Yesterday I purchased all new XLR cables for my setup, I was using a random bunch of RCA cables I had laying around and purchased at different times. One of them was actually used in an old record player system from my father which I'm sure is older than me at this point so it was time for an upgrade to quality cables.
After swapping in the XLR cables, the volume on my setup went very clear, and very loud, I'm guessing the XLR is just a hotter signal than what is typically run over RCA?
With the RCA setup, I used the large "Audio/Midi/Performance" control panel and set the trim to "-22" on pretty much all my organs. Everything else I left "as is".
But now that I have XLR, "-22" is far too loud and it only goes down to "-24" so clearly I need to find a new way to adjust the volume. There is the actual "volume" slider in that panel too but I always understood that to be way to quiet the sound temporarily, like if you wanted to not disturb a child sleeping or whatever. Did a search in the hauptwerk manual for "volume" but that keyword doesn't appear.
I went looking around and opened up the "Audio Mixer" window. In the bus settings, there are 2 places to adjust "level db", one under "Bus Audio Processing", and a second one right under that under "Audio Output (device) channel".
I'm currently using a Motu Ultralike Mk3 hybrid, which probably also has volume controls somewhere in it, maybe under "cue mix" but I find that program confusing as well and avoid it other than by setting my bass crossover (which already took me hours to figure out).
So that is 4, potentially 5 different spots I can adjust my volume, not including the speakers themselves (Adam F5/F7). The speaker gain controls are more of a fine tuning control, meant to balance a speaker in a room, as opposed to actually setting the volume.
What is the recommended way of turning down my output volume? Should I be trying to adjust the motu volume and leave stuff in HW alone? It's not that I can't find a way to turn it down, but I want to turn it down "without losing detail". Many software volume adjusters lose data/detail when you use them, at softer volumes the clarity goes down as well. I own a 2 channel Emotiva Big Ego DAC, which has a digitally controlled ladder network volume control; which means that the volume can be adjusted in software, but it doesn't lose that detail as you turn down the volume. I don't know much about it other than that it's a lossless volume control and apparently that is not that common as that feature was kind of hyped on the forum.
Any thoughts? This is kind of over my head to be honest. Just figured if I'm going through the trouble and expense of buying higher quality cables (which are amazing, already noticing the system is more quiet, got to love balanced connections) then I want to do whatever I can in terms of software too, to get the most out of my system.
After swapping in the XLR cables, the volume on my setup went very clear, and very loud, I'm guessing the XLR is just a hotter signal than what is typically run over RCA?
With the RCA setup, I used the large "Audio/Midi/Performance" control panel and set the trim to "-22" on pretty much all my organs. Everything else I left "as is".
But now that I have XLR, "-22" is far too loud and it only goes down to "-24" so clearly I need to find a new way to adjust the volume. There is the actual "volume" slider in that panel too but I always understood that to be way to quiet the sound temporarily, like if you wanted to not disturb a child sleeping or whatever. Did a search in the hauptwerk manual for "volume" but that keyword doesn't appear.
I went looking around and opened up the "Audio Mixer" window. In the bus settings, there are 2 places to adjust "level db", one under "Bus Audio Processing", and a second one right under that under "Audio Output (device) channel".
I'm currently using a Motu Ultralike Mk3 hybrid, which probably also has volume controls somewhere in it, maybe under "cue mix" but I find that program confusing as well and avoid it other than by setting my bass crossover (which already took me hours to figure out).
So that is 4, potentially 5 different spots I can adjust my volume, not including the speakers themselves (Adam F5/F7). The speaker gain controls are more of a fine tuning control, meant to balance a speaker in a room, as opposed to actually setting the volume.
What is the recommended way of turning down my output volume? Should I be trying to adjust the motu volume and leave stuff in HW alone? It's not that I can't find a way to turn it down, but I want to turn it down "without losing detail". Many software volume adjusters lose data/detail when you use them, at softer volumes the clarity goes down as well. I own a 2 channel Emotiva Big Ego DAC, which has a digitally controlled ladder network volume control; which means that the volume can be adjusted in software, but it doesn't lose that detail as you turn down the volume. I don't know much about it other than that it's a lossless volume control and apparently that is not that common as that feature was kind of hyped on the forum.
Any thoughts? This is kind of over my head to be honest. Just figured if I'm going through the trouble and expense of buying higher quality cables (which are amazing, already noticing the system is more quiet, got to love balanced connections) then I want to do whatever I can in terms of software too, to get the most out of my system.