peter I set my master output of device full volume , all my stereo songs are packaged to a degree where they need no tweaking , I use playlist volume to set a difference in overall volume from my main performance playlist, to my background music playlist , this makes it seamless when I decide to stop playing and setup my next song in my background music playlist , it simply takes over with correct decreased volume , this applies when I get back to perform I simply do the reverse , with no need to tweak anything ever, this is only possible if you have a seperate volume per playlist,
I spend a lot of effort in completing my backing tracks to not need on stage tweaking not having playlist volume would make me touch the iPad again which defeats the purpose of having everything done correctly.
I use playlists as individual gigs and different background music needs, reason for this is I can foot select next song without needing to leave to another playlist, I only leave my gig playlist for a background music playlist which has its own volume setting.
I use an external small on stage mixer for instant tweaking, that has my vocal mic, seperate fader for my guitar level and my backing , then a master fader for overall gain control, this gives me everything I need to tweak on stage in case of things needing to suddenly change but I normally don’t tweak that either that much as it’s setup prior to performance , having ST3 volume control of songs and playlist makes it easy for fine tuning which should only happen once in a blue moon but it’s there to make on stage tweaking very rare.
If you just throw in all your backing tracks Willy nelly that’s when you need to constantly tweak .
Yes we don’t use the faders on ST3 a lot but they are there to create a final balance of volumes needed so we don’t need to keep tweaking, without them we would need to fiddle on stage which is not what we want.
There should be no gain issues as the mixer trim takes care of that , having more places to control the volumes is also not an issue for those that don’t need it , just don’t use it. But for those that know what they are doing having individual playlist volume is very useful to set everything exactly what’s needed and not have to tweak anything while performing.
Now that I have a small digital mixer CQ18T I am looking forward not having to do any tweaking on it as it remembers all settings for different venues and band setups, all I need is a master volume knob , as long as I have my playlist volume setting available , otherwise I will have to tweak levels as I get off or on stage which would be a shame to go backwards.