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About DCA Nroups
What is a DCA? DCA stands for Digitally Controlled Amplifier. What this function does is allow a single fader to control the level of a group of channels.
Let’s say that you have your drum mix set up and it’s perfect but the drums are just a bit hot relative to the rest of the mix. When you assign a DCA to
all the drum microphones, you can pull down a single fader and bring down the level of all the drums at once without changing their mix.
TIP!:
The TouchMix allows a DCA master to control outputs as well as inputs. One of our favorite tricks is to assign all the stage
monitor outputs (auxes) to a DCA. If the monitors start to feed back and you don’t know which one is the problem, you can bring all the
monitors down at the same time until you figure out what to do.
Consider what groups of things you might want to control at the same time. Here is an important thing to know – if the DCA fader is at 0.0 (the
U mark), it will do nothing to the level of an assigned channel. The DCA adds or subtracts level. Move the DCA Fader up 3 dB and everything it’s
assigned to will increase by 3 dB. Remember that assigning a channel to a DCA Group can cause a sudden change in the level of the channel so it’s
good practice to have the DCA master at 0.0 when changing assignments.
About the TouchMix Compressor Display
Dynamics processing (compressors, limiters) is not well
understood by many users. This is probably due to the
fact that the actions of compressors and limiters are subtle
unless they are completely mis-adjusted. Most displays of
dynamics processors use a graph that shows input level
versus output level. But these displays don’t capture the
other important aspect of dynamics processing – time.
The TouchMix dynamics display was developed to visually
present time and level simultaneously. Looking at the
display we see these indications.
A – Threshold. This indicates the level of the input signal
that is required to cause compression or limiting to take
place. As long as the signal remains below the Threshold
level, it’s as if the compressor / limiter didn’t exist.
B – Attack Time. Once the input signal exceeds the
Threshold level, the compressor / limiter goes to work and reduces signal level. Attack determines how quickly the compressor reduces the audio to
the level set by the Ratio.
C – Ratio. This determines how much the signal is reduced in level once compression / limiting takes place. A ratio of 1:1 would mean that no
reduction is taking place. While a ratio of 20:1 would indicate extreme compression.
D – Release Time. Once the signal level has dropped below threshold, the compressor will stop reducing the signal level. Release determines how
quickly gain reduction ceases.
— Figure 10 —
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B
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