Which PA System?

and what is awesome is that this entire board all 28 posts and 2 pages are done by You MrJonesey, Wes, and Myself.... Just thought that was interesting

You know, I noticed that too. lol, I really expected to get more input on this topic. But, I can certainly say that I never expected to get as much assistance, expertise and knowledge as I did. Had it not been for the hep from Wes and yourself, I would have purchsed the Yamaha and had no idea how to set it up. I know have a basic understanding of ohms law when running speakers in parallel and that it is better (louder) to have less ohms when running from a solid state amp. I can now confidently run my daisy chains without fear of blowing a speaker or damaging my mixer.

Now, if I can just get the rewire correct on that monitor speaker when I add the extra jack. I've seen schematics on wiring in parallel and parallel/series. I'm guessing that I want to stick with just parallel. This is kind of how I see it:

From the speaker I would leave the current wiring as is and then simply duplicate the wiring to the first jack on the new second jack? So I will have two wires on the speaker pos and two wires on the speaker neg?

I also read that I shouldn't use metal to mount the jack. I think it said to use ceramic or wood.

So, let me know if I can expect any pops, sparks, smoke or other surprises when I fire it up.

Thanks again. You guys have been great to spend so much time helping out a struggling noob. :shock:

MrJonesey

Leear is right, the buying never ends. But Leear runs Pro Sound and hires for bands, so he really needs lot of gear.

A few years back I had a real simple PA. Just a powered mixer into two Mains and two Monitors. It used to take me 15 minutes to set it all up. And it sounded great, we would get compliments on our clear sound. Then I joined my current band and started building a bigger system. We have an unpowered board, dual EQs, Crossover, Amps, Subs, four Monitors.... Now we mic the drums and all the instruments. I kinda miss the old days with the simple set up. We sound good, but it sounded good with the simple system as well.

What I am saying is that you can go way overboard and spend thousands on PA gear. You can buy speakers and monitors that cost a grand each. You can buy a board that costs thousands. You can buy subs, and compressors, and effects units, and on and on and on....

But does it really sound better??

These expensive systems do sound better, but not that much. If you know what you are doing and set up your PA properly, you can get great sound out of a simple system.

And believe me, hauling all this stuff around gets old REAL QUICK. Keep it as simple as possible.

I don't see why you would need any more than two Mains and four monitors. 15" Mains crank out plenty of low end. We have subs but rarely use them, they weigh over 100 lbs. each. We only use them at very large venues. You want to mostly put vocals in the monitors, you can already hear your instruments on stage. I used to put Lane our other guitarist in the monitors so Dom our bass player could hear him on the other side. I set up next to Dom, so he had difficulty hearing Lane. But that's all you need really. We can hear our own instruments and drums easy.

You can put the whole mix in the monitors, but it is not necessary and just makes for more noise on stage. This can muddy your sound big time. So, put the whole mix in the Mains, but put as little as possible in the monitors, vocals only is best. If you have acoustics or electrics without an amp, but straight into the PA, then yeah, put them in the monitors as well. But guitars with their own amps leave out.

Pro Sound for big bands on a huge stage like Leear runs is a different story altogether. A guitarist cannot hear another guitarist 75 feet away. But this is not the case at all for bands that gig in small to medium clubs.

If each of you has their own individual monitor, that should be all you need. A 10" or 12" monitor is actually better for vocals than a 15". You want 15"s for low end like bass or keyboards. Smaller monitors work well for the midrange where vocals are (guitar too).

MrJonesey

As for that wiring, I am no expert, but that wiring you suggested sounds fine. You absolutely should go parallel to get a 4 ohm load with two 8 ohms speakers in parallel.

Here is a place to get speaker jacks.

http://www.lopoline.com/catalog/item/3698277/3343828.htm

For parallel you want to go from the positive terminal on jack #1 to the positive terminal on the speaker, then from the postive terminal on the speaker to the positive terminal on jack #2. You of course would go negative terminal jack #1 to negative speaker terminal to negative terminal jack #2.

Or, couldn't you go from the positive terminal on jack #1 to the positive terminal on jack #2, and then the negative terminal on jack #1 to the negative terminal on jack #2? This seems even simpler.

Alright, the PA has finally arrived. I got a little excited when my wife called me at work to tell me that some packages arrived but that they were too big and heavy for her to carry in. It is a little larger than I imagined, especially compared to what we were using berfore. I'll have to record one of our performances so you guys can see if you did a service to the world by helping us find our sound.

Thanks again, guys. We are all very excited to try it out!

Jim

Jim

Alright!

You know, I love buying guitar and PA gear. I feel just like a kid on Christmas Day. I check tracking everyday to see when it is going to arrive. I get all excited at work knowing it will be there when I get home or arrive a little later. And then opening all those packages!

Have fun setting it up and let us know how it sounds. :D

Wes

Congrats hope you love it....

Well, we finally got a chance to get everyone together yesterdy and play through the new system. The sound was incredible! We absolutely loved how clean and full we sounded.

We still have a lot to get used to and probably need to spend some more time with the manual. We couldn't seem to get it to crank up very loud. I must not have had something turned on, because we could crank the individual and master sliders all the way up and still not get to where it was overwhelming in the basement.

Beautiful system and I'm sure it will be all we ever need (for a few years) once we figure it all out.

Thanks again for all of your help! :D

if your not used to running a board try this... plug in the mics as you normally wood, do not turn up the slider at the very top there is a knob titled gain,if its not labled its the very top knob on the channel.. start talking into the mic and slowly turn in up until you see the channel indicator light just start to flicker once you see the light and is Cositent stop. Now turn your main volume to nominal or 0.... and slowly increase your slider on your channel as you keep talking into it. this should get you plenty of headroom and volume. never or atleast try not to go past nominal. be sure you have the speakers and amp plugged into the correct place as well. ( not familiar with this board, i had one that had a power selector switch you could select from 100-500 watts a side) let me know if this helps or not i'll try to keep thinking......

Thanks, that makes sense. I'll try it.

Also, I forgot to properly set the output switch. I can set the left and right to work together, seperate or bridged. I think I had the selector set to run together. The problem is that I had the left side running the FOH speakers anad the right side running just on small monitor. I think I should have had then seperated and that this probably brought down my overall sound.

I'll let you know haw it goes next time (most likely this week-end).

Thanks!

I'm an old teacher who does things best when given specific step by step instructions. I call it my "Doctor Seuss" mentality.

This website is the best for walking you step by step on how to set gain structure on your mixing board: http://www.mmproductions.co.uk/gain4.html

Follow the step by step process for setting your gain and your sound will be unbelievably better.

Thanks AustinMan. I printed it off so we can walk through it all this week-end. We plan to go step by step, take notes, mark settings, etc. I'm really excited to see what we're going to be able to do with this thing. Even without really understanding it, we sounded a thousand times better than before with the old rig.

hey ya know just off the top of my head.... I have a nice Behringer 18" sub for sale 250... only used 2 or 3 times.... give nice low end it can thump... has built in crossover as well

hey ya know just off the top of my head.... I have a nice Behringer 18" sub for sale 250... only used 2 or 3 times.... give nice low end it can thump... has built in crossover as well

I have really spent my limit for now, but it does sound awesome. Try me in a couple of months if you still ave it. I think it's definitely something we'll want to add on.

MrJonesey

Sorry to take so long to get to this. I agree with Leear, the first thing is get a good strong signal using the Gain setting at the very top of each channel (the white knob). So speak or sing (as loud as you perform) into this until the LED indicates a good strong signal. Watch the clip light if it has one. It is ok for the clip light to blink occasionally on peaks, but you don't want it on all the time.

Use the sliders for each channel to set the mix.

Use your Master volumes to get overall volume for your FOH and monitor mixes.

I am not familiar with this mixer, but I looked at the manual. I think you should set it up as shown on page 11 of your manual in "Dual Mono Operation". Make sure the Amp Mode switch is set in the center "MONO1/MONO" position. Use Output B for your front of house (FOH) speakers and Output A for your monitors.

You really don't want to go stereo when playing live. Folks on one side of the room will only hear half the mix and vice versa. Even "pro" soundpeople almost always go mono. Stereo can sound good in a very small venue, but you will have problems in a larger hall.

Also, make sure "pan" is in the center. If you run mono (which is really best for live sound), then always set pan in the center. If you use your mixer to record or play a very small room, then you can go stereo and use the pan feature.

It is not surprising that you did not get huge volume with one single monitor. An amp will only produce about 65-70% power at 8 ohms compared to 4 ohms. This powered mixer operates best with a 4 ohm load on each side. Run another monitor daisy chained to the first and I bet you will hear a big increase in volume.

These should help you get maximum volume from your system. But no matter how powerful a system is, it is easy to overpower it with loud guitar amps. So try bringing the volume of the guitar amps down some. Go for a good mix that sounds great. Musicians (especially guitarists) like to play way too loud sometimes. It is probably a lot louder than you think.

A lot of good info here. What is Speakon?