UR44 low volume balance problem

Steinberg Hardware UR Series
1

Heya all,

Basically i had CMS40 monitors for quite a while and i noticed as i turned up the volume from minimum on the UR44 the volume balance would be slightly out until i went past a certain threshold and it would then settle. Was never too much of a problem.

I now understand that volume discrepancies between the master left/right channels at very low volumes using the front volume pot is quite common on audio interfaces in general.

Anyways, i now have some new Focal Shapes and these are way louder and as such, only a little turn of the volume on the UR44 makes these loud. Now if i want to listen at very low levels, i of course get the imbalance.

So… i read somewhere to bring the volume down elsewhere, so i checked out dspMIXfx and i can set the DAW volume or master volume fader there to something suitable, enabling me to have to turn the volume on the UR44 more than usual to get sound out. This then gets me past the initial imbalance before i get sound, so all good.

So my final question is this. Can i leave it like this? Will dropping the DAW fader in dspMIXfx and then raising it more on the front panel of the UR44 be detrimental to my sound quality in any meaningful way?

Thanks, and soz for the long(ish) post…

2

Ok, just adding to this now. Using the UR44 on my Apple Mac and the volume seems to be already nicely calibrated. There is no volume when the main outputs are turned all then way down, unlike Windows, and i need to turn the volume knob a reasonable amount before getting volume, hence no imbalance even at very low listening volumes.

So this seems like a Windows driver problem, or something about the way Windows handles this itself?! The output volume in Windows must be something like twice as much?

EDIT: Ok, excuse my ignorance… i had no idea the dspMixFx mixer settings were stored on the interface itself! So when i tried my Mac this morning and the sound was way more attenuated, it was because i had adjusted the DAW fader in dspMixFx last night when in Windows.

So my main question still stands i guess. Will bringing the DAW fader in dspMixFx down by around 6db negatively impact my sound quality by any real margin?

3

Late reply but I don’t think there’s gonna be any impact on the sound quality, I just lower the master fader on the dspMixFX when needed and voila