my ears can't tell the difference, but...

Sometimes when cutting the lows, the meter level goes up one notch. Bringing it back in brings the meter level back down.
So my question is, when you cut using the low EQ does it boost the mids/highs slightly?

No, and it shouldn't "boost" the meter. If anything, the levels will dip to reflect the EQ parameters.

Seems to me that some 800's have a weird little issue where the center detent on the EQ's is not quite at center; so turning it to the left which would normally cut it first boosts it, then cuts it as it goes further. But I could be wrong.

-r-

No thats not it, the next meter notch will stay lit till you bring back in the bass.

Try it out. It seems to happen on most of my tracks. put your EQ's at unity, adjust the trim so the signal lights up +7, turn it back slightly so that it doesn't light up. Drop the bass, and 7 should light up again.

I bet it's just the meter misinterpreting the signal

O_o

Jebus man, +7??? TURN IT DOWN!!!

NOT good to run your levels that hot (for MANY reasons, not the least of which being the risk of clipping which destroys speakers faster than you can say boom), and you shouldn't need to. 0 is best, learn to love it.

That said, does it happen at 0 or only up at 7?

-r-

There is NO good reason for operating above 0dB.

Maby thats why he can't tell the difference
The ears are gone.

Yes it happens at any of the level changes. 0-1, 7-10 whatever.

This maybe a rookie question, but why is 7 too much for the individual channels? is unity for the trim pot less than straight up? I just assumed unity was straight up. I can understand why I wouldn't want my master out above 0, but if my tracks are at unity or less and not clipping, why should i turn them down?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mik,

Unity is not necessarily straight up on the trims. If there's no center detent, it's probably not unity.

The reason is simply because every track you play is likely to be different, so "unity" changes on a per-track basis.

As for why 7 is too much, there's a few reasons:

1) It IS possible to blow a channel by feeding it too much signal. It's rare, but it can happen. The less into the red you go, the less there's a possibility of this happening.

2) Any time you go above 0dB on ANY mixer at ANY point (from input to trim to EQ to channel fader to master EQ to EFX to output) you're adding gain to the signal that wasn't there in the original track. This may or may not be bad; in the case of a Pioneer mixer, it's probably not, since the amplifier circuitry present in the mixer (there has to be some kind of amp to go above 0dB) is pretty good and doesn't color the sound much. As well, with Pioneer mixers, there's so much headroom that you're not likely to clip the channel. It MIGHT be bad because even though it's Pioneer, clipping is still possible. And the more you reduce the headroom (each time you go above 0dB you reduce the headroom by that much; so if you go to +7, you've lost 7dB of headroom that you might need somewhere down the line for other processing, whether or not that's in your mixer), the greater the chance for clipping.

Ideally, you should set up your system so that you never go above 0dB anywhere. But, should the need arise for that extra little bit of volume, you know you've got it there without any problem whatsoever, and you can push it a few LED's into the red. Some would disagree with me here, but the reality of ANY show (club or mobile or otherwise) is that sometimes you just need to CRANK it

-r-

There are many reasons why the zero is zero and not the +7. A little search and read about audio signal will teach you much.

Just tried this on my 800, set the channel meter to 0db.. start to kill the low every so slowly and around the 11oclock mark the meter jumps up one bar. Crazy!! keep cutting the low then it starts to fall.. why is it boosting when i start to cut the low?

Keep in mind that it might not be. The only way to tell for sure would be to hook up a spectrum analyzer on the OUTPUT of the mixer and see if the VU meters are telling the whole truth.

-r-

Exactly - as Ryan says, the VU meter isn't an entirely accurate representation of the actual audio signal, it's designed strictly for giving you an averaging of signal level across the spectrum so you can match levels for mixing.

it does the same on every 800 ive used tbh (quite a few )
Have thought about actually analysing the different signals on the studio machine many times to see if it really is boosting the overall level as it doesnt sound like it to me but I've never got round to it

Hi guys, I have tried some basic test using 2 units(1 at work & 1 at home)of DJM800, running through an old Klark Teknik DN60 spectrum analyzer w/ its built in pink noise level, I tried cutting the Low eq slowly and the VU drops slowly even on 0 or +7 settings, and I see no visual boosting on the VU as stated earlier, I think it depends on the type of music, maybe the VU meter are still reading the Mid band part of the music even if you turn down the Low eq...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sl1200ltd,

Translation for those who don't understand geek:

While the VU meter may go up, the audio doesn't.