I use as little gain as possible. At loud shows especially, if the gain is set high it has the potential to brickwall.
I think you mean clip, not brickwall. Nit-picky, I know... 
When you use the digital in on the JB3 doesn't it disable the meters? If so that's going to be a bitch to set right.
Nope, NJB3 meters are active regardless of mic-in/line-in/optical input.
Nit-picky? Nah, discernment is important to get information across in this medium. 
I didn't know of a difference in the two terms. Would you mind explaining?
Nice to know about the JB3 digital metering. I'm not sure where or who I heard it from that a digital input disables the meters.
As far as getting the channels equal....I just use my eyes and a little flashlight. But test it out at home and see how responsive the JB3 meters are to level tweeking. If it works you can just use the JB3 meters to see if your even with the gain.
Here's what I see as the difference between the two:
Clip: going past -0- on your digital device
Brickwall: (pulled this off of Victor Yiu's D7/D8 page)
"Brickwalling occurs when the output of your microphones is too hot for the preamp you are using (either the deck's input or an outboard mic-line amp), which results in the preamp being overloaded. Most of the better condenser mics out there (AKG's B&K's, etc) are capable of output voltages higher than the mic inputs on, say, a D7 are equipped to handle. This will turn what could have been a terrific recording into a mudbath in a big hurry.
Fortunately, brickwalling is both easy to spot *and* easy to prevent: the name "brickwalling" stems from the fact that when this phenomenon occurs, the levels on the DAT deck will typically go right up to but never beyond a certain point, as if they're running into a "brick wall". Note that IT CAN AND WILL OCCUR WITH THE LEVELS SET *ANYWHERE*, this has NOTHING to do with going over zero, which is *digital* distortion; brickwalling is *analog* distortion, the same thing you get when you turn a cheap AM radio up too loud. You can get it with the levels set at -12, and it has nothing to do with where the record level knob is set!!
So, for example, if you're recording a show and see that the levels are always hovering right at or around -6dB and never go beyond it, no matter how intensly the band is playing, it's a pretty safe bet that the mic preamp of your deck isn't happy with what it's seeing. In the worst case, the recording will be unlistenable; in cases where the overloading is bad but not severe, the recording will sound really good during the quiet parts but will tend to get muddy-sounding during the louder stuff. So, for example, Fee will sound great, but the finale of
Bowie will sound muddy, garbled, trashy, etc.
As I said, I have been seeing this on a *lot* of the recordings I've been getting lately, so I figured a word to the wise oughtta make a lot of people happy. :-)
So how do you stop it? Simple. Most of the good condensor mics out there also have attenuation pads, which will drop the output signal level of the of the mics down to where your mic preamp will be much happier (as will all of the people that listen to your tapes, including you! :-) So if you see this happening, all you've gotta do is switch the attenuator pads on your mics to the "-10dB" position (make sure you don't hit the rolloff switch by mistake!). Note: this will require you to set the record level knob up significantly higher to get good levels, but your recording will sound *tons* better. If you do this *and* maks sure that the levels don't go above zero, you'll be rewarded with much-better sounding tapes!
FYI, if you want to see what to look out for, play some of the
less-than-perfect sounding tapes in your collection while watching the levels. Assuming that good gear was used to record it, there's a pretty good chance you'll see the brickwalling effect."
http://www.rockpark.com/d7/Hope this helps. -drew
Topic: Setting Levels AD20 (Read 4975 times)