The TTM57 does not kill the audio signal completely when you turn the gain knob far to the left. I liked the way the gain worked with the TTM56, as some DJs prefer fading out the songs using the rotary gain knob instead of using the line faders. Plus I would prefer keeping the TTM57 as close to the TTM56 as possible (not saying to keep bugs or not to improve things, but this is definitly *not* an improvement).

As I dont see any advantage about the gain not killing the signal completely I would suggest to change the way they behave.

The way it is right now it simply makes not sense to me, as it takes away possibilities - possibility to fade out with the gain knobs. Thats an unneeded restriction.

Any thoughts+comments?

hmmm
ive never used the gain knobs as an "fader".
I was always worried that there werent enough gain headroom. on some mixers.
but i understand what you are stating.

im gonna have to agree with Nik on this one, I have used the gains in this manner before, and I think people are so used to the performace of the 56, it would be weird to change something like this on all your loyal customers, unless someone at rane can give us a great performance explaination of why the gain is structured this way!

i agree with nik, no kill is annoying.

yeah I noticed this in the manual just before I placed my order...

I used the gain sometimes to fade out a track rather than channel faders too but thought the mixer had too many good features not to buy it just because of this.

If you notice the empath mixer does not kill the volume on the gains either,not sure if its something to do with the anti-clippin feature they've added in??

Using gains to mix is just bad technique. If you turn off the gain then you turn of the headphones at the same time. You then have no true refernce to check you signal... if we are talking about an inferior mixer design then the vestax pmc 07 pro with it's channel faders that were unusable for mixing started this trend of using gains to control the mix. If you are looking for extra smoothness us your eqs. If you need to kill use the toggle.

I am killing the signal, cause I want to kill the signal. In other words, I am aware of it, and I dont need the signal in the headphones any more.

Some prefere faders, other prefer using knobs to mix, thats why there is an empath rotary for example. Not killing the signal is just an unneeded limitation with no essential benefit.

Also, killing the sound using the EQ will also kill the headphones.

There are several reasons we chose to setup the incoming gain structure this way. Remember, every design is a compromise. You can never please everyone. Here are a couple in random order:

1) These gain knobs determine the signal-to-noise ratio [e.g., THE performance] of everything, ...EVERYTHING: control signal [e.g., vinyl tracking], analog & digital audio, all recording, internal mixer effects, FlexFX send/return, headphones, all outputs. The number one cause of bad sound is poor gain structure. Get this knob set wrong and the performance of EVERYTHING suffers. Conversely, restricting this knob's range makes everyone's system perform better, in ALL ways and more importantly, ALWAYS.

Think of it this way: the TTM 57SL does almost everything digitally. One of the first things all the audio inputs see is an A/D converter. By increasing the gain range of this pot, we're essentially letting users reduce the number of bits being toggled, in a way turning the 24-bit converters into, say, 9- or 14-bit converters if this gain gets set too low.

2) Analog pots suck at accuracy, consistency and repeatability [especially at the extreme ranges]. Reduce the gain range and you greatly improve repeatability and the accuracy with which users can acheive consistent results. Conversely, use a wide gain range and severely hamper the circuit's ability to get fast, consistent results. Note that a lack of fast consistent results means EVERYTHING lacks: control signal [e.g., vinyl tracking], analog & digital audio, all recording, ... etc. I think you get the idea.


"If bad sound were fatal, AUDIO would be the leading cause of death"
- Don Davis

Peace

I personally don't like the eq's prefader, I like a post fader eq like on my 2016. I want the crowd to hear the effect of the eq's but I don't want it in my headphones. Can this be a programmed option on the 57?

Steve, the EQ's do kill the signal completely. Wouldnt the same arguments which you gave about the gain controls also apply to these controls?

I agree with Nik here...

I'm not sure I get exactly what you're implying, but YES. EQ changes alter the gain of everything that's post-EQ (albeit only in specific frequency ranges). So the same thing applies indeed.

Basically we have a philosophy here at Rane that we're very careful to keep the number of places in the signal chain where one can alter the gain to a minimum & we appropriately restrict the range of said gain controls to keep the performance optimized, while trying to provide the most flexible device for the target applications. [Boy, that sounds like a bunch of marketing mumbo-jumbo, but it's true. Luckily, we don't have a marketing department.]

Okay, either I totally misunderstood your posting or I was totally wack with describing my thoughts in my posting. Let's try again.

Your arguments why you dont want the gains to completely kill the signals were:
a. you dont want to extend the range, because that would mean you lower the resolution if you change the gain
b. you would have to completely turn the gain's analog pot faaaar to the left, meaning it operates at an extreme where it can falsly operate.

Are these points replayed correctly? If so... those same arguements would apply to the EQ pot, but with the EQ pot you decided, that they should be able to completely kill the signal.

I think the difference is that generally people will run with their EQs around centre or slightly cooked. Whereas people will have varying views on the best way to set their gains a lot of which could be completely wrong.

Well, assuming the input gain stages are analog in nature - it's quite important they are set correctly (or not used incorrectly) to feed a decent signal to the A/D converters. As the EQ is done via DSP then the same kind of arguments (e.g. S/N ratio) don't really apply.

OK, now I caught up to you. Yes, you're still right on. And we're both saying the same thing.

The difference is: with the input gain controls, restricting their range increases one's ability to quickly achieve their primary goals for touching the controls, namely: match input levels & avoid clipping. Conversely, increasing the input gain range slows one's ability to achieve these goals and has the added double-whammy of decreasing the gain-matching accuracy available to the user and decreases the performance of everything (as described above).

But forcing the same decreased range restriction on the EQs' gains would be totally unacceptable and would completely disallow achieving the goals of why the EQ controls exist, namely: full kill. And yes, poorly set EQ controls do and will decrease the performance of everything (but less so, in some ways, than an analog EQ approach vs. the DSP one in the TTM 57SL - as Deft points out).

Doing it this way decreases the potential for poor performance while still achieving all primary user goals. As I said, all designs are a compromise. You can't please everyone; if we could, we'd all be retired and independently wealthy with our Scratch LIVE's on a sunny beach somewhere (at least I would be!).

They are not analog AFAIK.

What is AFAIK?

AFAIK is a technical term that describes the digital -> analog conversion. kidding my man, it stands for "as far as i know".

lol, cool thanks

The input gains are not analog.

So how do you deal with very low or high input levels? You'll either have a bad S/N ratio or clip the A/D converter? I suppose with respect to a control signal that's not too critical (especially as you can be conservative), but what about people using the mixer as just an audio mixer not in conjunction with Serato?
I guess if you had them analog then it's just as likely to suffer from people setting them incorrectly....? Better safe than sorry.

That is terrible news IMO.

Analog or digital, it does not matter, you still need good gain structure setup. Both clip, both handle low and high levels, each has their pros and cons.

I just didn't know there was such a difference between the 56 and 57. You said "each has there pros and cons" but I wasn't thinking there would be any cons to upgrading to 57. As far as pros/cons...from my experience analog sounds better, but is more expensive, digital is cheaper, has more features, but has maybe a flatter sound.

I am not trying to talk down the 57 Steve. I feel like I'm being a bad guy here, but I'll either buy a 57 or a 56/SSL combo, so either way my money is going to Rane. But I don't have an unlimited budget, and I'm just trying to find out more about the gear, and which one is right for me. I did read all the preliminary info on the Rane site, but I didn't see a mention of the internal mixer design changing from an analog to a digital one (if that's how it is.)

For instance, my friends have A/D's that cost as much as a 57 (Apogees). Mine isn't that expensive, but still, isn't a fair concern that the 57 A/D may not be as good as others? or rather, that you can't use the mixer as full analog?...I hear you screaming at me already...I'm sorry. My fear of digital comes from 20 years of music retailing which said 'this digital thing' is a 'studio in a box' and stuff like that.

Since we already know the pros of the 57 vs.56/SSL combo, maybe you/someone/anyone can list some of the CONS so that we may better understand this thing?

Thanks for your patience with me.

jizzer, the whole 57 is digital, if you download the manual you can see the basic block diagram all signals are digitised and then handed off to the DSP. To me it sounds amazing, both with analogue and digital sources.

Thanks nobspangle, I downloaded the manual and that block diagram did explain a lot.

Well, I thought one of the main possible advantages with a digital mixer is.. that you can please everyone. Just make it optional! Whoever wants to stick with your philosophy and views of limiting the gain knobs should leave it as the default setting, whoever wants to have the same behaviour as the TTM56 being able to kill the signal with the gains should be able to choose this from the software.
You are pleased. "Your" camp is pleased.
I am pleased. "My" camp is pleased.
Everyone is pleased.

:-)

for me... not killing feels wack, sorry.

(unfortunatelly i dont own a 57 though... :( )

I love you Rane guys for changing this! :)

Thanks a lot.

Now please lets eliminate the auto-limiting...

BTW, for those who dont know, this has been fixed with 1.6.2 Public Beta and the mixer firmware revision v1.10 .

Any other good tidbits I should know about in mixer firmware revision v1.10?