EBS_freak

Did you use the Wayback machine or something?

Al - you are quite right, there is a whole barrage of viewpoints going on here. 1 I think in short, I am saying that a decent PA that can handle the whole band is the way to go. 2 You will need monitoring - my preference is inears... but you will need something to use as a monitor. For IEMs this could be as little as £100 (and certainly wins on weight and portability). You could buy a wedge... this can go from 100s to 1000s. Pete actually uses a small Genz combo that he already had prior to buying his PA. With less noise coming from the stage and the FOH providing all your volume, the onstage monitoring needs are greatly reduced... unless your drummer is a clown and still insists on banging seven shades outta of it as opposed to making use of the mics on his/her kit... 3 When you are playing with another band who still have a "dino" setup, you could use the PA tops as your backline instead of a traditional rig. I think that's the general underlying message...?

I don't think @charic will ever achieve that though... Think he needs more give in his 80s metal slacks.

If you plug it directly into the mains, absolutely yes.

Here you go Jack, This could be the answer you are looking for.

Exactly!

When you getting your NX15SMA?

Or you could use a preamp/eq pedal pre EQ if you still want to cling onto something outside of the PA... Graphic or Parametric EQ, whatever your bag, it's there on pretty much every digital desk... and unlike your standard analogue, thats on all outputs, whether it's for a monitor mix or for front of house mix. Why wouldn't you want that flexibility?

Err yes.

You haven't played with a Helix, Kemper or AxeFX have you? Actually, scratch that... the amp modeler on the Behringer mixers alone is far more tweakable than an amp.

The point is, with a FRFR solution, you can use it as either backline or FOH! The FRFR is their combo. The FRFR solution is your rig. So the guitarist turns up with a modeler and a FRFR cab/s. The bass player turns up with a pre/modeler with FRFR cab/s. The drummers do what they want anyway... usually turning up with a completely inappropriate kit for the gig.

When did you last gig? The 80s? :-p

And still nobody mentions the improvement in sound quality when you've ditched the amps. re:drums just for anybody interested, acoustic drums are still the preference for any drummer. A drummer that turns up to a pub gig with a huge kit and super bright and loud cymbals is the local village idiot. In terms of micing, for pub gigs a lot of the time you'll just need kick. For larger venues, you can successfully mic with two mics. I personally never mic the snare directly unless I am micing the whole kit. On a two mic setup, i would choose to mic the kick drum and a single condenser mic on a high stand behind the drummers right shoulder, pointing directly across the kit at the snare. (Assuming drummer plays right handed). This way it'll get a good coverage of the kit, (hi hats and splash included) not just the snare. It sounds great in the inears also - if you are using them. PS - entry level wired inear monitoring can be achieved for way under 100 quid per person for somebody using ME6s. For something a lot better, for a 200 quid setup, consider something like UE900s. Read about it in the inear monitoring thead if you are interested. Also, check out the inear recording I put up in there and ask yourself if that isn't something you'd like on a gig. That level of monitoring is now affordable even in a pub band given the pricing of digital desks now. Link - Theres always going to be dinosaurs stuck in their ways. Tech has moved on. Not too long ago, PA that would take a full band going through them was prohibitively expensive. This isn't the case now as the tech is becoming a lot more affordable. Whether people choose to embrace it or not is another thing. I'm convinced that the amp route is on borrowed time now... but that's just me. I like an amp like the next guy... but the convienience of a PA doing all the work, the better monitoring that it opens up, wins it for me hands down. I don't care if people want to go the same route as me or not - I just like to correct statements that suggest a route like that is prohibitively expensive. You only have to read through the IEM thread to see what a revelation it has been for the people that have made the switch. And to be honest, you don't even have to go with IEMs... a serious wedge with your own mix of the whole band in it, with the foh doing all the real work, is another great option. The crazy thing is, nobody batts an eyelid about paying crazy money for backline but if I said the best sound you'll ever have is if you changed your say, 1000 quid boutique cab for a 1000 quid monitor that has both you and the band going through it, most people would not be interested... Not saying my opinion is worth more than anybody else's - but I've done both routes in anger. My IEMs for example, cost more than most peoples complete backline... but that's how much I have been sold on the alternative method of getting a band sounding the best it can both in my ears and out front. The other thing is, my sound is consistent in every venue and I can hear exactly what I want. When I was at the drum show, I was having a similar convo with a drummer whilst at the IEM stand. If you were on a gig with IEMs, you can hear everything you want to hear at a volume you want to hear them. Percussion on a gig? Great! I want to hear that shaker and Indian bells they got going on. Chances of enjoying that on stage without IEMs? Zero. You'll be lucky to hear anything over the drummer. Anyway, the point is, is that this stuff is now available to all - whether it's on a stadium gig or a pub gig. - and I guarantee your audience will appreciate the band more if they can hear everything clearly through the PA. A decent PA yields better high frequency horns too - so getting your vocalist heard over the band is easier... and that is further cemented that the quieter band sound on stage means less bleed into the mics. As I say, Dinos can be Dinos for all I care... but it's interesting to see all these old guys advocating that nothing but an amp would do are all deaf and wired up with hearing aids... but each to their own.

It depends what line of thought you have when trying to make your point though. I know there's people that don't get it and that's fine... but you need to see the PA speakers as a replacement for a bass amp, a keys amp, a guitar amp (or 2) and the means to make a tiny portable drum kit sound huge. Oh yeah... and that's before you get to the vocalists. That's a huge weight and size saving across the whole band. And in terms of volume, you aren't deafening everybody onstage and outfront, your decent PA speakers are not going to run out of steam before your combo. Meanwhile, your band is going to project properly... e.g. So unlike those guys that are standing off axis to a guitar amp, those guys that are hearing the whole band through the PA are going to hear a balanced mix wherever they are standing. With regard to band ownership of PA, I own it all anyway... because I'd rather take a pair of tops and some in ears to a gig and know the band is going to sound great. If I'm playing with another band, I can just take a top or two to use as my rig.

Depends... a RCF 735/745, Yamaha DX15... they'll quite happily put out a shed load of bass...

Ooh! Does that mean we going shopping?

You need to replace your cables and plugs for black ones!

Nope - that's why I mentioned them. As a PA, a pair of either will do better than a lot of 2 tops and 2 sub setups.

Any high quality PA speaker is going to get your there. My current faves would be something like a RCF 735/745. Anything will do for guitar... but for bass, you need some tops that can take some abuse in the lows.

Whats your budget?

The plastic is always vulnerable on the cables as they are regularly dosed in the sweat and oils around your ears and hair. JH changed their connector on their higher end models for two reasons - to enable the adjustable bass functionally but to also make them more hard wearing. As always, carry a spare if you can... as at one point they will go, most likely at the ear connector end or the jack socket. In terms of the higher quality cable - I don't think any superior quality cable will improve things sonically when being used with PA gear - and even then, the connectors are still going to subject to the same sweat etc. Just keep using the wax picks routinely after every use and wipe them down. I tend to put mind in the acs sanitiser every couple of months too.

It's not going to be just the desk - it's maybe that the trim on the speakers is too high. You may need to turn those down. Basically, your output on your desk should never be going into the red when the output is at unity. Likewise, your speakers should never be clipping when your output on the desk is at unity. You are doing the right thing by using the PA for projection and keeping your stage volume down - I just think your gain levels are to pot.

If you are cutting out the front of house, it sounds like you are driving the inputs of the speakers far too hard and the circuitry is cutting the speaker in order to protect the components. Make sure that your sound guy knows how to gain properly and the input is set such that the speaker doesn't not peak. With regards to the crossover, you consider the PA system as a high and the crossover routes the frequencies coming from your bass to either the tops or/and woofers appropriately. An in appropriately set crossover wouldn't cause your PA to cut out - that would be the incorrect gain staging and pushing too hot a signal to the speakers from your desk's output. Set your speakers to 100Hz but with all honestly, with what you've said, it sounds like your sound guy isn't... and could do with a crash course before he/she causes damage to your PA speakers.

Pre EQ. You should have a crossover point set which is common between the tops and bottom. In reality, the correct answer is the one that your ears say is right. Assuming you are using DXS15, you would probably choose to go with the 100hz setting on both the sub and the top. There should be a crossover built into your speakers - so the sub will do the lows and the tops the highs... you just send a full range L and R to the subs. You can also implement an "aux fed sub" (google it)... but remember to high pass your tops if you do that.

OK - I realise that the monitor mix that I did way back has vanished due to be in my attachments prior to the basschat migration. Anyway, I'd like to think that I've moved on from where I was, especially now I am running a dedicated monitoring desk and dropping waves plugins and the like into the mix. Yeah, I guess I'm getting pretty serious about inears and the stuff! For those truly geeking - I've got a FoH desk, a monitoring desk, a broadcast desk (for Facebook live mixes etc) - all connected via Dante. (By running DAWs on various other connected Macs for example, I'm kinda limitless on the mixing front now). And of course, with Dante, it's easy to record the gig from all points of views (FoH mixes, ears mixes etc... with Dante virtual sound card). The stereo outputs to the inears were pushed to a Mac recording what you hear. There were also another other recorders (one DL32R and DAWs running - as this particular gig may be going onto video so absolutely wanted to make sure I had loads of redundancy! - Anyway, the resulting audio will sync nicely with the video being captured (independently to the feed that was sent via the live broadcast). Here's my den underneath the stage which was hosting the Dante switches, computers, mixers etc! And here was the view from the front before the punters arrived... Anyway, this was in ear mix for the female lead vocalist - hence the lead vocal being very prominent in the mix. Thing of note on this mix, it's not a mix that your would want to commit to record - it's tailored towards what the inear user wants. In this case, the vocal is really pushed (after all, which vocalist doesn't want to hear more of themselves? - same with drummers and bass drums (incidentally I have a separate channel for dealing with the drummers bass drum wants!). Any mono feeds have had pseudo stereo effects applied (to give more stereo spread) and panned appropriately to help try and avoid everything being central in the in ear user's head. The more you can shift from the centre position the better (helps things sound a lot more natural and less fatiguing). Hopefully you can hear the instruments spread across the soundscape. Personally, I don't like the sound of the stereo spread on the lead vocal when listening back - but when performing, it's great and gives a sense of space in your head. For those that complain about isolation, there's two hard panned condenser mics pointing toward the audience (3500 of them on this gig) - hopefully you can get a sense of them being in the room with you, especially at the beginning and the end of the song. Have a listen on headphones and see what you reckon... and tell me if you've ever played a gig with a wedge that sounds anywhere near as good as this! FemaleVox-HigherAndHigher.mp3