Low Input Signal

[Pizzaman461]

Hi everyone,

I am currently using Pro Tools 11 and the Yamaha 01v96i mixer. According to my mixer my signal strength is quite high. But, even when the gain and volume levels on it, the signal into pro tools is very weak. I get to about 40-50% in the green area on the signal meter. Any ideas?

[Darryl Ramm]

"quite high" and 50% into the green... it would help more if you used some actual dBFS numbers here.

How are you determining "quite high"? What metering are you looking at on the panel? (I have no experience with those mixers). The aggregate main stereo out meter may not give you a good idea of the level of each track.What do you have the meters set to? (input? post fader? pre EQ etc.). Are the sends on the panel to the DAW pre or post-fader pre-or post EQ? If you mean "quite high" just by listening to the output that may not give you near enough information to compare the Pro Tools input to.

What are you looking at in Pro Tools? What exact meter type? Are the Pro Tools meters pre or post fader? (they should be pre). Tracking so that the peaks you can see sit around -20dbFS into a modern DAW with a modern interface is fine. You do not need to track hot / close to the red.

What exactly are you tracking mic preamps? Line inputs? guitar DI??? What mics? Where is the mic gain set? If Line inputs are the correct level matches (-10dBV/+4dBu).

Ideally you can bung a sine wave into one channel (from Pro Tools signal gen plugin), and you should be able to route this back via a DAW out in the mixer as well as out physically out of the mixer say back into say a mic preamp on he mixer and compare metering on that input channel on the panel and in the corresponding Pro Tools input.

Remember the conversion is all happening in this box, so ideally you can work out how to get the mixer meters to display the USB/DAW send levels (I sure hope they can) and make sure they agree with Pro Tools. If they don't well uh they must... and you can work out back from there inside your mixer what is happening to the signal.

[Darryl Ramm]

http://download.yamaha.com/api/asset...asset_id=57146

Looks like you've easily got enough meter configuration options to say backup from the direct channel outs driving the USB out to find out what is going on. They even give you an onboard oscillator/test signal generator that you can meter on bus 1-8 and send to the USB out.