How about an Auto-Pad feature, turning on the pad on the preamp at an appropriate gain level? Several times when using the encoders above the faders for setting gain I wished for something like that. At the moment it is turn turn turn, noticing you can’t get high/low enough gain without toggling pad, now having to select the channel and turn on/off pad, possibly doing the same for the next channel, cause it’s ganged (which also begs the question why there is no option to gang the preamps as well as Qu and so on can do). Or if you don’t like fully automatic swithching, how about having the gain to brickwall when hitting lowest without pad or highest with pad, but a short pause followed by another turn in that direction will turn on/off the pad?
to be honest, i’ve never had any problems with switching the pad in the last 32 years since i’ve been using mixing consoles. and since you can display the gain numerically in the digital consoles, it’s become even easier.
of course, the thing you mentioned could be implemented. but in my opinion many other suggestions are more important.
I like this idea, sure it’s easy to know what the gain is set to and that you need to toggle the pad, but you still have to select the channel and go to the preamp tab to do anything about it. I can’t see any reason the preamp knobs shouldn’t function as a continuous -15 to +60.
One exception to this is with a particular model of DI box that clips only 1dB later than the preamp without the pad in. With that DI, if it looks like you need the pad on the preamp you should actually pad the DI instead, so it’s nice to have an obvious indication that you’ve reached that point. Of course you could solve this by writing down the gain setting (between -15 and +60) where the DI needs padded.
Chris
To be honest, the PAD is for me, who was growing up with digital consoles without it, not really comfortable. When the gain structure is not really well maintainable (unknown band or other circumstances) makes it hard for me to anticipate for each signal should I use the pad or not. Most difficult is for me the pad of the SQ which produces ~3 seconds silence when pressing the pad. I know that the pad is required due the hardware design of the analog inputs.
Nevertheless an auto pad is only acceptable if there is no mute when the pad is toggled.
Wolfgang, it is in this case really only about the comfort not having to select the channel first, when you use the channel encoders for setting the gain. If you see you need the pad, you have to select the channel and push the pad button. This could be circumvented.
Hello, Jens,
if you adjust the Gains directly via the encoders, this can be a bit awkward. I can understand that.
I don’t work like that, so I don’t notice it.