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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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?