[GotNoRice]

I was talking to a friend and we were talking about how we had our cards hooked up to our headphone amps / stereo receivers. He was saying that it is best to have the volume at 80%. On cards I’ve had like the Chaintech AV-710 I’ve always just left it at 100%. The EMU volume control works kinda differently it is set at “0.0” and I can ether enter a positive or negative number to change that. He said that was bad and said it sounded better set at -3 or -5. I didn’t really notice a difference other than I had to turn my amp up louder to compensate.

What do you guys think?

 

[Gabe Logan]

I have mine left at -5 and use my amp to put the rest of the volume.

I say that because if you put it up too high i feel too much distortion enters as i leared one day when i though for a second my cans were toast.

 

[RedLeader]

Not sure about the EMU, but most audio devices have a "sweet spot" in their range where everything just seems to click. A debated phenom to be sure, but having worked in recording it seems to hold truth, at least for older analog devices. This thought about 80% is probably because that's about the range this sweet spot seems to be in the majority of the time. And I agree that maxing out your gear isnt a good idea, thats how you get distortion, forget any amorphous spots.

 

[Kram Sacul]

Patchmix is supposed to be set at 0.0 as with wave and asio. Any more and you'll get harmful clipping. Any less and you get... less.

 

[Asmo]

The creative soundblaster/audigy line were better set at 80%, but the E-MU cards are best set at full (0.0).

You can attenuate the signal in other places, you can add a trim pot, or a volume DSP in your player to turn it down a few DB. You can decide which sounds best, its not a huge deal. Just dont' turn it above 0.0 like above posted.

 

[Kassem]

How do you go above 0.0? That setting on my PatchMix DSP is full volume.

 

[saturnine]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kassem How do you go above 0.0? That setting on my PatchMix DSP is full volume.

Check out the number under the volume slider in Patchmix. The bar meter thingy should hover a little under 10 on the main/mix.

 

[Jahn]

mine's on WAV bypass - i have no vol control from the computer (which imho is a good thing) - i use the amp to change volume. of course i could always reduce source vol via the players like itunes or BSplayer, but for the most part they seem fine maxxed, and bypass on the patchmix gives me one less thing to worry about - everything on my patchmix is bypassed as much as possible - any eq strips, balance, SFX, etc.

 

[Metaphysical]

is this the case with all soundcards? i thought people were saying with the av710 that to have the windows volume all the way up yielded the best sound.

 

[Mercuttio]

Hmm, how do you set up an EMU 0404 card for Wav bypass?

 

[Sabbe]

How does the windows wave volume slider come in to this equation? I've used my 0404 with 0.0 volume in patchmix, but the windows wave slider is at 50% default, but I always move that one to maximum 100%, so my actual settings are patchmix 0.0, windows main 100% and windows wave 100%.

Is that correct or should I leave the wave slider at 50% default? I haven't noticed any clipping however.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn i have no vol control from the computer (which imho is a good thing) - i use the amp to change volume.

Same here.

The Windows volume slider doesn't work...no volume control in Foobar activated.

 

[NeilPeart]

Perhaps this only applies to E-MU 1212M owners (I think it applies to all E-MU users, however) but it seems there are 2 volume adjustments possible, and both affect my usage, even outputting via ASIO:

Both of these are set at 0.0 dB but perhaps this is not the most optimal (I use a -4.0 dB in the foobar volume adjustment, but I may be migrating to ReplayGain). Any thoughts?

 

[Chri5peed]

Stupid Dream & Ghost Reveries equate to almost portable sex!

A Replaygain query. I see in Foobar it has an option to check individual tracks/albums, giving them replaygain data I guess?

If you leave then unscanned, how does it work? Do played tracks automatically get data?

 

[star882]

For a digital connection, *always* set the volume to 100% before the DAC and use a volume control after the DAC to adjust the volume.
For analog, it's a little tricky to find the balance. Too low and the SNR will suffer, but too high and it clips. Properly designed, however, it should be possible to set it to max without clipping. Just try. If you get clipping, decrease it a little until the clipping disappears.