Problems With Volume Conistency - MPC2500

I'm having trouble getting the volume of my samples to sit right in the MP, the sample will overpower the drums or vice versa. Adjusting the volume of the samples individually does not help. I'm recording my samples off vinyl, including the drums, so I think this is something to do with how hot a signal i'm recording into the MPC. Few questions:

Some records are louder than others, should I adjust gain to hit 0db on the DJ Mixer for all samples?

Should I be normalizing all samples to get them as loud as possible before adjusting the volume individually?

If the signal is low, should I be turning up the master gain on the DJ Mixer or the record gain knob on the MPC?



Thanks for the help, just looking to get some consistency out of the overall sound so I can mix more accurately

do you use normalize option after sampling ?

^Sometimes, only if a sample is really low. I don't know if I should be normalizing all my samples..

why not ? as for getting volume right...there is no rule for that...pretty much whatever works to get the signal hot enough without introducing much noise...so combination of both voulmes or one will work as long as you gettin desired result..

thats the one thing that I hate about 1K/2500 series, the volume adjusting is horrible. moving a sound/sample down from 100 to 99, is like night and day. The older MPCs never had this problem. I believe this to be because of the cheap internal build quality of the newer MPs. Its pretty annoying, but just try to get your sampling levels to an area were you like in combination with your drums, before you sample

^Yeah MPC's have an odd gain structure from what I've been reading, more so with the 1000/2500 models. I'm just going to start recording as hot as possible while keeping the signal to noise ratio low; should make things more consistent