I recently got my Op-Z and enjoying it a lot. I have couple of concerns regarding the audio distortion and audio out level when I connect it to my audio interface.
If I use the reverb on board more then 25 percent I tend to get a distorted signal out of that channel and also If I try to increase the decay time of the reverb I tend to get a springy sound ( this might be because of the nature of the reverb). Also any of the synth channels that I use can get distorted if I tend to raise volume over 75 percent. I checked the drive on Master and Punch and Master Volume on mixer sections. If I lower everything down, It cleans up a bit. So is it me that needs to mix a little bit better or is there a problem with the synth engines or fx engines?
If I listen through my headphones plugged in directly I can get a pretty hot signal. Booming actually but when I connect it to my interface with a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch stereo TRS cable to my audio interface or any of my other gear, I tend to get a weak signal as far as I ll have to give it some gain from the mixer to have it on the same level as my other gear. I have been thinking it might be the cable that I need to switch but I use the same cable with my semi modular and the signal is pretty strong with that one.
re: the weak signal, it’s probably that you’re plugging into a balanced mono input, not a stereo input.
Balanced outputs send inverted pairs of your audio, so a balanced input can subtract them to remove any common noise picked up along the cable. Your opz stereo output is sending a matching pair (aside from panning) so when your balanced input subtracts them, hardly anything is left (just whatever tiny mismatch there is on the opz output)
You need a cable that splits the TRS stereo into dual L/R TS mono
Thanks for both replies. TRS to dual TS solved the volume problem. I will try to lower those group gains on the mixer channel as well. Hopefully that will solve it. Do you think the reverb is getting distorted because of that as well or is it just the way that reverb works?
I guess you should be a bit more careful with increasing the volume(s). I always try to not increase the individual volume levels and instead DEcrease those of the tracks that are a bit too dominant. If your whole track becomes too silent after that, carefully increase the group and/or master volume(s).
For the reverb it’s probably like this:
Your tracks are fed into the reverb. If your track’s signals are already very hot and then sent to the reverb, the reverb signal will also be very hot from the beginning. Increasing the reverb volume makes the whole thing even hotter and it starts clipping. So be sure that on louder tracks you do not crank the “FX send” fully up, but be a bit more subtle.
When holding the mixer-button you can also controll the compressor with the yellow dial. It can help to cut out the peaks and raise the lower signals. Again, try to use it subtly. If the LED below the dial flashes blue all the time, compression might be a bit too active, resulting in some kind of sidechaining effects. If it does not flash at all, you might increase compression a bit, until the LED starts flashing blue from time to time. By that you can tame short peaks, without touching the volumes.
Also important: Pan your tracks! If you can’t hear a certain track, pan it to the left or right side, to hear it clearer. Or use the LFO on panning, to make a track stand out. If all tracks are in center position all the time, the track usually sounds boring (or bad).
With no mixing-experience at all, it is quite hard to learn mixing on the op-z. The app only shows the faders but it does not really show, how they affect the signals. You don’t get any information on the actual RMS-output-levels, peak-levels etc. Those would be essential for propper mixing.
Thanks for all those great tips and advice man. I will try to implement them into my workflow and try to learn mixing more. I should spend some time working on that skill as well I suppose.