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Forum: VirtualDJ 8.1 Technical Support

Topic: Trouble With The Gain Nob Changing By Itself ?

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whats happening is in the 1st picture my gain nob's are set at around the (2 o'clock position) and as you see in the 2nd picture everytyme i load up a song.the gain nob returns to the (12 o'clock) position.
so i went into Options/Controllers/Controller take over mode/ its set to pickup so i tried instant & gradual by with same results ?
any help please thanx
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 3:15 am
Did you set gainSliderIncludesAutoGain to yes?
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 5:38 am
Besides the autogain setting, you miss the entire point of the gain adjustment on computer software.
You TRY to use the gain like in a hardware mixer, but this is not a correct way for software.
So, bare with me as I will try to explain a few things:

1) The gain adjustment on ANY software is not a knob/tool to make the overall sound louder.
It is a tool to make a particular song (or an area of a song) louder in order to match the volume with that of the other deck playing out live.

2) Setting the gain to be constantly on 1, 2 or 3 o clock might seem that it boosts the sound but it ruins your sound quality. And that's on ALL Dj-ing software. Traktor, Serato and VirtualDj, all have a limiter that will forbid your sound to exceed a certain level because that would produce distortion. So, when you try to force your sound to have a boost of +3db for instance, all you achieve is to hit the limiter much more frequently and ruin the dynamics of your tracks. If your overall sound output is not loud enough then you should consider to A) Upgrade your sound-card with a better one, or B) Upgrade your sound reinforcement system (speakers and amps / self-powered speakers)

3) VirtualDj has 2 settings that affect the gain knob's behavior.
A) autoGain. When auto-gain is set to yes, VirtualDj tries to match the overall RMS level of a song to a set level (more info for this later down this page). When auto-gain is disabled, then VirtualDj plays the track "as is" without doing any gain matching but this means that you either have to use other tools to edit your tracks in order to keep them in constancy reagrding their levels, or you will have to make manual adjustments for all the tracks every time you play them. Finally when auto-gain is set as "Auto+Remember" then VirtualDj uses the "auto" setting for the gain adjustment of the track UNLESS you manually adjusted the gain of it at some point. While this setting appears to be the best of both worlds it should be used with extreme caution depending on your style. Several Dj's tend to use the gain knobs as mix aiding tools, or effect / transform tools. In such a case the "remember" value can end up be anything... From a very negative value to an extreme positive value. When you load the song next time, it could be played back with almost silence or burst your years due to very big gain... Personally I recommend to use the "auto" setting for auto-gain.
B) gainSliderincludesautogain. This setting by default is enabled and I recommend you to leave it this way. What it does, is what you describe as an "error"/ unwanted behavior. When you load a track and auto-gain is enabled, then the "default" position of the gain knob will be 12 o clock. At this position the gain slider also includes any adjustments made by the auto-gain function. With this setting disabled when you work with a controller and you load tracks with different auto-gain adjustments you need to move you gain knobs on different positions every time in order to "pick up" the software knob and start controlling the sound. This means that every time you have to look at your screen to see where the "auto-gain" adjustment is. With this setting enabled, all you have to remember is that you need to bring the gain knob of your controller to 12 o clock position in order to "pick-up" the software knob and start adjusting the gain.

There's also one more setting you should be aware of:
zeroDb This is the setting that allows you to adjust the target volume of auto-gain. However there's a "catch": It's already maxed out! In other words you can use this setting to adjust the auto-gain, but only in order to make the target volume lower, not higher. Why would you do that ? Well if you use too many effects, or mix more than 2 tracks live for the most part of your gig, or you do extensive use of the sampler, or all of the above, then it's almost certain that you will hit the limiter very frequently. For this reason you can adjust auto-gain in a lower setting in order to have more HEADROOM for you mixes, effects, e.t.c.

Finally: As I said (and I will repeat it for any guy reading this) if the overall sound output of your equipment is not enough, then adjusting the software gain to permanent positive values IS NOT the solution for ANY software. The solution is to upgrade your equipment! :)
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 7:45 am
@ Phantom
May I ask a question 'cos i just read something on the German forum that has confused me;
when you say
"A) autoGain. When auto-gain is set to yes, VirtualDj tries to match the overall RMS level of a song to a set level"
does this mean that it tries to to match the gain level to the other deck that's playing automatically, or is it more a global sort of best setting?
sorry for the dumb question(and the hijack ;-)
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 12:18 pm
It brings all tracks to a set RMS level. So eventually, it matches the other deck as well (as long as you didn't manually change the gain)
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 3:13 pm
PhantomDeejay wrote :
Besides the autogain setting, you miss the entire point of the gain adjustment on computer software.
You TRY to use the gain like in a hardware mixer, but this is not a correct way for software.
So, bare with me as I will try to explain a few things:

1) The gain adjustment on ANY software is not a knob/tool to make the overall sound louder.
It is a tool to make a particular song (or an area of a song) louder in order to match the volume with that of the other deck playing out live.

2) Setting the gain to be constantly on 1, 2 or 3 o clock might seem that it boosts the sound but it ruins your sound quality. And that's on ALL Dj-ing software. Traktor, Serato and VirtualDj, all have a limiter that will forbid your sound to exceed a certain level because that would produce distortion. So, when you try to force your sound to have a boost of +3db for instance, all you achieve is to hit the limiter much more frequently and ruin the dynamics of your tracks. If your overall sound output is not loud enough then you should consider to A) Upgrade your sound-card with a better one, or B) Upgrade your sound reinforcement system (speakers and amps / self-powered speakers)

3) VirtualDj has 2 settings that affect the gain knob's behavior.
A) autoGain. When auto-gain is set to yes, VirtualDj tries to match the overall RMS level of a song to a set level (more info for this later down this page). When auto-gain is disabled, then VirtualDj plays the track "as is" without doing any gain matching but this means that you either have to use other tools to edit your tracks in order to keep them in constancy reagrding their levels, or you will have to make manual adjustments for all the tracks every time you play them. Finally when auto-gain is set as "Auto+Remember" then VirtualDj uses the "auto" setting for the gain adjustment of the track UNLESS you manually adjusted the gain of it at some point. While this setting appears to be the best of both worlds it should be used with extreme caution depending on your style. Several Dj's tend to use the gain knobs as mix aiding tools, or effect / transform tools. In such a case the "remember" value can end up be anything... From a very negative value to an extreme positive value. When you load the song next time, it could be played back with almost silence or burst your years due to very big gain... Personally I recommend to use the "auto" setting for auto-gain.
B) gainSliderincludesautogain. This setting by default is enabled and I recommend you to leave it this way. What it does, is what you describe as an "error"/ unwanted behavior. When you load a track and auto-gain is enabled, then the "default" position of the gain knob will be 12 o clock. At this position the gain slider also includes any adjustments made by the auto-gain function. With this setting disabled when you work with a controller and you load tracks with different auto-gain adjustments you need to move you gain knobs on different positions every time in order to "pick up" the software knob and start controlling the sound. This means that every time you have to look at your screen to see where the "auto-gain" adjustment is. With this setting enabled, all you have to remember is that you need to bring the gain knob of your controller to 12 o clock position in order to "pick-up" the software knob and start adjusting the gain.

There's also one more setting you should be aware of:
zeroDb This is the setting that allows you to adjust the target volume of auto-gain. However there's a "catch": It's already maxed out! In other words you can use this setting to adjust the auto-gain, but only in order to make the target volume lower, not higher. Why would you do that ? Well if you use too many effects, or mix more than 2 tracks live for the most part of your gig, or you do extensive use of the sampler, or all of the above, then it's almost certain that you will hit the limiter very frequently. For this reason you can adjust auto-gain in a lower setting in order to have more HEADROOM for you mixes, effects, e.t.c.

Finally: As I said (and I will repeat it for any guy reading this) if the overall sound output of your equipment is not enough, then adjusting the software gain to permanent positive values IS NOT the solution for ANY software. The solution is to upgrade your equipment! :)



thank you for the info sir :-) gonna go look into my settings. i never use the (gain nob's) to make it louder i set my gains to where my leds dont go into the red & then use the master. but like i was saying just the saturday it started to reset to 12 0'clock all by it self then the next song will come in lower sounding...??
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 5:09 pm
music234 wrote :
Did you set gainSliderIncludesAutoGain to yes?


I just checked it & its already set to yes ?
 

Inviato Mon 30 May 16 @ 5:55 pm
my works the opposite the gain on the other deck that i want to mix in , sounds louder than the one that was playing and my settings are in auto gain ... sounds awful when you mixing my mixer is a ddj-sx2 pioneer
 

Inviato Sun 13 May 18 @ 5:19 pm
[quote=adrianezv]my works the opposite the gain on the other deck that i want to mix in , sounds louder than the one that was playing and my settings are in auto gain ... sounds awful when you mixing my mixer is a ddj-sx2 pioneer

 

Inviato Sun 13 May 18 @ 5:21 pm
[quote=adrianezv]my works the opposite the gain on the other deck that i want to mix in , sounds louder than the one that was playing and my settings are in auto gain ... sounds awful when you mixing my mixer is a ddj-sx2 pioneer

 

Inviato Sun 13 May 18 @ 5:21 pm
Some tracks may sound louder than others, even though the gain is being set automatically - but that's where your ears come in.

Before you play it to the audience, you check in your headphones to see if it sounds balanced against the playing track, and adjust as required. That's a standard DJ technique.

Auto gain is not perfect. It can't hear the music the way we do. Our ears are more sensitive to certain frequencies, and some tracks just sound louder than others because they're mixed differently, contain different sounds, or they're compressed more......etc.

Don't rely totally on the auto gain. Use your ears. Be a DJ!

 

Inviato Sun 13 May 18 @ 5:35 pm
cryptoDJControlleristMember since 2017
Aha! just what I was looking for. Problem solved, thanks!
Just my 2 cents..I need to stop the gain from resetting because I mix videos without audio. I mix only videos on 1 and 2 while mixing audio on 3 and 4. On 1 and 2, turning down the volume slider dims and fades the video to black. I need videos brightest at all times. I found that turning the gain down turns off the sound while keeping the volume slider all the way up keeps the video brightest. But when I load a new video the Gain resets and that video’s sound blasts my cue and master volumes ‘cos volume slider levels are maxed… OUCH!
 

Inviato Mon 11 Jun 18 @ 12:57 am


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