Basically my question is: does cranking the gain/volume knob on active monitors affect the sound at all? I mean the whole premise the preamp market is that amplification is normally imperfect and affects tone, transient response, etc. right?

So if I leave my monitors' built-in volume knob at, say, 8 or 9, could that potentially produce less transparency than keeping the speakers low and always having to crank the interface gain?

I'm probably just splitting hairs here and it doesn't make a difference.

 

I found this video pretty helpful

 

Imho it's more important to level your mixer/interface properly because if you keep your mixer low and turn the speakers up you will raise the noise floor considerably in volume.
Plus, if I cranked up the volume on the speakers to two thirds, the bearable levels in my studio would be within the monitor fader range from 0-1 instead of 0-10.

 

@nadirtozenith this is just the kind of answer I was hoping for. Thank you! I often see you rating others' posts, but rarely see you post yourself. It's great to hear from you.

@jaymo99 it may be my wonky work computer, but I don't see a video there. I'll have to check it out when I get home; thanks for your reply

@fraifikmushi agreed about the noise floor. That was a big part of my reason for posting this - constant white/pink noise from the speakers. It's very very low but clearly audible if you're sitting right in front of them and listening for it.

 

hello, Caveat Emptor,

thank you for your kind words.

quite possibly this is just because my reading speed is way above my dabbling typing ability. :replace_me:

if the noise floor coming from your speakers is something to stumble into, of course you need to lower the input gain on them, thus concentrating your control range even more on your audio interface.

experiment with everything, you will find the most appropriate balance.

from all that there is, wish you the best...

 

You want your amp to work at its optimum amplification/gain, yet have optimum signal out from your audio interface. Sometimes a balance (or compensation) is needed to get good results, as nadirtozenith have already stated.
Basically you want good strong hot coffee (not weak and luke-warm), and then drink average amounts of it (not drinking too much).

If you are talking about the differences in frequency curve at different loudness ("Everything sounds good loud" saying), the Fletcher-Munson curve will explain alot (about human hearing at different dBSPL).



Also, use good balanced cables (if you aren't already, that is).

 

Last edited: Aug 14, 2015

Hey @Baxter ! Nice to see you around these parts. Your remark about balanced cables just raised another question that has nagged at me for some time. While I do have some fairly fancy (by my standards, anyway) balanced cables connecting my monitors to my interface, my mic setup I've always been unsure about. Of course from mic to preamp is balanced. Then from preamp to interface is unbalanced, as I hope to bypass my interface's preamp and just use it for conversion. Am I doing it right?

Interesting side note: I just realized how closely the Fletcher-Munson curve resembles the frequency response of my Shure SM7B


I wonder if that has anything to do with why it is so widely regarded as a good-sounding mic.

 

Check your interface's manual, the general convention with combo xlr/trs jacks is xlr goes through preamp, trs bypasses it.

 

For live audio, proper gain staging at each step will help you avoid feedback. Feedback is not caused by volume, but by gain. Same is true for speaker damage. Too much power won't kill your speaker, square waves created by clipping with too little power will. Love my dbx DriveRack. For powered monitors or power amps driving passive speakers, I run the amps as high as they will go with no hiss or hum, which is wide open on a good power amp.

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2015