Phil Starr

Getting a matching 2x12 was aways the best idea both in terms of sound and looks. You'll get an extra 6db out of the stack at everything other than full power, the speakers will run and look cooler so it's win win. You'll never need them at full power but was that ever the point? You'll get tired of carrying them in the end and they are completely over the top but if you are young and fit enough then that's a whole lot of fun for £150 and you'll have change for some good earplugs

Hi all, just to say I haven't forgotten this design but I've not been well. Recovered now, but I've lost a couple of weeks and I'm behind with everything. It's going to be a few weeks catching up before I get time to re-visit this. I know a few people are revving up and ready to go but if you are patient it is still coming

And for anyone else interested. Follow the link people, there are a series of sound clips showing the sound before and after the technique. Really interesting even if your desk doesn't have that facility. If nothing else it'll make you think about your drum mic placement to get that mix of the 'click' and resonance.

Thanks Russ this is really helpful, I haven't mixed seriously since the 1970's so this is a new technique for me, though I had noticed the kick on some bands is a bit 'one note' as well as suspiciously tight I'd put that down to a sample or even very hard compression, now I'll have to see if I can spot it, another obsession :). Fortunately I'm saved from most of this because my drummer has an E-kit and sends me the signal she wants the audience to hear. Takes her sound very seriously too. We've also used a dep who sets up his own mic's and uses a trigger for the kick. First time I saw his band I couldn't believe the kick sound he was getting. They were on the bill after us and just blew us off the stage. That kick was giving a lot to how they sounded and the audience response.

If you are having clarity issues in your IEMs try listening to the sound you hear with them switched off but still firmly in place. To me it’s muffled but the real bass is still getting through. If your bass is going through the PA loud enough to reach the back of the room and you are only 2-3m from the PA then you are always going to be swimming in deep bass. Having as little of the sub frequencies in your monitoring as possible is the only way of coping with that.

There’s no doubt that there’s a little fairy dust in the SansAmp sound and I love the blend control in terms of getting a good sound quickly, but I don’t go for extreme sounds, just a touch of drive. It seems to even out the sound across the strings and saving me from having to eq for that, having said that once you’ve set up the zoom once you don’t need to worry about it again. The thing is that you can always hear a change but tweaking for a good sound seems to be more down to how you mix and what you do with the other instruments. For clarity I use HPF and shelve the bass down at around 150Hzin the mixer.

I’ve got a SansAmp programmable and a Zoom B1ON. I use the Zoom mainly but sometimes use the SansAmp with my P bass as they seem to work well together. The Zoom works with anything. Honestly I’ve never had concerns about how either sounds in the mix, I’d prefer a balanced output from the Zoom but am happy with the sound I’m getting.

It's often surprising how you can do things 'all wrong' and get away with it. In a way the possibility of PA behind the mics is what Bose were selling with their first stick systems. Although they advertised that this was due to the wide dipersal of line arrayed speakers the directional response of horns would actually help here in terms of feedback suppression. With both drums and keys between the PA speakers you could potentially point them either side of the front line mics which would help a little. The partial success of this arrangement (it doesn't work above certain levels) was more due to a smooth frequency response from their 'sticks'. One of the best things you can do to get a good sound is to reduce your overall volume on stage, and sometimes in the room. I can imagine a band who produce good but not excessive volumes will pick up extra gigs at some venues for that reason alone. Accepting a lower volume might be a commercial decision. A sound decision, not a sound decision I think not enough of us understand the concept of 'gain before feedback' Feedback only occurs when the sound from the PA (or any other speaker) returns the amplified sound at the microphone back louder than the original sound.* For any given system in any given room there's a level of gain which will give you feedback whatever you do. Set just below that point and the feedback from the mics can never build up and cause howlround. This band are just accepting that this point exists, turning up until they know where that point is and then working within that limit. You can change the gain before feedback in lots of ways, moving the speakers would be the obvious one, but if you are happy with the limit to your volume then what they are doing is perfectly sensible. Most of us I suspect don't line up behind the speakers in a rehearsal situation becaue we turn the gain down and don't need to. *Imagine a singers voice at the mic is around 90db it's then sent to the PA which adds 20db of gain and comes out of the speakers at 110db (90+20) Sound drops with distance so when it gets back to the vocal mic it's probably lost most of the 20db of gain ar maybe slighly more. This is crucial to feedback though. If it comes back at 89db then it's quieter than the voice and the sound will die away, if it comes back at 91db it will be amplified another 20db and come back at 92db which will be amplified again and again deafening us all with feeback. Anything slightly less than the original sound -no feedback, even the slightest fraction louder feedback every time. The gain before feedback is 20db in this case and you cannot use even a tiny fraction more.

Well I for one found that very interesting, though I still didn't get the "sine wave" bit. That was in the second part of @EBS_freak's answer, Thanks Russ Posted Friday at 13:14 (edited) On 11/04/2024 at 12:34, Al Krow said: Can you talk us through your thinking and how you would go about applying "a sine wave on a gate" please? I'm not familiar with what you have in mind here! This one will need a quite feature rich digital desk or outboard (however, I will drop in an easy alternative once I've talked you through it) Basically, kick drums on mics can be quite a pita in the live environment because they tend to pick up not only the kick drum but all the low end rumble crap on stage. So theres a number of things you can do to address this. The common one, is to use two mics. One which is getting the all the beater frequencies and the other which is getting the lows - but the gain can be a lot lower as you don't need to boost the gain on that mic to capture the beater frequencies. Lower the gain and closer proximity to the drum means higher signal to noise ratio without all the bleed. OK what else? You can also apply a gate. The gate stops any signal from the mic getting onto your mix bus. Once a threshold is exceeded (e.g. a kick drum is kicked), the gate opens and lets the sound of the drum through... before closing again. All this means is that you get the sound of the drum but the ambient mush which is present whilst the drum isn't being kicked doesn't go into your mix. However, the low end you are getting may be that fundamental plus still quite a lot of mush. So how can you get all the low end fundamental without the mush? Answer? Fake it. So you use a mic to capture the beater and roll off all the low end and associated mush. So how do you get that low end thump of the kick? Easy - that's where the sine wave comes in. So lets choose say 60Hz. Set up a sine wave (some desks have sine generators (usually labelled oscillators) - other desks without the functionality, you'll need to plug in a sine generator onto another channel - however, if you haven't got an oscillator, it's unlikely it will support the next bit). Of course, what you have now is a permanent sine wave present on your mix bus. What you need to do is configure it to be side chained and triggered when the gate on the kick drum channel opens. When you've done that, you'll end up with the kick drum with the inferior low end being augmented with the pure sine wave. That will give you purest bottom end - and with some big subs, you'll be pinning people to the wall with the most precise sounding kick drum you've ever heard. BUT>>>>> as I said, not every desk can support this. Whats the alternative? Drum trigger. I always carry around a Roland TM-2 with a RT30K trigger. This gives you the opportunity trigger a sine... but if you are going to do that... you may want to trigger the complete kick drum sound completely. Whats not to like about a lovingly crafted studio quality kick drum sample in a live setting? And that's it! PS this is a cheat which is also used on more studio recordings than you would think. Gives you that low end precision which a mic simply can't deliver. Edited Friday at 16:51 by EBS_freak

Thanks, I've been aware of the Mic Mechanic for a while, it's one I've actually seen people using. The D1 looks interesting too in doing the delay +de-tuning (though de-tuning my singing seeems an unecessary step ) I've promised to record some basslines for my mates solo act tonight but I'll trawl You Tube for informative videos of the TC stuff tomorrow, Thanks again. Used would be good too

I've been looking at the TC Helicon stuff too. Reviews of the sounds produced are positive but to get similar functionality I'd be looking at the VoiceLive 3 at £600+ which is a lot to spend on experimenting. I did borrow a VoiceLive 2 a while ago but couldn't get the sounds I wanted at the time, though both my needs and hopefully understanding has changed since then. I also owned the VoiceSolo personal monitor which had some nice reverb and so on as part of the package. Single pedals for each effect are appealing in terms of simplicity when playing and singing live, but once you get to three pedals it starts to look expensive. However it would mean I could buy and learn to use one effect at a time and start the learning curve without having to commit huge funds up-front. Thanks @Mykesbass and @naxos10 food for thought certainly. Which TC units were they? They make a lot of different options.

And please don't tell me not to. I want advice on how to, not on the artistic merits. Preferably from people who have done it or worked with people who have So, I sing backing vocals for a very cheesy covers duo with the emphasis on audience singalong. Believe me it's as awful as it sounds but people are loving it. Bass/Guitar and programmed drums. Basically I sing the audience bits so they know when to come in. Mainly what I want to do is add in things like reverb and delay without touching the mixer and using my feet to switch between songs. There's a few songs where I need to sound like more than one person so doubling would be one effect I'd use and maybe a subtle octave shifted third voice. I might experiment with harmonies but the idea would be to fill out the sound rather than to slip into the robotic sounding stuff some over enthusiastic harmonisers serve up. At the moment our vocalist adds harmonies to the backing tracks for three or four songs. I'm trying to steer a route so that we are live in the room though, not some sort of karaoke act. I'm seeing using a processor to fill out my voice as being preferable to an increasingly rich backing track even if the backing is all us. Ultimately I'm just looking to fill out my vocal sound without the audience noticing anything artificial going on. I'm currently looking at the Zoom V6 SP as the right balance of features and price combined with ease of operation but I'm open to other suggestions

She looks good to me.

This has the design drawings

I've been wondering about this question again, could we have given a clearer answer? It's tough for someone with no technical background to follow some of the more technical answers but that is what anyone asking willl be offered.It's equally tough for someone who has a technical background to give a partial answer, something they know is almost true but leaves out some important detail which could end up with someones hard earned money spent on something that won't do the job. There was a one line answer available here all along: buy a decent quality 12" system with 300W a side going to each speaker. My guess it that most of us who are regularly gigging either own or have successfully used such a system for many gigs. I see a lot of covers bands, I rarely see anyone using anything else in pubs. Two 12's on poles are on display at at least 80% of pub gigs. Why did we make it so complex The analogy here might be asking three different 'experts' about how the heart works. A primary school teacher will give a different answer to an eight year old from the answer a secondary science teacher will give an eighteen year old Biology student different again. A doctor has a different problem when they talk about the heart it has consequencies. If they aren't clear somone might die, if they fail to get the message across, then catastrophe. If they over simplify and miss out what later turns out to be an important detail they can end up in court. I wonder if we aren't all pretending to be thoracic surgeons here carefully picking words and refining arguments when the real doctor inside them wants to just scream; "lose some effing weight, stop eating crap, get some exercise and enjoy the rest of your life" as they propose surgery or prescribe pills with side effects that will make their patients lives miserable. I wonder why we didn't say; "get a couple of decent 12's on poles and get on and enjoy playing"?

I've a litle Alesis mixer plugged in most of the time but I've also used the headphone output of an interface or driven them off a Zoom B1ON. I've also used the band's PA mixer as the sound is a reasonable proxy for the PA speakers so I can tweak eq away from the gigs and get the same effect at the gig. The Alesis mixer means my duo (2vox,bass,guitar)can rehearse without setting up a PA, in an 8'x10' room these go very loud. I looked at Yamaha and KRK too but these were on offer at the time. https://www.thomann.de/gb/rcf_ayra_pro5.htm

Honestly the best decision I made was the purchase of a couple of active compact studio monitors. I use RCF Ayra5's and they sound better than anything you'll ever play through live, handle kick and bass with ease and innocently look like a couple of hifi bookshelf speakers. They'll double as a soundbar for your TV if you want to leave them in the living room.

Wasting your time? Not really but don't expect a miracle and don't create any further damage which means working minimally rather than doing work which is unnecessary. I see you can still buy these for £259 and by and large the Xenyx mixers are pretty reliable but time will take a toll. At that point it won't be worth paying a tech to try a fix which might only last a short while. Obviously the sliders are the most vulnerable bits, they are probably the most often used parts and the tracks are poorly sealed against dust, The first thing I would do would be to clean the outside of the mixer as thouroughly as possible avoiding driving anything into the sliders in particular but the innrds generally. Anything left on the outside you will displace with handling and it could end up inside. Don't use liquid cleaners including water. instead use moistened cloths or cotton buds and you are trying to lift dirt not wash it off. If your cotton bud releases a drop of water when you use it you are far too wet. I'd risk using a little washing up liquid in my water, nothing stronger. Personally I remove all the knobs before starting all this, they can be washed separately and dried thoroughly before reinstalling. My next step would be to investigate what is working and what not, I'd be very reluctant to clean a slider that was working ok 'just in case'. The Deoxit or Servisol don't really clean dirt, they soften it and then whan you wriggle the controls they move it around, nothing actually washes out of the pots. On a working/non crackling pot it could end up creating a fault that wasn't there before, on a really crackly pot it often works a treat and you hve little to lose. Make sure it's a good quality switch cleaner and never use anything like WD40 which leaves a film of lubricant. Even a switch cleaner will leave some residue so don't soak everything and watch out for over spray. So test every control and wiggling ten times before testing is a great start in cleaning the dust of ages. Note what crackles and what doesn't. If it crackles is that across the travel of the control or just at the extremes. I've got one that just crackles at the bottom end which I don't use anyway so I leave that alone. Obviously if it crackles when you adjust the control but only when you move it that is less serious than something which crackles when it is static. Hopefully you can leave more than half your controls alone. I've had great results on sliders You can get the cleaner onto the tracks inside through the dust seals easily enough and the dirt if it is in there will generally get moved to the ends of the sliders. Go for the worst one first as you'll have little to lose. The rotary pots are more problemmatic. They will probably be more or less sealed so getting switch cleaner in can be really difficult. often impossible without opening the whole mixer up and getting inside which makes the circuit board vulnerable. I'd give it a look but I learned by breaking more things than I fixed at first. I'm agnostic about compressed air, I've a compressor at home so I've never used a can and I can set the pressure. I'd certainly not use it like I do on car parts but I have cleared a lot of dust and spider webs off circuit boards in the past just be aware that several psi on a delicate component isn't a great idea. I guess the question is "do you feel lucky" Don't forget all the sockets, try them all and try plugging and unplugging repeatedly. Switch cleaner can help here but i'd spray the plug I was using and not the sockets as you don't know what is on the inside of your mixer, replacing the plug is going to be a lot simpler than repacing a pcb mounted socket specially made for Behringer 20 years ago. Will all the crackles miraculously disappear, probably not. Will you end up with a bargain price usable mixer? With a little luck you should be OK, what have you got to lose?

I'm in awe of anyone who even attempts to dep unprepared.We've been using deps a lot recently owing mainly to ill health and frankly it's a nightmare. Drummers have always been OK Bassists I wouldn't know because I've only missed one and I wansn't there anyway. Guitarists are a nightmare mainly they seem to think that if there is a chord sheet un Ultimate guitar they are good to go and that if they know verse chorus they know the song. Mainly I organise deps but because it's usually last minute there's no chance to rehearse. We always start with the set list from the last gig and that means we've all played it within the last two or three weeks usually, the rest of the bnd need to be secure. I send that list our with our first contact with the deps. That's rapidly followed with key changes and You Tube videos of the band or the nearest thing to the version we do in terms of arrangement. I'll send out notes of who starts the songs once the dep has agreed. I'd expect a dep to get back to me within a couple of days to indicate which songs they can cover and which are a step too far. Interestingly that's usually due to unusual rhythms more than anything else. At this point if we are half a dozen songs short I'll send out our extended set list and ask the dep to send me theirs (amazing how few have that list btw) and we usually expect to have to learn two or three of their songs. It's not a difficult gig because we play everyday cover band songs straight and mainly in the original key. Our worst experience was with a guitarist who had no idea but seemed to think he was coping. After three songs I turned him off in my in-ears (bliss) and started counting bars watching the drummer and litening to the vocals. I found out at the break drums and vocals had also cut him out of their in ears. I've reached the point where I'm refusing to go out with a dep who is unknown or unrehearsed. I'm going to be on the lookout for a couple of deps in each seat and our lazy band will just have to find time to rehearse them in. I want to guarantee them at least a couple of gigs a year too. A couple of you I note are from Wurzel Country. See you soon I hope

I'm assuming the frequency of the filter as quoted is the -3db point so yes it would probably be noticeable if you did an A/B test but only just. The likelihood though would be the audience wouldn't notice it at all in the mix. Guitarists don't generally play single notes much and don't bang away on a single string open E anyway. I can't actually remember which song Mike uses this particular patch but iif the keywas in anything above E... So like Earth in the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy it's 'mainly harmless'. I think we are often too scared of HPF and set it too low. That's why I was so intrigued by @VTypeV4's comments on setting HPF on vocals. An operatic Baritone will normally sing from F2-F4 so just above the bottom note on a guitar. Nobody really sings that low on pop music so setting the filter even higher for vocals makees sense and the 80Hz filter on most analogue mixers looks pretty conservative, I'm thinking of pushing mine up to 160 and seeing what dfference that makes. I'm no Baritone Maybe we should start another thread on HPF now that those of us with digital mixers have the chance to set it where we want?

It's probably covered in here, one of the most useful and comprehensive threads in BassChat FWIW I've found that this is the most difficult price range, there is either cheap analogue stuff, digital which has a bit of latency and the really good analogue which is more expensive.

No the Lekato did a good job pretty much. No drop outs at 50m on the way out but it dropped out at 20m when I turned my back on the stage and interrupted the line of sight with my body. I'm going to have to cut the double axel out of my dance routine

Problem solved it seems. I've put an 80Hz HPF on the guitar channel and Mike has made some adjustments to his fx, we gigged last night (at a different but still cramped venue) and not a hiccup. When we go back to the venue where the problem happened we'll sound check those patches before we start but I don't anticipate any issues.

I've been a Wharfedale user for years, I still have a complete EVPsystem with subs as a backup system. They are old and heavy but sound great and are very reliable, but also provide proper cutomer support. Wharfedale are now owned out of Hong Kong in a group with old UK firms like Audiolab and Quad. The Delta series were their 'quality' range at the top of to stuff they make for pub bands, disco's and clubs. For that you get wooden (MDF) rather than plastic cabs. I've not heard the latest ones but earlier iterations were very comparable with Yamaha cabs for build quality and sound but at a much better price. Ignore the specs, The Wharfedale specs for the AX range are true RMS/AES values, strangely the AXF range advertises inflated peak values. The AX looks very much like a smartened up re-vamp of the EVP's with the AXF's being re-vamped Deltas. If you can afford the extra the Delta AXF range will offer Baltic birch cabs and slightly better bass drivers along with FIR technology which improves the sound at the crossover frequency. If you want to go 'cheap' the Tourus range of plastic cabs seems to correspond with the AX and the Typhon roughly with the AXF but with platic cabs. Again I haven't tried them but I did own a pair of Wharfedale Titans which were great for vocals and really lightweight but the plastic cabs resonated like mad if you put bass through them at high power. I don't think you'd have that problem with bass through the MDF cabs. Hope that helps.