PSA: Please put volume blocks in your presets!

Poparad

Power User
I'm getting pretty sick of loading a patch and having the unpleasant surprise of finding the levels on everything cranked (especially when using headphones). Having a volume block in the chain attached to an expression pedal, External 1 for example, would be very polite. :)
 
or level all scenes to the "line" in the output block and then, reduce the output block by 6 db as a standard.

I'm always surprised by this as well - many patches I try are way too hot and either clipping my interface or in danger of.
 
I agree with you in concept...

... but what if a person just doesn't use Volume blocks? Maybe they have one Exp pedal and use it for wah - or they don't use a pedal at all. Or what if their workflow always attaches it to External 2? It would only work if every user agreed to always use them, and use the same setup. You could just as easily ask "please don't crank the living sh!+ out of your presets" but that probably won't happen either.

I've run into it too, so what I do is turn down my own volume when I load a patch, or go in and turn something down first. Something I can control instead of hoping others will... ;)
 
I come from a "recording engineer trained in the '90s" background - i.e., I am pretty careful about leaving a bit of headroom to avoid digital clipping. Digital clipping is the aural equivalent of chewing on tinfoil. The old ADATs had virtually 0 headroom. 0dB was it. +1? Here's your chewing hum - tinfoil flavor....
 
Being surprised about the loudness of a preset does not bother me so much - it's just that if I try a preset from wherever (even some profrssionally done ones) and it's way too hot right off the bat, then I usually lose interest in exploring the preset (or others from the same author) any further. I find levelling out presets properly (consistent + with headroom accross ALL scenes, fx combinations, and expected playing intensites) to be kind of a drudgery that takes me a lot of time to do on my own presets so I'm not too interested in doing it on others' presets, and especially not if I'm going to be paying for some.
 
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