Gain Wizard

Welcome back to the next installment of the TouchMix Training Series.

In this installment, we’ll be going over one of the more unique functions of the mixer, the Gain Wizard.

To access this function you just press the Wizard button on the mixer and Gain Wizard on the touchscreen.

But you might be asking, “Well what does it do?" Well during setup and sound check,

one of the first things to do is gain stage each input for optimum signal-to-noise ratio.

To do that, you would typically an instrument or a microphone to a channel input

and increase or decrease the analog gain trim to maximize that input’s signal, without clipping.

This adjustment is done on the preamp, before it makes it to the digital domain of the mixer.

But in reality, the levels of the sound check might not be the same as the live performance.

No matter how well-tuned the sound check goes, the excitement of the performance

might lead the musicians to push their levels further than expected.

If that happens, the signal is going to clip – causing distortion and other nasty sounds.

The mixer can’t automatically dial this down because the clipping is taking place

in analog before the mixer receives it.

If you’re engineering a live mix then you’ll see the clipping and you can dial it back down again.

However, many TouchMix users are the performers themselves,

and won’t be paying attention to the clip indicator during the set

because they’ve got more important things to do:

like entertaining the audience. Well that’s when you call on the Gain Wizard.

On your home fader screen, you’ll see your channel’s faders as well as the mini-faders at the top of the screen.

A channel’s meter will turn red momentarily when its channel is clipping,

but the mini-fader that represents that channel will stay red.

But that doesn’t tell you how much clipping there is or what to do about it.

What the Gain Wizard does is keep track of your channel inputs and tells you how severe the clipping is.

When you select the Gain Wizard you’ll see a representation of all of the input gain trim knobs,

any clipped input channels, and a meter indicating how many tick marks it recommends you turn one down.

Then all you have to do is adjust that trim knob manually to keep your channel from clipping

or suffering from distortion again during your set.

Tap the reset button to clear the indicators and you’re good to go.

If, during your performance, you ever see a red clip light on one of the main fader banks,

it’s a good idea to jump into the Gain Wizard to see how much you should trim back that input

to get it back under control. And just so you know,

if you ever want to clear those clip indicators from the mini-fader bank without going to the Gain Wizard,

simply go to your menu screen and tap Clear Clip. And that’s about it. No guessing required.

The Gain Wizard is just one more way that the TouchMix ensures you’ve got the perfect mix for your live event.

In the next installment, we’ll take a look at the Aux and Monitor settings.

So we’ll see you then.

You shall not pass audio. He’s a Wizard. Yeah, we got that.