I’m looking through the forum here, YouTube, Reddit and a few the Googles, and this topic just about as clear as mud. I can’t find anything official from NDSP on the topic either. The minimalistic manual doesn’t explain it at all, at least what I’m seeing. SO….
How do you all go about setting your gain staging from guitar input all the way out to FOH? As of now, I am boosting my global input gain to just “tickle” the red when I strum hard on the highest output PUs I have. Then I just go through the patch and set outputs of say the amp with any overdrives I may be using at once to a healthy input on my meters of my interface. But I don’t think this is necessarily right.
Input Gain for Guitar - There’s a lot of different methods I’ve seen where people just leave their global input gain at 0.0. They might boost the input on the patch on the input block. Now I’m seeing some people boost on the global but reduce on the input block. Another question is am I understanding correctly that the global input gain AND the preset input block gain is the same? It’s just either globally through the I/O page so all instruments are affected similarly and the preset input gain allows you to just adjust that input per preset? I’m thinking the 0.0 on global is better if you use multiple types of guitars and build a patch for a specific guitar. Am I thinking about this correctly?
Overall Patch gain - How are you setting your levels within your patch. If you are a user that uses 0.0 on the global OR boost on global but reduces on the patch to unity equal to the boost introduced, how do you ensure you’re getting the right amount of output coming out of the QC into your interface or FOH?
Thanks for any input you can offer (pun intended).
For the input gain, I’d say there is no “right” way. It comes down to how you want to build your presets, how you manage different instruments with different pickups and outputs and the like.
Input gain at 0.0 is supposed to behave closest to the real amp or signal chain.
Input gain up as high as you can without clipping is supposed to maximize signal to noise ratio. You can do that but you it will effectively be like a boost pedal in the front of your signal chain and you have to account for that in the settings.
The “boost the global, but reduce the input block” technique is mostly about reducing noise. I’d only recommend this if you are really obsessed about input noise because changing this in every preset can become tedious.
The short version is that at +9.3dB global input gain there is a point where the noise floor is reduced, so you do +9,3dB on the global input and -9,3dB on the preset and you’re back at +/- 0dB but with less noise.
For output/patch levels I leave the global I/O output at 0.0 and use that only to compensate for different interfaces/FOH/monitors if necessary.
In the presets I dial in the basic tone and then tweak the amp outputs and the gain on the output block to the desired output level. I bring the output up so it peaks around for example -10dB, then fine tune and compare by ear to level it with other presets.
Just another quick question as a follow up. Lets say you create a preset that uses 3 or 4 different combination of fuzz/overdrives/distortion etc., something like that. Not that you’re having them all on at the same time, but for scenes they are coming on or off. How are you balancing those outputs? Are you adjusting your final output level to accommodate the loudest scene you have? Or leaving a little room for say a boost for solos? Hope I’m making sense here.
Also, If a person (me) had a nice small collection of varying types of guitars with pickups that are both single coil and hum buckers, AND various outputs, are we just making different presets for guitar specific. That’s kind of what I’ve always done.
Yeah, pretty much this. Although I mostly try to not have too much volume difference between different scenes. Maybe someone else can give some input here.
This would be the way to go imo, especially if you go with the global input at 0 dB. Otherwise you’d end up adjusting the input gain every time you switch instruments.
You can adjust the global input gain to minimize noise on your hottest pickups, then subtract the added dB in the input block for each patch the same, regardless of guitar. You won’t have optimal signal to noise for the lower output pickups, but that’s probably a good compromise.
Super helpful.