

-but as mentioned before, a simple/quick adjustment of the gains is the easiest solution...

+2

I

So you want the sound coming out of your mixer to be level. A compressor/limiter is what your talking about. The DB Driveracks are the standard for alot of mobile djs, clubs. They are very easy to use and have alot of preset features to take the work out of making things sound right.

Basically what you need to know is that compression will bring every sound in the song up to a certain point and then constantly push it down to make it all level. Limiters will just clip the sound when it goes above what you want it to, but leave the track unchanged. There is so much more to get into, but thats the easiest way I think to explain it.

Really though matching the levels of two tracks is a basic Djn. If you cant do that without any help you have a problem. I know a guy like that and when I hear him, songs come in and out a different volumes. Just painful to listen too.

my philosophy is that the track has already been mastered in the studio. i use more cut than not and boost the eq on the mixer to add for those special moments. the rack eq has more to do with particular room acoustics which is different from your style of play. there is an incredible amount of info out there on this stuff...just check out the rane website for a good start.

The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement guide should be a mandatory read for anyone getting into live sound.

www.amazon.com

Listen to most top 40 radio stations for 30 minutes, and your ears will be unbelievably fatigued. There is hardly no dynamic range - it's like listening to machine shop equipment.

ok guys thanks for the advice, but i should have mentioned it was not when i was mixing it mostly when im playing the dinnertime music ..some tracks are louder then other tracks..i was just wondering if thier was such a product that could auto level the sound instead of me going to the mixer to adjust the gains..i know it sounds lazy but hey its something i was thinking about having..i guess i could mp3 gain my music and use one of those compressors you guys were talking about..thanks

You're making this much too difficult.

The SSL autogain feature would be just fine for what you're looking to do. Just make sure you have the option selected then reanalyze your files (or just the files you're using for the dinner music).

I remember having to babysit the levels on my dinner music way back in the day, burning them to discs with a CD creator that normalized the tracks made that portion of the event that much easier. With SSL you don't have to worry about that, as Autogain is FTW.

The auto-gain feature when you build overviews in Scratch-Live would get you close.
If you manually set the gain on each individual song, will Serato remember them?
(time consuming to say the least -but perhaps just for your dinner music crate)

Thanks DJLJ

DBX Driverack PX for active system and DBX Driverack PA+ for passive. On the other hand you might consider PLATINUM NOTES to scan all MP3s for consistency.

O

Yes it will. I fine tune some tracks (especially bass-heavy ones) that didn't sound close enough in level to the other programming out of my system.

One thing you could consider is figuring out which tracks are the worst offenders and tweeking them in an audio editor (garageband would do the trick) to raise or lower the volume. i think it can even be done in itunes.

True. Or one could just use the track gain knob in SSL. :)