So I recently sold all my mobile equipment. I kept my Technics 1200's and ready to purchase a Rane MP2015. Just wondering if anyone knew where I could get the best deal? I have a few hook ups but just asking around for a better deal.
Thanks in advance.
So i recently saw a lot of guys using the mp2015 with the level meters peaking all the time. and just now i found this video by rane.
can anyone explain? why should i play with the levels this high? and if so, why doesn't rane just label the scale differently? (hope you know what i mean)
i thought it's normal to play around 0dB in the green area?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZhBXyt5iKQ
You're right, he's wrong. Some mixers do have quite a lot of headroom eg the Allen & Heath xone 62, and I believe the Rane is a 32 bit digital mixer so it has a lot of headrooom too.. However the designers of the mixer chose the nominal (0 dB) level for a reason.. and the S/N as well as headroom will be both be in a good place at 0dB. On a quality mixer that does have a good amount of headroom, it's OK to peak above 0, even well above zero. But there's absolutely no reason or need to push it to the top as he does in that video. Distortion is a much bigger concern than noise in DJ applications.
Last edited by light-o-matic; 08-09-2017 at 07:49 PM.
ok, thank you for that answerOriginally Posted by light-o-matic
but i still don't get why the official rane channel is spreading this wrong information when one of the first things you learn when starting Djing, is to keep an eye on your channel levels... if it really is necessary to play the MP2015 at these high volumes due to some S/N reasons, why didn't they just label the level meters differently (e.g. put the 0dB mark where the +6dB would be)?!
seams weird to me
there is another video for the sixty-two or something like that where he also explains the gain structure in that way.
at least it might explain why most of the 2015 users max out the gains
Yea, well.. here's a theory: The designers of the mixer set 0 dB on the meter deliberately low, knowing that stupid DJs are going to redline it. In that case, when you are running the mixer at 0, you have got more headroom than you need and could improve your S/N by pushing it higher. Of course, with a bit depth of 32, you have a dynamic range of 192 dB, so it's hardly necessary to overworry about squeezing that extra +9 out of it.
I am sure that if you hooked an oscilloscope up, or a distortion analyzer, you'd find that the mixer DOES have tons of headroom and you probably CAN push the meters all the way to the top without distortion.. but the point of headroom is that you get a nice clean signal even when you have above average peaks. You have already got plenty of S/N, distortion is the concern more than noise.. so I wouldn't say don't go over zero.. I wouldn't worry about pushing it a bit.. but to push it to the very top in an effort to maximize S/N makes no sense.
Then there is the matter of input gains. When you set the input gain on the channel.. that is only the level coming into the first stage of the channel.. then you've got to go through the EQs, the channel faders, the mix bus.. If you max out the level coming in, maybe it's fine with the eq's at flat and the channel level at unity, and only one channel turned up. But what about when you've got boost on some EQ's, channels above unity, and 3-4 channels going? You are then pushing levels higher. So it's not sensible to bring it into the channel as hot as possible, you want to have some room there.
Last edited by light-o-matic; 08-10-2017 at 06:31 PM.
The Rane MP2015 is 32 bit floating point prior to the output stages. So even if you are in the red on the channel, it's not going to distort the DSP section. The outputs are a different story, though, including headphone DAC, DAC for the booth, and master. The master meters, by the way, are not affected by the master volume control, which supposedly has its unity at 7 on the dial. Session digital output unity is max. The red OL LED is literally the 0dB full scale point for the portions of the unit that must work in fixed point, i.e. the DACs and sample rate converter to the SPDIF out... that includes the headphone DAC being fed the cue. So stay out of the OL, anyway. Being just barely out of the OL (fully lighting the top yellow continuously but no red) slightly maximizes the total dynamic range of the analog outs for when you are running measurements (the ones Rane advertises) and gives you a louder headphone jack for those crazy stick headphone house DJs that are blasting super loud over the sound system with no real headphone isolation. And they're probably pretty deaf after so many years of doing that. The headphone jack is very very loud anyway you use it, in my opinion.
I recommend actually running the unit only up to the +7 LED, because there's like 8 to 10dB of headroom from the +10dB to the OL LED, making it pretty useless for eyeing levels for quick cueing of similar crest-factor and RMS musical content. What you should be doing, which is what I was trained in a studio environment for mixing program material from multiple channel strip sources, was to run the mixed program music with the meters bouncing AROUND the 0dBVu point. You're trying to get average volumes consistent from song to song, not setting calibrated instrument peaks for the channel strip (which lower) or doing an audio analyzer for a review or stated specs (which is higher). For normal studio content with pretty common RMS, that will put you bouncing somewhere from -5 to +5 on the dB volt unit scale, plus or minus an LED depending on if it's super dynamic or super compressed Loudness Wars stuff. Save that +10 LED on the Rane for your emergency headroom when you're routing for effects, using the filters, or you do something stupid.
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