"This one goes to 11" a certain movie character once said about his amplifier, and while your Headrush speaker will as well it's important to know when you can go to 11 and when it isn't advisable. The difference in knowing how or when to do so is simply in gain staging.


Line Level Sources 


Line Level Sources can be Guitars, Mixers, DJ Controllers, Phones, Drum Kits etc. Basically anything that doesn't need a preamp to function. Devices which have line level inputs can be broken up into high gain and low gain.


High Gain- Mixers, DJ Controllers, Guitars with pedals, music played from a home amplifier. As a general rule of thumb, anything that has both a gain setting and a volume setting has the capability to be a high gain device. As a result, we will want to keep the volume on the FRFR-112 lower, anywhere between 5-8 maximum, depending on the signal coming out of what we're playing out of.


At the 8 line, the amp inside the speaker is already boosting signals to come into it at a 0 dB threshold(if you're using a DJ mixer or a recording software, 0 dB is already the threshold where we hit the Yellow) and amplifying them. When a high gain signal comes in, the amplifier multiplies that gain; and though the speaker may not be getting a signal limit from the input, once it is amplified it can damage the drivers of the speaker itself. This is especially true of overdrive gain and distortion, which blast out those frequencies to get a fuzz effect.


Low Gain- Acoustic Guitars, Phones/MP3 Players, Commercial Players, Drum Kits and anything else that only has a volume knob. Most of these can go to the 10 setting safely, and some of the weaker sources like Acoustic Guitars and MP3 players can go even a little higher to the 11, as players rarely would have enough power to do so. 


That being said, please do not treat sources going through a mixer as the same as they were if being directly connected. For example, once an acoustic guitar is being played into a mixer, it must be treated as a high gain source because the mixer is now adding a level of gain to the signal. You'll then want to dial that back on the FRFR to compensate.


A Word On The Contour Switch

The Contour Switch is a bit of an audio sweetener built into the speaker that adds +3 dB to your highs and lows. Part of the reason you might not want to use the speaker at full volume with a high gain signal is that Contour switch adding extra response to your sound, potentially beyond the limits of the speaker. As noted in the manual, with the contour off it is safe to use the speaker even higher than we have suggested in the article, but you still will want to watch your own gain coming into the speaker and try to keep a balance on what is coming in. 


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