Playing live. Low volume problem.

Fatjac

Inspired
Hi All,

I've been asking a fair questions lately & really appreciate the responses. I bought the AF3 & FC12 recently so it's been a huge learning curve thus far. I've been trying to set it up & tweak it for playing live with the band. Anyway yesterday I was forced into taking it to rehearsal before I really have it set as I want because my valve amp went up in smoke!

I was fairly happy with the sounds, they need tweaking some more, but the lack of volume surprised me. I can only use my JVM on about a quarter to a third volume but I needed the Axe set up at full everything! Now yes I know that solid state watt for watt just aren't going to give the same but even so. I am sure that I am doing something wrong hence the post.

So the set up was: AF3 running into an SLA-2 with two Orange PPC12OB (Orange 2x12 open back with Vintage 30's 16ohm) in stereo. The output of the Axe was at full as was the SLA! It was barely loud enough to keep up with the drums & bass.

Looking this morning I see that most of my settings have the Amp block output level at about -40db. This is because I am getting a clipping associated with the meters probably 6db in the red. The only way to tame it seemed to be to reduce the output level of the amp block. I expect that this is where my problems are rooted so how should I go about resolving this? One thing that springs to mind is should I have the Axe output at +4db & if so is that ok to run into the SLA?

Any help appreciated as usual.
 
Last edited:
To set the levels of your presets, by adjusting Amp Level, go to Layout and press Zoom. The meter at the top is what you need.

Make sure that Gain in the Global EQ is set to default.

Go to Layout > Meters, watch the meters of each block (bottom ones are Output) and verify that you're not losing signal level anywhere in the chain.

To get the highest level out of your III, set Nominal Level to +4 in the I/O menu.
 
The SLA does 100 watts at 8 ohms, so it’s probably only doing 50 watts at 16 ohms. That’s not loud at all.
Thanks Chris. I may be wrong but I think that it's 200W @ 8 ohms. So 100W @ 16 ohms. I'll check the spec sheet.
 
The SLA does 100 watts at 8 ohms, so it’s probably only doing 50 watts at 16 ohms. That’s not loud at all.


Makes a bit bigger what the efficiency of the speakers are more than anything doesn’t it ? A really efficient speaker at 50 watts will be louder than a speaker that is really hard to drive at 100 watts
 
It seems apparent that your gain staging is Way off. Please post a preset that is representative of the problem you have .
..no way should amp level be at -40 in most scenarios.

Here is one of the presets. Don't laugh! It's a work in progress...it does show that the Amp block output is at about -30db. I can't increase it because the meters go way into the red & it sounds awful.
 

Attachments

  • Gary Kitchen Sink.syx
    48.2 KB · Views: 7
IMO, you are using way too much Master Volume on the Friedmans and Marshalls, and not enough Level, also, importantly, you have not properly set Bypass Mode to Mute on the amp blocks that are not being used in each scene which causes unwanted bleedthrough. perhaps start retweaking there
 
IMO, you are using way too much Master Volume on the Friedmans and Marshalls, and not enough Level, also, importantly, you have not properly set Bypass Mode to Mute on the amp blocks that are not being used in each scene which causes unwanted bleedthrough. perhaps start retweaking there

Thanks. I'll give that a try.
 
I had a quick tweak but ran out of time....anyhooo...my 2cents :)
 

Attachments

  • Gary Kitchen Sink.syx
    48.2 KB · Views: 3
I also think it's not RMS power so to get any volume out of that thing you would need to bridge it and blast it.
 
Back
Top Bottom