I’ve been playing with this lately too. It can be tricky to get the sound level in the sweet spot where there is no distortion, yet loud enough to be heard without having to turn every other sound down.
I usually mess around with the volume level of the sound source, at the sound source (like volume knob on a synth), and find this can “overdrive” the sound on the MD (depending on what sound patch is loaded) if it is set too high. So start with turning your sound source down a little.
You can turn the DISTORTION level down on the MD, and that will give your sound more headroom (less distortion). Sometimes filtering out very low frequencies helps too, but your sound might start to sound thin.
Sometimes I have to turn the VOL level parameter of the INPUT machine (NOT the main volume knob) way up if the sound source is too quiet. But it seems to operate more like a maximizer, in that it flattens the dynamics of the sound by amplifying the quiet parts, but not the louder parts. It can sound okay for some sounds, and crap for others.
Another trick to get more volume from an INPUT machine is to turn the DIST up a bit. The sound will get louder without distorting, up to a point.
A technique that i just started to experiment with and have the best control with, is to run the sound source through my mixer where I can boost the signal with a (much more powerful) GAIN setting, and also EQ the sound in the mixer so it sounds good playing through the MD. But this works best for sounds being recorded into the MD, and maybe not the best if you’re changing the sounds source on the fly as per a live set.
1 Like