I’ve seen this discussed in the Qu forums and I’m thinking it’s true for the dLive to but just to make sure…
If I route a sinewave into a matrix at 0dB, I see 0dB on the leds above the matrix fader. Say this matrix is used for recording and is going out both analog via the mixrack and AES via the surface. On the recorders I’m seeing a level of -18dB.
Normal. Because recorders use dBFS scale, that stops at 0, but dLive and SQ are in dBu. And on these desks 0dBu happen to be at -18 dBFS. So you have 18 dB of headroom.