XLR to Unbalanced RCA to Phoenix

[rplace]

1 hour ago, Coytee said:

 

If my outputs were lit like yours, you probably couldn't be in same room.

 

 

 

I took that picture during a pretty quiet listening session. My wife was still sleeping. She got up and thought I had gone for a bike ride not even realizing I was listening to music.

 

Puzzling to me but I'm still very new to all this.

[rplace]

6 minutes ago, babadono said:

Never seen that on my unit so far. I would think first of all that you should set it up so any unused outputs are muted. Inputs too. What are the meters in XConsole showing when the front panel meters are showing this? Oh and yes I agree with Coytee if I could get my unit to output like that the Jubes would blow you out of the room

 

Originally I had all unused ins/outs muted. I got a file from @Chris A and for now don't want to change anything while i'm giving him updated readings.

 

I'll have to check xconsole next time.

 

3.5 watt amps, it can get loud, too loud for comfort. 

[babadono]

Let's figure this out.

A couple clichés come to mind:   'Sum ting wong'  and

  'the answers are out there'.

But like I said in a previous post have no fear.

 

Edit--- man its Saturday, I've got chores to do. I'll try to check in later.

[Chris A]

By all means, you need to get the gain-staging right on your preamp, Xilica and amplifiers first.  That could affect the EQing, etc., I've found. The stuff we're doing can wait until you get that under control.

[rplace]

8 minutes ago, Chris A said:

By all means, you need to get the gain-staging right on your preamp, Xilica and amplifiers first.  That could affect the EQing, etc., I've found. The stuff we're doing can wait until you get that under control.

 

Any suggestions on how to go about this? What is gain-staging?

 

For gain I am running -6 on the HF and +2 on the LF for no other reason than when I  first played them the HF was overpowering. Guessing the difference in efficiency but not sure. Do I need to start here?

 

It actually sounds pretty darn good. Maybe it is just the high level of detail I am hearing from the large drivers or the fact they are so different from my khorns. Imaging is over the top. 

[Chris A]

You can start by turning up the gain on your amplifiers to at least 2/3s of full scale (if they have gain controls).  In your case, it might be better if you turn them up all the way--at least at the beginning of the exercise of setting the Xilica and preamp gains. 

 

If you don't have gain controls on all your amplifiers, then that's something that should be conveyed back to this thread, too.

 

Chris

[Coytee]

I'll probably butcher this...  but what the heck, I've displayed my ignorance many times before....every now & then I get lucky and say something that is at least 'in the right direction'.

 

If you lowered all your output channels (by the same amount for each channel), that would then require you have more INPUT power, to achieve the same volume at the speaker.  Think of a teeter-totter, you are currently maxing (I'm guessing) your output channels and your inputs are loafing along).  You want to flip the teeter-totter.

 

So I'd personally, try to lower all the gains on each output channel which will force more input power.  That will push you towards maximizing your S/N ratio on the input side.

 

I have no clue how to do this on the Xilica, either on the front panel, or the software.  

Does your amp have a variable gain knob?  If so, what I did was work backwards.

 

If memory serves me, I turned everything to zero volume (preamp, power amps...I think the Dx38 was untouched)

 

Turned my power amps on and turned the gains on them up, up up... until I heard some hiss.  Once I knew where that was on the dial, I pulled them back so it was quiet as a tomb.  Went up the food chain and put some music on.  Turned the volume knob on my preamp to 100% BUT BUT BUT, had the gain controls on the preamp at zero.  Rotated the gain knobs so I'd hit a volume that was pleasant to listen to....perhaps even a bit loud and was "done"

 

I used that for general every day listening.  If I wanted to step on the throttle a bit, then I could either push the gains up on the preamp or, push the gains up on the power amps.

 

I learned that my Peach had low hiss at low gain and low hiss at high gain.  It maximized the hiss right at 12:00...right smack dab in the middle.  (this was verified by Deneen as a reality of the circuit design).

 

So I switched things up a bit and maxed the gains on the Peach, keeping the Crown's dialed back.  Zero hiss at zero volume.  No discernible hiss anywhere.  But, I only had "pleasant" listening volumes.  Nothing to crank with.  NO problem.  If / when I want to crank things up, I just go to each amp and wick it up a couple clicks until I'm happy or stupid.

 

Bottom line, I think you have a gain matching issue.  I also think once you get it properly smoothed out, you'll like your sound even more.

[Coytee]

I'll tell ya....  you can tell Chris is an engineer....and I'm a broker.

 

I use 54 words to his every 1

 

[rplace]

1 hour ago, Chris A said:

If you don't have gain controls on all your amplifiers, then that's something that should be conveyed back to this thread, too.

 

LF amp is a crown with gain control.  It currently is at 14 out of 20 clicks on the knobs or about 70% or about 2 o'clock 

 

The HF amps are 3.5 watt SET monoblocks with no gain control 

 

Preamp has volume and balance, no right/left  gains 

[Chris A]

I'd crank the gains on the bass bin amplifiers:  channels 1 and 2. Then rebalance the channel gains within the Xilica to get about the same output from your HF drivers as the bass bins.

[rplace]

21 hours ago, Chris A said:

I'd crank the gains on the bass bin amplifiers:  channels 1 and 2. Then rebalance the channel gains within the Xilica to get about the same output from your HF drivers as the bass bins.

 

Done. I turned the Crown for the bass bins up then uses an SPL meter to get both the highs and lows to 75dB with Pink Noise. This completely changed the Gains I had set up on the Xilica. Originally I had the LFs at +2 and the HFs at -6. Now, with the SPL measurements they landed at -12 for the LF and zero for the HF. Next I listened to a few well know albums and adjusted by ear till I felt they blended correctly. This kept the HF at zero and brought up the LF to -10.5. By the end of an hour or so of listening to Jazz/Rock/Female vocals I settled on HF at zero and LF at -11.0. This will be where I make my next measurements unless some of  you think I should do something differently.

 

23 hours ago, Coytee said:

Turned my power amps on and turned the gains on them up, up up... until I heard some hiss.  Once I knew where that was on the dial, I pulled them back so it was quiet as a tomb.  Went up the food chain and put some music on.  Turned the volume knob on my preamp to 100% BUT BUT BUT, had the gain controls on the preamp at zero.  Rotated the gain knobs so I'd hit a volume that was pleasant to listen to....perhaps even a bit loud and was "done"

 

This was kind of my approach today when setting the Gain on the Crown all the way up based on Chris' suggestion. I had a BBX in the past and Mark suggested a similar set up to get the Gain knobs set and forget then you had plenty of room on the volume knob to go above typical listening. So I currently have the preamps volume at around 10 o'clock and the Xilica's gains a noted above. It is at a good every day listen volume for my room/ears. I've got plenty of room left on the dial to crank if need be.

 

 

On ‎8‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 11:31 AM, Coytee said:

I'm guessing they're mapped to the inputs.  If you remapped them to inputs 3,4 then they might go dim.

 

(just a stab at an answer)

 

I think you are right. See screen capture below. Mixer column shows 5-8 out all mapped to input 1 and the gains up even though I've muted them (in red below sliders) you can see on the meters to the left they are showing a lot more lights lit up beyond channel 1/2/3/4 (4 hidden by my screen markup). So I moved sliders 5-8 down to zero and no lights on physical front panel of Xilica or in the software application.

 

 

[rplace]

On ‎8‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 12:36 PM, babadono said:

 What are the meters in XConsole showing when the front panel meters are showing this?

 

Please see previous post for the complete details. This morning I started to adjust gains and balance HF/LF accordingly. I'm probably way overthinking this but trying to be through and learn a thing or two along the way. Once again I greatly appreciate EVERYONE's help!

 

First screen capture is of some Xconsole items pretty much as it was yesterday when I noticed the maxed lights on the physical 8080 unit. The only difference would be I've adjusted the Gain on my LF amp per Chris's suggestions and rebalanced as noted above. This was taken in the middle of the song, not quiet not loud. Nothing in the inputs side lit up and outputs 1-4 nothing or minimal. Outs 5-8 are +6 and the picture below of the Xilica shows meters 5-8 maxed out.

 

 

 

 

Second Screen capture. Here I've set the sliders for 5-8 to zero as well as kept them muted. This is the beginning of a song that is kind of quiet. The way I interpret it is that the inputs are providing something but not even close to yellow/red and the outputs similar. While I can't grab a screen capture and snap a pictures of the physical meters at the same time, the picture below this screen capture is pretty close to the same part of the song. So next below are Xilica software and Xilica physical at close to the same passage.

 

 

 

Third Screen Capture. The two below are screen shot of Xconsole and photo of unit about the same time mid song when it is in full force. I see about the same on the input side as above in 2nd shot and activity now on HF and LF where above on the second screen capture there was no LF activity registering. NOTE my LF is out 1 and 2 HF is 3 and 4.

 

[babadono]

Anything going on with the pegged meters? Sorry for my absence, I got invited to a concert last night and therefore did not get all my chores done yesterday. So I will be spotty again today.

 

Edit-----Did not see your above post or we were posting at the same time.

[rplace]

18 minutes ago, babadono said:

Anything going on with the pegged meters? Sorry for my absence, I got invited to a concert last night and therefore did not get all my chores done yesterday. So I will be spotty again today.

 

Beyond the two posts above? I'm not sure what else to provide. But give me some steps like "Do steps X, Y and Z and take pictures a, b and c and I'll try my best.

 

EDIT - Okay I was starting to doubt my approach.

[babadono]

Hmmm... I still don't see any signal on the output meters in XConsole. But I do see activity on the gain reduction meters. Do you have limiters or compressors set up?

[rplace]

16 minutes ago, babadono said:

Hmmm... I still don't see any signal on the output meters in XConsole. But I do see activity on the gain reduction meters. Do you have limiters or compressors set up?

 

Isn't that what this is?

 

 

 

 

[babadono]

I don't believe so. I think those are the gain reduction meters, showing the activity of the compressors/limiters. You have me at loss here because my mixer that runs my set up malfunctioned and has been sent back to the manufacturer. I currently have no way to feed a signal into my Xilica. Can anybody else verify what the meters on the right of display are?

[rplace]

9 hours ago, babadono said:

I don't believe so. I think those are the gain reduction meters, showing the activity of the compressors/limiters. You have me at loss here because my mixer that runs my set up malfunctioned and has been sent back to the manufacturer. I currently have no way to feed a signal into my Xilica. Can anybody else verify what the meters on the right of display are?

 

You are correct. Guess it helps to read. The title in that window does in fact say compression. I just assumed (incorrectly) that "meters" with an in and out were showing the interaction between the raw input on the left and the resultant output on the right after filtering/PEQs/etc.

 

At any rate, setting the mixer to zero for channels 5-8 makes the meters on the physical box not go into the red for those channels. With the gain changes I mentioned in previous posts; the LEDs on the 8080 will have 1 or 2 green lit up for the HF and once in a while 3. The LF typically has zero and occasionally 1. Nothing ever seems to happen on the input side. Better? If I turn up the volume fairly loud I can get the inputs to show some movement on the window on the right. See below circled in blue.

 

Are the gain controls linear? Or I guess a better question to ask is....If I keep the differences between the HF and LF the same can I move them up and down collectively without impacting anything else? To make the example easy lets say I have HF at zero and LF at -10. Can I drop the HF to -10 and the LF -20 then use more input from my preamp and everything else would be the same except for the amount I'd need to turn my preamp knob to achieve a given level?

 

[babadono]

Gain controls are logarithmic. By definition dBs are logarithmic. The good news is so is our hearing. So yes if you lower both LF and HF gain by another 10db they should track. But I'm still curious about the gain reduction going on in channels 3 and 4. I think I will have to get something up and running while the mixer is gone so I can check my Xilica unit out. I never noticed the gain reduction meters doing anything but maybe I was just not paying close enough attention. Anybody else got gain reduction going on?

[Marvel]

Does anyone else here use compression on the audio system? I used it for my TV because I didn't like dealing with the dynamic range of dialogue to music to background levels (until my compressor acted up and I took it out to have it fixed). I especially used it when the wife has folks over for karaoke... 🙄 Music goes though a different system...

 

Bruce