Where are you setting your input level?

S

squealie

Experienced
So, I noticed I was clipping the crap out of the input...

With a passive Duncan Custom 5... surprising. I had to back it off to ~18% to get it to 'tickle the red'

I'm realizing that I've probably been hosing myself since I got the thing. Total slap the forehead.

Is everyone changing this every time they change guitars?
 
mr_fender said:
15% for my Duncan JB. If in doubt, record a DI track via USB and zoom in on the waveform and look for clipped peaks. "Tickle the red" is a bit vague. Inspecting the DI waveform is much more precise.
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Recording a 'bypass' preset and looking at the waveform was how I clued into this. All of a sudden the factory presets sound like they make sense.

I am supremely dumb. I think FAS should make a sticky about TURN DOWN THE INPUT LEVEL DUMMY for those of us that are impaired.
 
mr_fender said:
15% for my Duncan JB. If in doubt, record a DI track via USB and zoom in on the waveform and look for clipped peaks. "Tickle the red" is a bit vague. Inspecting the DI waveform is much more precise.
Click to expand...
How does that work since the input level only affects the initial A/D converter?
 
DI = Direct Injection. It's a recording directly from the input with no processing at all. Record a signal from USB Inputs 5 and/or 6 to capture the signal directly from the Instrument input jack (Input 1).
 
My loudest signal will tickle Yellow/Orange on the front panel. If there's red, that's too much for me. I don't want any clipping. Plus a low signal can be adjusted/boosted in the preset. But once you've clipped it there's not much you can do to reverse it. I don't mean to say that the unit can't 'handle' a hot input. It can, it just clips/distorts. There's some great stuff on unity gain in the forum searches. I think @Moke advice is spot on.
 
Ideally, you want the sensitivity set as high as possible to maximize the conversion bit depth utilized and to keep a good signal to noise ratio. That said, the Axe's input is very low noise, so you likely won't notice much of a difference if any as long as you are not clipping. Like Bman said, I would err on the side of too low of a setting than to high. In other words, not hitting the red LEDs is most likely better than hitting them too much.

Pickup output is just one factor. There's also string gauge, pickup height, pick choice, and player technique. Some folks just barely tickle the strings while others beat the hell out of them. Those with a light touch can typically keep their Input Sensitivity set higher as their overall output will be less dynamic.
 
When I first got the axe, I was frustrated because my cleans were not clean, even though I wasn't necessarily clipping. My main guitar is an LP traditional with tradbuckers, not super hot. Anyway, here is where I ended up. My goto clean amp is the carol ann triptik clean. no issues to report

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So, I tried this and can only say wow. Almost all factory presets are usable with no tweaks. Before, many of these were muddy and way to thick sounding. I had followed the advice of "tickle the red" on the input LEDs and had mine set at 55%. I recorded an input tone into Reaper and looked closely at the waveforms and saw some clipping. Worked on this a bit and ended up with the input level at 30%. No clipping here.

Wow - this changes things for the better. Many thanks to the advice here.
 
Here‘s what I was thinking: Assuming that there‘s 6dB of headroom between the end of the range of the yellow LED and the onset of the soft clipper (at least that‘s what‘s stated in the Wiki), and 6dB is equivalent to doubling the volume of an audio signal… wouldn‘t it be optimal to choose the highest possible input sensitivity at which the red LED does not light up yet and then doubling that value? In that case the headroom should be fully utilized without clipping the signal. This should at least work if the percentage value corresponds to the volume of the audio signal.

Let‘s say, the highest possible setting at which the red LED does not light up at all is 7.75%, doubling that to 15.5% should fully utilize the headroom without clipping.

Please correct me if I‘m wrong.

Edit: It seems that input sensitivity is a term that usually correlates to voltage. So assuming that doubling the percentage means doubling the volume is probably completely wrong. TBH I think it would be so much more intuitive if the red LED would actually show the onset of the clipper.
 
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Hm, perhaps I wasn't even that wrong about this. I just tested it on my FM9. With an EMG 85 in the bridge I had to lower the input sensitivity to exactly 3.1% to never tackle the red LED (yep, that's a hot pickup), even when strumming as hard as I can. I then doubled the setting to 6.2% and looked at the input level meter on the display of the FM9 (Home => Meters). Seems to be perfect! The signal only gets up to the ceiling of the meter when strumming very, very hard. Before that I had set the sensitivity to 20% and I can now hear very clearly that it was too much and actually compressed the signal quite a bit.
 
I play Solar guitars and my sensitivity is very low like 5% or something and I still clip the red. It has direct mount pickups and I use very heavy strings for low tunings.
 
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