Volume settings at live concerts

[christianjwagner]

Hello together,

I am asking you about your experience with the volume settings of your nord stage at live concerts. Do you turn up the volume knob to the full extent or do you leave some headroom? I got used to leaving the volume knob at 3 o’clock, means 75% of the full way.

Do you crank it up completely? I know Marshall amps have volume knobs that go up to 11 . Guitar players!

Our sound engineer told me he didn’t mind and said that the signal to noise ratio is better with higher volumes, and of course, I believe him, but if I break my habit, we will need to adjust all the sound mixes, for example, in the in ear monitoring and of course I would need to advise him before. so I just would like to get some feedback from you.

PS : I use a passive DI box between my north stage and the stage box, but I believe this is a no relevance here for this post

[cphollis]

Your sound engineer is sharing advice from 1965. With modern digital mixers, you can run at almost any level and be clearly heard.

I run my NS4 at ~50% (volume knob straight up) and my individual sliders at 80%. If I happen on a program that is leveled too low, there's plenty of juice in the tank to correct things and be heard (e.g. a flute solo). Maybe your sound person is uncomfortable with significant amounts of digital gain? I'm not -- it's just a number after all.

At 50%, the NS4 using a DI at "idle" through my SQ5 mixer produce almost zero background hiss -- it's very, very hard to hear if at all. It's not a concern at all for live music, *maybe* if you were doing ultra-precise recordings.

[Mr. Marko]

I set the volume on my NS3s to 12 o’clock (50%) and run through a Radial Key Largo keyboard mixer with a built-in DI. The inputs on the Key Largo are set to 3 o’clock (75%) and the main outs that go to our stage box (with splitter snake) are set to 1 o’clock (60%) to feed our IEMs and FOH. If I need to push for a solo or a part that needs to be louder, I could easily turn the NS3 volume knob up, then know where to reset it to the original setting afterwards. Those settings stay the same from gig to gig regardless of front of house.

The Key Largo also has a separate set of outs that run to a Rolls PM59 headphone mixer, so I can hear myself in stereo and adjust the IEM volume for my NS3s separately from the rest of the band, which I get in a feed from the stage box.

More often than not, I will get unsolicited positive feedback from sound engineers that are mixing our band for the first time about the sound quality of my rig, and I’ve never had an issue with signal strength.

I’m sure you can achieve similar results with other equipment, that’s just what I do.

[Heatha05]

I did some level setting using an oscilloscope and my rig. The NS4 output using one oscillator and the fader set to maximum is approximately 0dBu (roughly 2V peak to peak) when the volume on my Nord is set to 3 o clock. This is a strong signal level and should not drive anything into distortion.

I use a VU meter on my mixer to set the levels for each song to be the same (using the Nord SOUND menu) during rehearsal, so I typically don't need to adjust anything. This makes the FoH engineer happy. And my IEM level I can adjust myself.

[Mr. Marko]

I do what ajstan posted above...ride my knobs for leads like a guitar stomps a pedal.

KeyLargo with (2) K8.2 for Stereo Monitoring and a Rolls PM351 for IEM when I use them.

In my years of playing I have found - if you let people tell you how set your gain structure...you will eventually stop doing that and learn your own best practice.