Phil Starr

OK I wanted to do the PA shootout anyway so I'm proposing to do that in the main hall after lunch. I'm going to bring my 15" tops to compare with my 10" tops used with a sub, @Woodinblack is bringing his Evox system, all these are RCF Active systems and roughly in the same price range so its a reasonable comparison of big tops, little tops plus sub and a stick system If I can fit everything in the car I'll bring my old Wharfedale PA so you can see what a cheap old system will do and I can demonstrate the power alleys you get when you have the subs placed under the tops. I'll also attempt another cab build in the side room at some time in the morning demonstating the 'Easy Build' technique and showing off the new BC 8" cab design. I'm happy to take suggestions about what we might add to the PA shootout to help anyone thinking of buying PA gear in the next couple of years. Any suggestions though are welcome.

The problem is pretty well known but I've never seen a band address the problem before and to be fair not very many venues. Full marks to you for thnking of the solution and finding the right product. 6db extra headroom before feedback will make a difference.

Have you ruled out a self build? I designed the basschat 6" cab for precisely this use, it's tiny but has a proper speaker that will handle bass. The bottom end has been sacrificed deliberately but it has a flat response from just below 80Hz all the way up to the highest frequencies from a bass and in a small room it sounds beautufully clear and has plentyof bass if you don't want that rumble that permeates the house. You can use it with your TC If not then another option is to use a studio monitor, I use an RCF Ayra Pro 5, if you want tone shaping then something like a Sansamp or a Zoom B1 four will drive it or your Phil Jones Bighead

That's interesting, I've not come across that before, how do you go about it?

That's it really, Andertons have a sale on with some interesting reductions. A few RCF speakers (RCF 735 for £839) £200 of a couple of A&H Qu mixers, Loads of Behringer stuff cheap including X18 for £399, XR16 for £322, X32 Producer for £999 loads more too. https://www.andertons.co.uk/browse/offers/all-live-pa-offers/?page=2 Does this make me an influencer?

Ooh, bring it to the bass bash

https://www.thomann.co.uk/tc_helicon_voice_tone_d1.htm https://www.thomann.co.uk/tc_helicon_duplicator.htm https://www.thomann.co.uk/tc_helicon_critical_mass.htm this one is not really delay but another way of thickening out the sound I'm looking at these for my own use in my duo where I do the dooby-doo's and it would sound better if there were several bv's. Think Chelsea Dagger. The advantage of pedals is that you can switch them in and out with your feet obv's and your singer can/should buy her own. On another track you might like to look at something like the Mic Mechanic https://www.thomann.co.uk/tc_helicon_mic_mechanic_2.htm . You are right though, a mixer would give more bang for the buck. Given the number of pedals you have...... you'll adapt

Limiting is just controlling the peaks and bringing them down. Compression is looking at more of the sound and squashing it down reducing the difference between the loud and quiet bits. They both work the same way but compression affects pretty much all of the vocal sound depending upon how you set it up. Normally with compression you turn the volume up to compensate for the compression. https://www.sonible.com/blog/compression-vs-limiting/ I ought to say that the poblem with compression in a live setting is that because of the increase in gain you can get feedback problems, not a problem if your singer is loud and doesn't need a lot of ggain but a problem if there are howlround issues. Limiters tend to decrease feedback issues Detuned delay: delay is an echo effect but with often one repeat rather than reverb where the effect decays over time. If you set up a single repeat it sounds like a second voice supporting the first and if you can de-tune it you get a more realistic effect as no two voices are identical, delay without de-tuning sounds a little robotic if overdone. There's a thread on reverb and delay in the PA forum. TC and others make pedals for vocals which can create this effect for you.

I would have thought prety much most interfaces will do this I have a Moukey MSc1 and it sounds great alternatively a lot of small format mixers have USB interfaces built in. I'm using my Alesis mixer at the moment for this evening's practice The ana logue circuitry leaves a bit to be desired but it's good enough for personal practice and recording ideas. Hiopefully you can fix your old one though. Good Luck

I'd say for least financial loss buy something fairly decent and avoid anything that says 'practice amp' The reasoning is this: if you buy something old but good you'll be able to re-sell at more of less the price you pay. On top of that most 'practice amps have terrible speakers and tone. Your novice is going to be discouraged by poor tone and enthusiastic about making lots of lovely bassiness. They'll be even more encouraged if their first amp is good enough to jam along with mates. My first amp was a Hartke Kickback 10, bought for £100, used for four years and sold for £100 and I even gigged with it a few times and used it for dozens of rehearsals. A small gigging combo might be easier to re-sell and be a better bet and it will certainly be nicer to play

So are you proposing to build a cab? im assuming since space generally is an issue and given the capability of the Kappalite that you’d go for a 1x15. Essentially a version of the gen 1 Barefaced Compact. If you aren’t going to build then one of those would probably work well for you.

We will need the internal dimensions of your boot for our calculations 😂

Like you my bass has mainly gone through the PA for years and that is pretty much what the audience usually hears. The best bass sound I ever get is surprisingly through my little RCF 310's up on poles which we use for rehearsal. On the floor the bass is just a bit overwhelming without a lot of eq. but used as stage monitors you can get a good sound with them eq'd. I've also used them singly or as a pair for backline at gigs and it works ok. Nowadays I use in-ears. It can all be done successfully but you need to reset your patches and spend as long on getting it right as you probably have on your TC setup. Like you I feel I have to carry some sort of backline for the odd gig where nothing else is available and I do have an amp and bass cab. I think that's the rule though, There's no voodoo magic in bass speakers or PA speakers and all the rules apply. If you can't get away with a single 10 for a bass cab then a 10" PA cab isn't going to do it either. If cheap bass cabs dont sound as good as expensive ones the same is true of PA cabs. If the cab only sounds it's best after 2 weeks of setting and re-setting your signal processing then expect the same when you switch to FRFR. If the Spectracomp is central to your sound you are going to need a pedal with FRFR. In your case with the BC208 you'd probably need a decent 1x12 FRFR speaker to match the output. Personally I'd look at something a little better than the Headrush or Harley Benton where some savings will have been made in the bass driver, but they'll be fine if you don't push them. The advantge to you of course is that you can then rationalise and use the same speaker for bass and your guitars

Happy to take a look.

I'd love to see your BC 112mk3 cab. It's the only one of the BC designs I don't have.

We've swaped thoughts on PA before Mike and you were one of the West Country people I was thinking of. Maybe we could play with PA speakers in the side room during the day and perhaps do something more organised next year. Let's see what people want once we have a few more comments

Well I'm obviously going to be there. I'll bring along a collection of the Basschat home built speakers and I'll provide a PA for the main hall. I'll try and run something entertaining after lunch as I've done for a few years now. As Mike has already said that could be: Another bass cab shoot out. A quick comparative look at PA systems A live cab build of the new Basschat design Bass cab shoot out. I have four identical PA channels so can run a fair blind test with four cabs hidden behind a screen. Can you tell the difference? In the past we've run this with 12" speakers but I could do it with any combination of cabs, It might be interesting to throw an Ampeg into the mix and run it against a modern FRFR cab. PA Systems We've had a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of using smaller PA speakers with Subs v's bigger PA speakers without subs v's modern stick systems like the RCF Evox. A group of us in the West Country have discussed getting them all together in a room and trying them out. We could share that with everyone. Live Cab Build Six years ago I built a cab at the bass bash in 47 minutes. There's a video up on You Tube I've just put up a new design on Basschat for an 8" speaker and I'd be happy to have another go, probably in the side room. It would be nice to re shoot the video and put in some close ups to make it all clearer. I'm happy to run any of these but it does take a bit of time to prepare and I can only really run one. We did bass amps at the last Bash so I'm keen to do something different this time.

I'm going to duck that one Al. Beyond my pay grade, I'm not a studio engineer. This was a practical observation sparked off because I've just bought a new sub. (I know, there's me telling everyone else not to bother). We were trying to see where to set the levels relative to the tops and initially I couldn't be certain that they were actually working at all, so I turned off the tops to check. Sure enough there was a faint rumble. I turned the sub up a bit and reconnected the tops and now it was way too loud. To be fair I've noticed this many times before when using subs, a little goes a long way. I suppose the thing I'm trying to say more generally is to ignore the idea that there is one solution for every band. Very few of us actually 'need' to take a huge sub with us to every gig in the UK and that's probably true in most of Europe. Gigs in the USA may be different. For many of us too music is a hobby, it's OK to want a sub you don't need or to choose not to go that route. We all play in a unique variety of venues and the Venn diagram of our set lists probably shows a remarkably small area of overlap even for the cheesiest covers bands (guilty as charged there). Some music has more bass content than others but most has very little content below 80Hz. We are also talking about portable PA often set up in small spaces so our decisions are based upon a balance where practicality and sound quality has to be balanced. Some of us have to transport the PA in a family car, others struggle to lift 20kg tops above their heads or to move a 30kg sub at all. Sometimes you have to play gigs where the PA needs to be discreet and other gigs are in a barn (literally down here in the West Country). I try not to jump to conclusions about what sort of band people play in. Cost is a factor too, you might be better off investing in better tops than spending £500 on a cheap sub or saving your money altogether. If you are playing some sort of pop/rock music indoors to audiences of 20-100 people then you aren't going to need subs and if your tops are good quality active 12's then you can put all your instruments through them quite safely in the sense that they won't break. Towards the top end of that audience size and in bigger rooms subs might add something and also clean up the sound in your tops. If that is what you are trying to do a small sub might be appropriate. The driver in a sub is made differently from the driver in your tops so even a 12" sub will add something. If you are struggling to lift your tops then using small speakers as tops and adding in subs you can wheel in makes a lot of sense. If you just want to be really loud, play huge venues or a style of music that is unusually rich in lower frequencies then you are going to need a bigger PA and at some point the argument for carrying subs becomes pretty strong. There isn't some rule that says you need huge subs for every occasion or every band.

This is my experience too. Indoors with the sub on the floor and probably close to a side or rear wall you will get anything from 6-18db of reinforcement of the lowest frequencies so one sub in this situation is equal to two or more. In addition music generally contains very little sound below 100Hz. Specifically Indie music, but most of the pop rock covers pub bands tend to play. You only have to look at a meter to see that the spectrum will have the bass down an average 12db or so depending upon the song. Try playing any well recorded music through the PA and switch the tops off and you'll find there is almost nothing coming out of the subs even when playing the PA at quite loud volumes. RCF rate both the 732's and 705's as 131db peak. Those figures are inflated but by presumably by the same amount. You can add 6db for the second top and 6db for room reinforcement to the single sub in an enclosed space but you'll probably need the second one outdoors. In any case there is no way you'd push out full volume from the 732's into the vast majority of UK venues with fewer than 200 people present at which point you are usually looking at a touring rig or a hire company providing PA. the original question was "Sub Woofers - sublime or ridiculous" and the answer of course is neither, just a useful tool that you might need or might not.

£405.50

The frequency response is probably just the highest frequency they would recommend for the crossover and it would depend upon your tops. Even with eights you'd normally crossover below that. Yes the subs will reduce the bass load but that is a two part help. The crossover is the bit doing the job here. You are effectively adding an HPF for your PA. All ported cabs have a point just above the tuning frequency where there is an excursion peak and there is also increasing excursion as the freqency drops it's extreme excursion that will lead to failure of the speakers most of the time. Obviously the crossover will also remove some of the electrical power from the tops too so that will mean less heat in the coil but in practice the power going through the subs isn't much so the coil temperatures in your tops won't drop much either. That leads me to ask why you want to do this? Your active speakers are protected from almost all overload issues as i found out when an idiot sound engineer overloaded one of my ART310's accidentally when he had problems with the router on his Behringer mixer. It simply switched itself off and it reset when I unplugged it and works perfectly since. You can probably clean up bass in your PA by using an HPF without affecting the sound much. A designated HPF will probably fiter at 24db/octave and the one in the sub probably at 12db/octave, depending upon how it is done in your model/make. Are your speakers showing any signs of stress at the moment? Are you loud enough at most gigs? Do you want more bass in the mix and more of that deep booming disco bass? There are threads on BassChat about sound engineers ruining gigs with over enthusiastic use of sub-bass. Adding subs isn't all joy, there's an upside and a downside. The downside is obviously more to carry and a bloody big box at that. You then add in a box which radiates sub bass out at 360deg including backwards exciting room resonances in most British venues with their tiny misshaped rooms. The backwards sound floods the stage with sub bass which is a total pita It's more complexity and there will be a longer set up time and a bit of a learning curve until you get it all working well. I've got subs but they go out once a year probably and almost always to open air gigs. Obviously they can also be great, you don't have to have them too loud and you can filter out the unwanted frequencies or trim them down with eq. The will reduce the excursion of the mid/bass drivers in your tops and they will allow you to use smaller mid/bass drivers and smaller tops. I'm using mine now a bit more and taking 10's not 15's and I'm toying with the idea of using a small sub with 8" tops for some gigs with my duo. RCF do a rather nice 2x6 top which I'm wondering about but that is probably just GAS. Are you considering new tops? I fear I might not be the only one suffering from GAS

Lidl were doing them too around a fortnight ago but they are widely available. I bought a Lidl one; max load is 250kg so you can stack all eight subs

It's so difficult to compare PA speakers on specs nowadays. I'm seeing over-quoting of specs by 4x regularly and similar over-quoting of db levels for sound output. The sums in their advertising literally don't add up. The idea that a single 12" speaker can handle 2,600W of sub bass frequencies is just absurd as is the idea that it can ouput 130db sound levels. However i do know from direct experience that the TX series and the TS series are chalk and cheese and I personally wouldn't look at the TX. I don't think the 26kg for a sub is that bad, you'll struggle to find anything much lighter and it isn't something you have to lift onto a pole, Lidl and Aldi have both sold little trolleys you could wheel them on in the last fortnight and our local stores still have them in stock.