Volume - how to increase it?

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Haydn
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Volume - how to increase it?

#1 Post by Haydn » Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:39 am

A regular problem I've encountered at dances is the sound isn't loud enough. I often find I turn all the knobs up to maximum, and some tracks are still too quiet. They might sound loud enough in an empty hall, but from experience, the volume has to be a lot higher in a hall full of noisy dancers. And the problem is worst with those lovely old 30s tracks.

If it's your own club, I guess the answer is obvious: buy a more powerful sound system. But if you are DJing at someone else's event, what can you do to increase the volume? When DJing from my MacBook Pro, one big lesson I've learned is to use my Turtle Beach USB card for sound output. It makes everything at least twice as loud. But the worry is sometimes everything is at the loudest setting, which leaves no room for manouevre, and I think it's probably better for the equipment if you don't play constantly at maximum volume.

One example of a quiet old track that often seems too quiet at dances is Andy Kirk's Bearcat Shuffle (compare this with the volume of Count Basie's Shiny Stockings). Are there any other technical solutions here? Software or hardware to boost the volume? Is it possible to digitally increase the volume of your MP3 library so the tracks are a lot louder when it comes to DJing?

SoundInMotionDJ
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#2 Post by SoundInMotionDJ » Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:56 am

For individual tracks, it is possible to use (almost) any sound editor to increase the volume.

As a more general solution, a sound card that will pre-amp is OK. The "best" (for some value of "best") sound cards do not function as pre-amps. So, they will pass "line level" at most. The Turtle Beach card will pre-amp the sound, but adds a lot of noise in the process.

A small table top mixer that will provide some pre-amp ability is a good solution. I use the Behringer UB-802 for small events - it is my only mixer in these cases. But, nothing would prevent you from plugging your computer sound card into the 802, and the 802 into the club's mixer. That will give you a lot of control over the volume. The UB-802 is about $60 new, and can be found for $40 delivered from eBay. The UB-802 is not the cleanest mixer in the world, but as long as you don't try to take things to "11", it is a decent compromise. But it is one more thing to carry.

Most DJ software will offer some king of "auto gain control" that can help to boost quiet tracks. The quality varies a lot. OTS AV is the best I have heard ever - the auto gain control is really nice. It can equalize the level from 1960's Motown, to current pop songs, and everything in between!

--Stan Graves

Haydn
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#3 Post by Haydn » Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:59 am

Thanks Stan - great advice :)

Are you sure that the Turtle Beach card 'adds noise' by the way?
SoundInMotionDJ wrote:The Turtle Beach card will pre-amp the sound, but adds a lot of noise in the process.
I haven't noticed this. The card I use is the Audio Advantage Micro portable USB Sound Card as described here:

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/micro/home.aspx

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JesseMiner
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#4 Post by JesseMiner » Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:15 am

All you, as the DJ, can really do with a laptop is provide a quality "line level" output (licking the yellow, visually speaking). Does a headphone output provide this quality? I don't believe it does, but I might be wrong. All laptop DJs should have software installed to monitor the level going out, and if you don't, get it! My Echo Indigo DJ sound card has a simple monitor that I run in the background and regularly check to make sure I am sending out the highest quality signal. Be careful that you aren't trying to push out too high a level (in the red, visually speaking) that will only bring distortion. If you are maxing out your levels on your laptop, you are most likely sending out a distorted signal - not good.

Beyond that, more volume is going to need to come downstream from you. So either the club needs to get a more powerful system or you can bring additional audio equipment. I have no expertise in this area, so I will leave the subject to the more experienced.

Jesse

SoundInMotionDJ
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#5 Post by SoundInMotionDJ » Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:26 am

Haydn wrote:Thanks Stan - great advice :)

Are you sure that the Turtle Beach card 'adds noise' by the way?
SoundInMotionDJ wrote:The Turtle Beach card will pre-amp the sound, but adds a lot of noise in the process.
I haven't noticed this. The card I use is the Audio Advantage Micro portable USB Sound Card as described here:

http://www.turtlebeach.com/products/micro/home.aspx
Yes, I am sure. I am not talking about "hiss" but rather the more generic "noise", as in "signal to noise ratio."

I have listened to the Turtle Beach USB card and the Gigaport AG card and the built in sound card on my laptop side by side. Same source files, same player, same headphones. Only the sound card was different. Based on that test, I was not able to tell enough difference between the Turtle Beach and the built in sound card on my laptop to justify even $20. Oh, I should say that for the test, I made sure that everything in the headphones was at the same volume level. I wanted to remove "louder = better" from the comparison.

If your point of comparison is the built in sound card compared to the turtle beach sound card - then you may not notice any additional noise or distortion.

If you do not have a relatively good PA system, the noise from the PA system may be loud enough to drown out the noise from the sound card.

In my case, I have both a sound card and a PA system that are "above average" in terms of quality and fidelity.

--Stan Graves

SoundInMotionDJ
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#6 Post by SoundInMotionDJ » Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:40 am

JesseMiner wrote:All you, as the DJ, can really do with a laptop is provide a quality "line level" output (licking the yellow, visually speaking). Does a headphone output provide this quality? I don't believe it does, but I might be wrong.
"Line level" is about quantity, not quality.

Most pro-audio equipment is setup to use +4dBu as the "line level" reference, which is 1.228Vrms. 0dBu is 0.775Vrms.

In general, headphone jacks are setup to use the "0bBu" as the "maximum" volume. Most pro audio sound cards also use the 0dBu reference.

Most consumer level sound cards use the +4dBu reference (i.e. "louder = better"). The turtle beach sound card falls into this category.

Jesse is correct that attempting to "max out" the signal from a laptop is a losing proposition.

--Stan Graves
Last edited by SoundInMotionDJ on Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#7 Post by SoundInMotionDJ » Fri Jul 25, 2008 11:46 am

If you are curious...

Disconnect the sound card from the speakers. Play a 1kHz signal through your computer. Turn the volume all the way up. Use a volt meter that can read RMS to measure the voltage of the signal coming from the sound card.

As I said before:

1.228Vrms = +4dBu
0.775Vrms = 0dBu
0.3162Vrms = -10dBu (the consumer audio standard)

--Stan Graves

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#8 Post by Toon Town Dave » Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:34 pm

I think what Jesse is getting at is to not saturate the soundcard's output to the point were it might start clipping. The yellow being the typical yellow band on the graphic VU meter.

For the not-so technically inclined, clipping will introduce a bunch of higher frequency harmonics we don't want that will be distortion. Noise comes from different stuff. Think of distortion from clipping as your voice cracking when you yell while noise would be more like background chatter, fan noise, etc.

I don't think the equipment other than the speakers should care if you're saturating it, it'll just sound bad. The worst that would happen to the gear is maybe an amp overheating and tripping a breaker or blowing a fuse.

In the club you DJ in, check the main power amps, sometimes at our old venue, the DJs would crank the volume down on the main amps. We could fiddle with the mixer volume but had to get the club DJs to fiddle with the dozen or so power amps.

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#9 Post by Toon Town Dave » Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:45 pm

Further to Stan's suggestion, you can download oscilloscope software that will use your soundcard as input:

http://zeitnitz.de/Christian/Scope/Scope_en.html

Use the 1KHz test waveform. If you feed it back into your sound card, if it's no longer a nice sine wave, you're probably clipping or introducing noise somewhere.

This software will also act as a spectrum analyzer:
http://www.zelscope.com/screenshots.html

With the sine wave, you should see one frequency spike at 1Khz with a small amount of noise at all frequencies. If there are other spikes, you're probably clipping if the noise level is high, it's probably something being picked up by the devices/cables and being amplified ... or you're just in an electrically noisy environment. If you're getting power-line noise you should see a spike at 60Hz.

Lastly, something that you might be encountering on some of the "louder" recordings is dynamic range compression which trades off the volume range between the softest parts and loudest parts for a general perception of louder. Television commercials do this to sound louder than the regular programming.

Here's a great rant on dynamic range compression in today's commercial music:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews/rant7.html

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remysun
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#10 Post by remysun » Sat Jul 26, 2008 12:29 am

If you're really half-assing it, you can put the speaker on top of a plastic tub, or something that will add resonance.

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remysun
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#11 Post by remysun » Sat Jul 26, 2008 12:32 am

SoundInMotionDJ wrote:Most DJ software will offer some king of "auto gain control" that can help to boost quiet tracks. The quality varies a lot. OTS AV is the best I have heard ever - the auto gain control is really nice. It can equalize the level from 1960's Motown, to current pop songs, and everything in between!
With Motown, anything goes. Berry Gordy listened to everything through a little crappy mock-up of a car radio in his office. He wanted the product to sound good even when it wasn't on the best equipment.

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Matthew
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#12 Post by Matthew » Sat Jul 26, 2008 2:34 am

If the problem is with just a few tracks, then, as Stan Graves mentioned, you can use a sound editor to increase the volume. I'm not an expert in that process, but I'd recommend using EQ to cut noise/hiss, then compressing the dynamic levels, then using a limiter to boost the volume. You may also switch the EQ-compression order, and listen to it. Be careful that the limiter doesn't create noticeable clipping in the bass frequencies.

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Cyrano de Maniac
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#13 Post by Cyrano de Maniac » Sat Jul 26, 2008 3:13 pm

Remember too that in some instances it's not the overall volume that's the problem, but you may be missing some critical component of the range of frequencies. If the source material isn't particularly hi-fi, this could well be part of the problem.

If you want to make it sound louder, and you have equalizers to play with, take a shot at bumping up about 80Hz to boost the kick drum and bass, and maybe somewhere between 1 and 2 kHz to bump up vocals (depends on the vocalist). 800 Hz can bring out a saxophone, and often somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 Hz can highlight a keyboard.

Just remember to return all these changes to something more reasonable when you move on to the next song. :)

Brent

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#14 Post by djstarr » Wed Aug 13, 2008 5:38 pm

Something I've noticed but not quite sure of the real reason: the Djs here who DJ off of Macs have a much harder time driving the volume than PCs. I Dj off of a pretty new Dell with a Turtle USB card.

We've had a situation at one of our local venues where the sound system is at 50% volume of what it used to me. For me I still have a lot of head room - I'm about 60% on my PC, but for one of my friends using a Mac everything was turned up and some low fi songs were not loud enough.

I'm also guessing that some of the issue is with the quality of the rip; almost all my songs are ripped from CD and converted to the APE format.

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trev
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#15 Post by trev » Wed Aug 13, 2008 6:36 pm

Macs do have a 'quieter' output. It just means that your amplifier/speakers will need that little bit extra range. Something like a Turtle Beach USB sound card on a Mac will boost the output level, so that's an alternative solution.

The flip-side is that the signal put out from the Macs is pretty good, and they can be turned all the way up without nasty distortion. We've had issues in the past with PC laptops that output a nice 'loud' signal, but with the volume too high, everything becomes really nasty and noisy. As with everything, you want the cleanest signal out of your source, and then let the amp and speakers do their job.

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