PA advice please

[bassboy115]

So i played a gig last night as a support act. We borrowed the bands PA. They used a power amp and a mixer linked to 2 speakers and a bass bin.

I was just wondering as my band will be looking at getting a PA (eventually) if getting a power amp and linking it to a mixer is a better option than just buying a standard PA head and linking that to a mixer?

Im presuming that a power mixer just provides power to the mixer. And the mixer does the levels?

Bear in mind im new to the world of PA's.

So what would be the better option and also how much could i get a decent mixer and power amp for?

thanks
Alex

[wazz]

I would get a simple mixer with balanced outputs and then get a couple of RCF powered speakers (300w).
Use this as more of a vocal, keyboard PA untill you have the funds to get 1 or 2 bass bins. If you want to get larger speakers eventually you can use the RCF's for monitors.
Should be able to get it all for under £1000 including cables and speaker stands.

[P-T-P]

I'm no expert but I've looked after the PA side of things for my band the past few years.

What you'll need depends on what is going to go through the front of house (FOH) speakers (vocals only? bass/guitar/keys? some drums too?) and whether you want to have monitors (either wedges or in-ear type) sending those sounds on-stage in some form.

I take it by "standard PA head" you mean something that looks a bit like a bass or guitar head but with several input channels that can be mixed and then amplified all from the one unit which then sends the signal to the FOH speakers.

This is what is called a powered mixer. Some have just 4 channels and output 150 to 250w and look a lot like a bass head. There are others which are much bigger though with fader (slider) controls, individual EQ controls (bass, mid, treble) for each channel (i.e. each mic or instrument coming in). Some of these larger units are still housed in a case and just look like a big bass head, but some are designed to be laid on a table top like a more traditional mixer.

You can get powered mixers that will deliver up to around 1000w (usually 2 x 500w outputs one for left channel one for right creating a stereo mix if required). They are available with up to approx 20 input channels, some of which will be stereo pairs, so you might have 12 mono channels (mics, guitars etc) and 4 stereo channels (for keyboards, sequencers etc.). You then create your mix and it gets sent to the onboard amps which then drive the speakers FOH. Some of these will have on board FX and some also will have additional controls on each channel allowing you to create one or more monitor mixes. These monitor mixes will usually need to be amplified by a seperate piece(s) of equipment.

Alternative to a powered mixer is a an unpowered mixer which can do everyrthing a powered mixer can do and may or not have the same features (onboard FX, monitor mixing etc.) but it won't amplify anything.

If using an unpowered mixer you need to either send the final mix signal out from the mixer and then to either....

a) A power amp(s) which then amplifies the signal and sends it to passive speakers or
Active speakers i.e. speaker enclosures that have a power amp built in to them

With your monitor mixes you will either send them to power amps and passive wedges or to an active wedges (with on board amp) or to in-ear monitors.

There's a whole lot more that may need to be done depending on what features your desk has and what you are putting into the mixer. You may need an EQ between the mixer and power amp, you may need to route some of the channels to external FX units. You might want to use a crossover between the mixer and amp(s) to seperate the low and high frequencies sending them (via power amps) to bass bins and tops.

Note: Mon and FX on each channel are usually referred to as AUX. A mixer with 6 Aux per channel can be used to create, for example, 4 monitor mixes with the other 2 being used to route signals to external (or internal) FX.

Personally, I don't like using active FOH speakers or active monitor wedges because most of the time you don't have a plug socket near where they are sited and end up having to run extension cables everywhere. Plus, if you use power amps and passive speakers, your master volume controls are all in one place.

In your post you mention about running a mixer into a standard PA head and that would work, but is not the optimum set-up.

My band uses a powered mixer and passive speakers, in-ear monitoring and a single wedge monitor. The chain looks something like this...

4 x vocal mics
1 x bass (DI)
2 x guitar (mic'd amps)

These go into powered mixer (Behringer PMP5000) which has 2 x mon sends per channel and two FX sends (to internal FX bank one and two). There is a jack output and master fader for each of the two mon sends and the two FX sends. There is also the master send for the on-board power amps.

The FOH signal comes from the power amp outputs (L and R) and goes into a bass bin (one each side) which has a passive crossover built into it. The bass bin pumps out anything under 250Hz and sends everything else up to a full range cab. That's FOH taken care of.

On each channel the "Mon 1" controls the amount of that particular voice or instrument sent to the Mon 1 output. Similarly with "Mon 2"

FX1 is only used on the vocals and sends them to bank one of the onboard FX unit which has a nice reverb selected.

FX2 is used on all the channels to send to bank two of the onboard FX but there is no effect selected. As FX2 is dry (no FX selected) I use the FX2 controls to crete a third "full" monitor mix

There is an output jack for FX1 and FX2 and whatever is sent from each channel to the onboard FX is also present here.

Mon 1 output is sent to lead singer's in-ear monitors.
Mon 2 output is sent to my in-ear monitors.
FX1 only has vocals and is a wet signal (reverb on it) and I use this for guitarist's wedge monitor (more later)
FX2 is dry and is a the drummer's in-ear monitor mix.

The signal from FX1 goes into what you earlier called a standard PA head and with that I power the guitarist's wedge monitor. As it's a 6 channel mixer and lighter than many power amps we use that because in an emergency it would be powerful enough to run a vocals only FOH mix.

Okay that was quite a lot to take in I'm sure, but that's the basics and I hope it makes sense.

[Muppet]

Top answer there Pete!

[bassboy115]

Yeah thanks Pete! that was great!

So your powered mixer will power the pa speakers without having a power amp?

Basically what we will want to run into the pa is x2 vocals and sometimes bass, 1 guitar and drums!

So TBH were not really looking for anything massive 300-500 watts is more than enough!

i think that behringer mixer is the type of thing we will want, just smaller..

So if i was to get a powered mixer i could run that into Passive speakers and passive bass bins?

Im still trying to rap my head around the monitor chain bit but thats not important at the moment!

thanks

[P-T-P]

If you're going to put drums (as in mic'd kit) through you're going to need a total of around 8 channels:

2 x vox
1 x bass
1 x guitar
1 x snare
1 x kick
2 x toms/overhead

You might as well get something with a fe more inputs than that, just because you might not need them now, but maybe someone else will fancy singing down the line, or you might want to double mic the guitar amp, add a bit of acoustic guitar etc. The difference in price between the PMP5000 (20 channels and PMP3000 (12 channels) for example, is only about £30 or so. There's also the benefit of a little redundancy should a mixer channel conk out by being overdriven or a having dodgy lead going into it.

As for power, you'd think 300 to 500w would be sufficient, and just for vocals it can be if you have efficient cabs out front and the rest of you can keep your volume in check That having been said, it's always better to have an amplifier with an output greater than the cabs as the number one killer of PA cabs is an amp that is working to the max and as a result permenantly clipping. The clipping is cancer for cabs. Better to have more headroom and turn down, especially as you'll only possibly go past the cabs' capabilities for brief peaks of volume.

Best front of house sound you can achieve will come from putting as much of the backline through the PA and being really disciplined about keeping on stage volumes to a minimum. Bassists are usually good with this, guitarists not so much!

[P-T-P]

Oh yeah, and get the best speakers you can afford. Nothing will put a crimp in your FOH sound like cheap PA cabs. Second hand is ideally the way to go to get the best value for money 'cause new or old, speaker cabs, generally speaking, either work or they don't. There's not an awful lot to gain from buying new as long as you do your homework and buy wisely.

I picked up our current FOH cabs off eBay just a few weeks ago. Got Laney bins, JBL 15" EON tops, the poles to connect 'em and the littel PA head we use now to drive wedge all for under £300. Wouldn've been a bargain at £450!

If you have to buy new cabs, see if you can find a set of quality full range tops that can handle some bass through them and worry about bins later. Also it's worth looking at the weight of the cabs as PA cabs can be hefty buggers.

[OldGit]

Brilliant advice from Pete there ..

A few other observations
We run a little setup like you are talking about and we have managed two quantum leaps in quality during it's life time.
One was when we bought a pair of Electrovoice SX300 speaker cabs for the front of house to replace our crap/cheap ones. (forget the bass bins, you'll not need them at this level) and the second was when we switched to a Yamaha powered mixer from a Laney.
I don't know what model it is a normal "marshall head-like" upright thing but it has two amps built in - one for Front of house and one for monitors so that bit is easy too.
Then all you need is a pair of wedges and you can hear yourself sing as well ..
Do get monitors of some sort as playing without them is a) not necessary and really hard work. Singing without monitors will just mean your act will be not nearly as good as it could be.

Another thing we do is have a mic on just the bass drum. The rest of the kit is perfectly audible but adding a little kick to the FoH mix helps with the beat for the dancers.
We also have a tiddly bit of bass from my XLR out and line outs from the other two backline amps in the mix (add 4 vocals, a sax, harmonical, acoustic guitar, guest players etc, all plugged into teh mixer and you can see what Pete means about a 12 channel mixer getting full very fast)

As Pete says that way we can have the on stage stuff quiet(ish), have some in the monitors if needed and maintain a much higher quality of sound overall for the audience.

As with all things the more you can spend on quality kit the better your sound will be. This is very true for vocals and especially monitoring. Good cables (try OBBM on here) and good mics will pay for themselves several hundred times over. (better sound = more bookings = more money)

If you don't know what mics to get start with Shure SM58's or SM58b ("beta") as an absolute minimum. There are mic experts on here so just ask.

[P-T-P]

+1 on mic-ing the kit

Done about 150 gigs with current band and never once felt the need to mic the kit. The kick-drum occasionally but never the whole kit.

If your budget won't stretch to SM58s then those Behringer people have made a halfway decent facsimile called, IIRC the XM8500. We bought one as a back-up and now use three of them. Our singer used one instead of his SM58 a few gigs back and tonally it was very close to his SM58, just have to get a bit closer to the mic for them to deliver than you do with the Shure.

[MB1]

MB1.
Stop worrying about it, f**k it off, Worry about your bass playing, and let the f**k**g singer worry about the P.A.!!!!!!!!!

[MB1]

MB1.
Its him that uses it, first and foremost,and then trys to get everybody else involved ,because he doesnt want to carry it.

[OldGit]

[quote name='MB1' post='37131' date='Jul 26 2007, 05:01 AM']MB1.
Stop worrying about it, f**k it off, Worry about your bass playing, and let the f**k**g singer worry about the P.A.!!!!!!!!![/quote]


If we did that we'd all be up the creek
Hands up if your singer/front person knows much about sound

[bassboy115]

[quote name='MB1' post='37131' date='Jul 26 2007, 05:01 AM']MB1.
Stop worrying about it, f**k it off, Worry about your bass playing, and let the f**k**g singer worry about the P.A.!!!!!!!!![/quote]

LOL Im the singer and the bass player! Iv already got an SM58!

Thanks for all the great advice!

Ive seen a mixer on another forum for sale and just thought id ask just to get an i dea about things:

Behringer SL2442FX for £200
Is this a good price?
Is this a powered mixer?
Is this a good powered mixer?

Thanks again

[Timface]

hey sorry to barge in but can someone explain these points to a novice?

[quote]You might as well get something with a fe more inputs than that, just because you might not need them now, but maybe someone else will fancy singing down the line, or you might want to double mic the guitar amp[/quote]

what is the advantage with double micing?

And does anyone have advice on these speakers for pa?.... [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Class-D-CD215-1000watt-Rms-speakers-dj-audio-PA_W0QQitemZ190134598149QQihZ009QQcategoryZ69967QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem"]here[/url]

[The Funk]

My advice, get a Soundcraft EPM12 mixer (£220) over a Behringer, then go into a pair of active PA speakers.

[bassboy115]

so that mixer isnt powered??

Is the behringer?

cheers

[The Funk]

No, it's not powered. I don't know about the Behringer - try the Behringer site. Powered mixers are more expensive than unpowered mixers and on the whole you tend to get more active PA speakers than passive these days.

The advantage of an unpowered mixer over a powered mixer is that you can keep the same mixer but upgrade the speakers as required for different sized venues. Another advantage is the 'panning' facility on unpowered mixers - for some reason, most of the powered mixers I've seen don't have this (could just be I've come across the wrong ones). Then you can position the different instruments into more or less the same place in the stereo spectrum as they are on stage.

[P-T-P]

[quote name='bassboy115' post='37190' date='Jul 26 2007, 10:00 AM']LOL Im the singer and the bass player! Iv already got an SM58!

Thanks for all the great advice!

Ive seen a mixer on another forum for sale and just thought id ask just to get an i dea about things:

Behringer SL2442FX for £200
Is this a good price?
Is this a powered mixer?
Is this a good powered mixer?

Thanks again[/quote]

Behringer SL2442FX at £200 is not a bad price but make sure it's all working the way it should. It is not a powered mixer so you would need power amps to use this in a live set-up. The Behringer powered mixers all start with PM, eg PMH5000 or PMP518M.

As for good or not, opinion is divided on Behringer in general. I can only speak from experience and say that the PMH5000 we used for the past couple of years and the PMP5000 we use now (like one I just sold) have been brilliant and exactly what we needed at a fab price. There's still a bit of a worry that one day it will let us down, just because it's a Behringer, but 150 gigs in and no sign of that yet. Our attitude now is that it cost us about £330 and if it did only 100 gigs and died, it cost £3.30 a gig so more than earned it's keep.

[P-T-P]

[quote name='Timface' post='37197' date='Jul 26 2007, 10:10 AM']hey sorry to barge in but can someone explain these points to a novice?



what is the advantage with double micing?

And does anyone have advice on these speakers for pa?.... [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Class-D-CD215-1000watt-Rms-speakers-dj-audio-PA_W0QQitemZ190134598149QQihZ009QQcategoryZ69967QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem"]here[/url][/quote]

Class D speakers look great on paper and sound sweet but they are really underpowered when it comes to pumping out copious amounts of volume. Check out the SPl ratings. Our drummer had a set of 15s for his electronic kit but compared to the Yamaha 15s we had there was no contest. Class-Ds were something like 91db while the Yamahas 99db and Yamahas were delivering nearly twice the volume it seemed.

[The Funk]

I just think the mic preamps on the Soundcraft mixers are better than the Behringer ones. Although it's a very subjective thing.

[bassboy115]

ok thanks well theres a soundcraft powered mixer on the bay for £155... I think im gonna keep looking around just to see the kind of prices different ones go for! And eventually when we get around to getting one ill have this thread and an idea of good prices to refer to!

Thanks Guys!
Alex

[P-T-P]

[quote name='The Funk' post='37219' date='Jul 26 2007, 10:36 AM']No, it's not powered. I don't know about the Behringer - try the Behringer site. Powered mixers are more expensive than unpowered mixers and on the whole you tend to get more active PA speakers than passive these days.

The advantage of an unpowered mixer over a powered mixer is that you can keep the same mixer but upgrade the speakers as required for different sized venues. Another advantage is the 'panning' facility on unpowered mixers - for some reason, most of the powered mixers I've seen don't have this (could just be I've come across the wrong ones). Then you can position the different instruments into more or less the same place in the stereo spectrum as they are on stage.[/quote]

More active speakers than passive? Not sure that's true is it? Certainly there are more active speakers on the market but I am not convinced.

I don't understand the "keep the same mixer and upgrade the speakers as required" commet. A powered or unpowered mixer has nothing at all to do with what speakers you use. If what you mean is you can add more powered speakers then what's to stop you adding more power amps and passive cabs?

I won't say there are no powered mixers that don't have pan controls, but the kind of thing we're talking about here will have panning on board. Basically if it has two power amp stages, eg 2 x 400w, it's going to be stereo.

I have to disagree on the active speaker front personally. In about 75% of the places we play, it would be a total pain in the arse to get outlet power to them.

[The Funk]

Well, I'll just explain the comment about upgrading the speakers/power amp as required. I don't have strong views on the rest and I hadn't considered the difficulty in getting a plug from your active speakers to an outlet.

What I meant was that if you get a good quality unpowered mixer now you will be able to use that in venues of all sizes. If you're starting out now in smaller venues and expect to move onto playing bigger venues, then your power requirements may change as you progress. If that happens and you end up in a situation in which your powered mixer is not pumping out enough power, you would need to upgrade your mixer.

It's not a big deal but I just thought I'd raise it.

The only combination that I don't think would work is:

Powered Mixer + Active PA Speakers.

Edited July 26, 2007 by The Funk

[P-T-P]

[quote name='The Funk' post='37243' date='Jul 26 2007, 11:24 AM']Well, I'll just explain the comment about upgrading the speakers/power amp as required. I don't have strong views on the rest and I hadn't considered the difficulty in getting a plug from your active speakers to an outlet.

What I meant was that if you get a good quality unpowered mixer now you will be able to use that in venues of all sizes. If you're starting out now in smaller venues and expect to move onto playing bigger venues, then your power requirements may change as you progress. If that happens and you end up in a situation in which your powered mixer is not pumping out enough power, you would need to upgrade your mixer.[/quote]

I see what you mean now. Yeah there is that to it, although how big are these venues gonna get? 1000w of FOH sound should be plenty for most pubs and clubs. My feelings would be that if we ever get to be playing venues where it's not enough, needing new gear would be a nice problem to have as the bigger venue would hopefully correspond with bigger pay!

[OldGit]

I'd certainly advise against a Stereo setup at the 400 watts level. For that size of venue (up to about 175 people) You just need Mono.
As for panning the instrumens to reflect where people are on stage -..., I really don't understand the point ...
The only person likely to hear the benefit of that is someone in precisely the right place in the centre of the hall ...

Nah, don't worry about stereo FOH 'til you get up to the bigger places and much bigger kit.

Of course a two amp ("stereo") powered mixer can be very useful - one amp powering the front of house, the second amp powering the monitors, all in mono and all with passive speakers.

Incidentally we use a mixture of powered monitors (with eq) and passive monitors to give us the maximum control over the tone of each wedge as we have different requirements (ie different bits of the aural frequency left working in our old ears ) and different feedback challenges with the acoustic and electric instruments.
The passives run from one side of our two amp mixer and the powered minotors daisychain from a line out send from the monitor side.
It's relatively easy to run power to the monitor wedges.