Phil Starr

OK most of the answer is: it depends. So I'm assuming you are looking to drive both speakers on one side of the PA and close coupled, ie close enough that the wave front is entirely in phase. You don't say if they are active or passive If they are the power is doubles and the radiating area is doubled so you'd gain 6db, in practice if they are passive the amplifier will be limited by the current the power supply can er.. supply so the power won't quite double but a 1db difference would probably not be noticeable. In practice it's more complex because they won't be close enough to couple perfectly and you'll get some cancellation. If they are active cabs then obviously you have two amps each 'seeing' an 8ohm load, if you are driving two 8ohm passive cabs from an amplifier and you are wired in parallel then the amp is driving into 4ohms and in your example the power handling is doubled to 800W.

Completely with Bill here, tweeters in bass cabs are for midrange mainly. The trouble is that few designs take a lot of care over this and certainly on mid-price cabs the tweeter isn't properly integrated into the design and is compromised by commercial decisions. You need rigid and fairly heavy cones to produce loud bass. Moving these back and forth quickly enough to make sound at high frequencies isn't really possible and above certain frequencies the outside of the cone lags behind the movement of the coil and the cone starts to flex and the sound starts to distort and you can see this in the frequency response also, most bass speakers show peaks and dips in response above 1khz. Speakers reduce in output from the side once the diameter of the speaker approaches half the wavelength. If you sit at right angles to the speaker the sound from the nearest part of the cone arrives at your ears before the sound from the far side and the delay causes cancellation. By the time the sound reaches you from the far side the cone has reversed direction. you can see all this in the driver manufacturers data. this is the Faital 12PR320 You can see the cone starting to flex at 1kHz in the blue line and also (red line) how much less output there is of axis due to cancellation. Between 2k and 7kHz its down between 12 and 24db so that's almost all the top end of the bass lost at 45 degrees to the side. The trouble is a decent horn/driver and crossover add considerably to the cost of a cab and may cost as much as the bass driver, adding roughly a third to the materials cost of the cab. Early designs were also developed with very little science behind them. Crossovers are often little more than a high pass filter often a single component to protect the tweeter so a lot of high end is added to the midrange peak that you already have and you can see on the graph. Since you have the tweeter and woofer operating at the same time there are also a whole set of new peaks and troughs and off axis issues. Lower crossover frequencies also mean more expensive drivers so they are 'crossed over ' too high and not sharply enough and what you end up with is that horrible tizz that everyone hates. Even worse is the piezo tweeter which can be wired with no crossover at all and almost inevitably sounds awful. Not a surprise, they are only £2.50 retail. So properly engineered tweeters should be concentrated on improving the mid-range and directionality of the speaker cab. they should give you cleaner smoother midrange and better intelligibility on stage. too many are just added because you 'need' one to appeal to a bigger market.

I gigged one of these for years and I've probably never sounded better than through my old Hartke, though memory does play tricks of course. I loved having the graphic and the contour controls worked well too. It's still up in the loft I probably ought to pass it on to someone who will use it.

Just a thought, I used to have an old Behringer B205D personal monitor that the drummer borrowed and mounted on a mic stand at ear level. If you can’t get him to go in ears then getting the monitor up at ear level means it doesn’t have to be so loud and moves it away from the mics. It’s a compromise but it worked for him, he bought the monitor off me

It's hard to give you really specific advice, without knowing the venue and type of music you play please just treat this as tips to try rather than 'this is the way to do it' If you are going bass from backline and unmiked drums then the only thing you have that will trouble your speakers are the keys. Adding subs really helps the kick but not much in the way of bass even goes through the subs, nothing at all if your are using backline for that gig. Getting the low frequencies out of the PA will help them a lot with power handling reducing both over-heating and excursion and subs will help for this but if money is tight and you are prepared to compromise for this one off then rolling off the bass in the keys will help. In fact it might be worth looking at what your keys player is actually playing with his left hand. A heavy left hand and electric bass isn't a good combination and both musically and in the mix you shouldn't be competing for the same sonic space. It's a sticking plaster strategy but if you have a 50 or 80Hz filter on the mixer it might be worth engaging it on the keys channel and seeing what it sounds like or alternatively adding about 6db/octve bass cut in their eq which will protect the speakers. In what looks like a long narrow space with a low ceiling in front of you it looks like it could be boomy anyway. Rolling off the bass will thin the keys if he is playing full chords low down but will leave most of what they do untouched and will clean up the mix, the punters will probably not notice.

Not all Behringer are the same so to an extent it depends. Generally you get what you pay for with Behringer. ”unmiked kit” You only need to match the drums and I’m assuming you do this at every other gig? If so stop worrying. An unmiked kit will be heard all through the bar and so will everything else. The punters will naturally arrange themselves where the noise is optimum. Those who want to talk will go away from the band and those that like it louder will move closer. The bar won’t thank you anyway if they can’t hear the bar orders. If there are that many people expect some absorption of the higher frequencies to be noticeable in the vocals. Ideally get the cabs as high as possible and if you can tilt them down slightly to point at the middle of the audience, though your speake stands probably won’t allow a tilt. Good luck and have a good night 😀

T nuts are a pain. I always use fingers to put the bolts in and get them finger tight before using any tools. They are usually cheap and nasty so this discovers the rough threads before you get stuck. You have my sympathy there. I never hammer them in any more, apart from being too close to a cut edge you rarely get a tight fit for all of them. Without the speaker present I pull the prongs in with a bolt and a penny washer. you only need to stop the t nut turning until it is finger tight, you might get away with it just using a bit of gaffer tape to hold it. Don’t tighten any of the bolts up until they are all finger tight as it stops you having any sideways forces on each bolt. it’s easier if you have a slight bit of movement available to line up all the holes and bolts.

Yes this has gone unremarked. No more endless one-twos whilst setting up. Line checking is just a look at the meters to see they are picking up audience noise. No horrible noise from my drummers over complex drum feed either. I can be pretty confident before un-muting that all is well.

no pun intended So earthing works by assuming that if everything is connected to the ground it is always at the same voltage. Mainly this is for safety reasons. The second thing you need to know is that we are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation coming from just about any electrical wires carrying an alternating current. This varying radiation will induce a current to flow in any wire that forms part of a circuit. If everything is perfectly connected to ground then that current will flow through the earth to ground. The problem is that earthing isn't perfect, there is always a small resistance in the earth circuit and a small voltage difference between different earths. Some of that resistance is in your equipment and some of it is in the house wiring. Sometimes it is enough to even give you an electric shock. So if you have a cable between two earted pieces of equipment the cable completes a circuit and current will flow along the cable down to earth and back up the other earth to complete the circuit. The earth shielding in the cable will pick up any electromagnetic radiation and a current will be induced. Most of the radiation will be from the mains flowing through all the mains wiring and things like electric motors so most of the noise now in your cable will be 50Hz hum you might also pick up radio too in this situation or the crackles from something with a loose connection. So (b) the ground lift thing works by breaking the circuit and (c0 no it wasn't the cab. It could be that you plugged the PA and your amp into a different mains socket and that one or both weren't earthed properly or were at the end of entirely different ring mains within the building, then there was a large motor running intermittently nearby during the gig or some other source of electromagnetic radiation. I try to run all our gear off a single socket, obviously you can only do this in the UK if you draw less than 13A in total that reduces the chance of this happening so long as all your gear is properly earthed and it eliminates the shocks you sometimes get from the mics due to floating earths. The ground lift switch is there just for this reason, to break the ground circuit, no circuit no current no hum.

These have a great reputation, though I've not tried one yet. £82 at Thomann, the alternatives in this price are possibly the Sontronics Solo £89, built like a Tank and the AKG D5 £77

I think both TuffCab and Warnex are very similar high build acrylics and you can regard them as interchangeable. Warnex from thomann and TuffCab is Blue Arans own brand

I always thought a click would be stifling, a straight jacket. Then I tried it and it is so liberating. The ultimate effect is that you just get tight. The creative person who won’t or can’t play in time isn’t really being creative. Unless they are playing solo they are just making everyone else sound worse. Just like the guitarist who can only get their tone by cranking their 100W amp. Ultimately you can only play together if you are together. If your drummer keeps good time then there is no need for a click and it’s good to know they’ll cover any mistakes and pull you back but if your drummer is really good you’ll be playing strict time anyway. If for whatever artistic reason you want to accelerate or slow or change tempo it’s all good but surely you need to stay together not half a bar after a random band member has decided to be ‘creative’. You shouldn’t need a click ideally but everyone should be playing the same time and the click is just one way of achieving that. Strict time is relaxing, liberating, you can be way more flexible if you know where the band will be in four bars time

Yeah I think for anyone who wants to shape their own colour LFSys is the way to go, unless extreme lightweight trumps sound quality. Although they aren't that heavy I'm 71 and carrying them up a flight of stairs is no issue, but Barefaced are just silly.

I said I'd report back from the shootout, a disclaimer here I was behind the speakers so I personally couldn't hear the direct output maybe John @Chienmortbb or @stevie or any of the other bassists there would like to comment? Even behind the speakers you could immediately hear the differences in sound and up on stage I could see the difference in audience reaction and I talked to people afterwards and a bit of what I'm saying here reflects those conversations. So the set up was straightforward: we had two LFSys Monaco speakers (very high quality FRFR bass speakers) with yours truly swapping the amps whilst @MichaelDean did the honours with the bass. Initially all the amps had the controls set to 12.00 except the master volume. Gnome first: no reason other than it was my amp and was set up before I went out looking for the others. It caused quite a stir on first few notes and at the end a couple of people said they were suffering GAS for one/going to get one. They are very bright airy and modern sounding. Next up the Elf: again this created quite a reaction. It's immediately quite a loud sound, a bit richer in the bass and with a really pleasing mid scoop. It kind of did have the generic Trace sound as proven later when we tried a proper Trace amp. It had a noticeably higher gain and was initially louder with the master at 12.00. Obviously that doesn't give you any extra power but it's going to jump out at you if you get to try one in a shop which is why they do it of course. Finally the BAM: to be honest it didn't get quite the same audience response but that was probably about the way we tested, I know from the measurements we did last year that it is in between the other two amps and that is exactly how it sounded. the Elf has a stronger bass and the Gnome a stronger top end sparkle. Like any taste test more always creates the stronger initial impression so the other two got the attention. It's still a fine amp. Once we had all three i went back to the Gnome and asked Michael to forget 12.00 and try to make the Gnome sound like the Elf, within 30 secs he was getting there and you should be able to get all three amps sounding similar to each other with just a little patience and without maxing out the tne controls. Again from last year's measurements I know the mid control works in the centre of the mid scoop they all have so it's relatively simple to remove that or to increase it. Finally I cranked the Gnome to demonstrate what sort of levels you could expect from 130W into 8ohms. There was still a bit of bass boost from the tone matching to the Elf and i took it to clear distortion and cut back to where i could just hear the distortion from behind the speakers. I could still hear the peaks being limited but this would be louder than I'd be likely to need on stage. In practice when I do use back line the Gnome doesn't really struggle as a stage monitor for bass and I only use my bigger amp when I have no PA support. The LFSys Monacos are 98db/W @ 1m. I'd like to thank Stevie for providing them and I've now bought one of the ones I used. I don't think there is a better FRFR bass speaker out there at the moment based on sound quality alone. I'd like to thank all the people who lent me their amps and Michael for being brave enough to demonstrate the amps to a room full of other bass players, I'd have frozen

I think that's maybe the price difference, Thomann are listing the Gnome at £129 so used at say £90 isn't going to tempt anyone to sell. You could hardly buy a pedal for that sort of price and for the buyer it's not enough of a saving to not buy new.

We'd love to see you at ours, maybe combine it with a holiday or take a sabbatical in the UK

As it happens we are going to the SW bass bash tomorrow and we will be doing a shootout of amps. I’m hoping that we will be able to start with the three micro amps. I’ll report back. We got to look inside all three. Whilst they aren’t identical they all seem to use the same chips in the output stage and similar power supplies. The pre amps are different so they were developed separately. The standard of construction was similar and good so IMO you should buy on sound or cosmetics with confidence that there isn’t a best one you’re missing out on. My Gnome has been 100% so far and I rarely use my bigger amps but I do go through the PA so most of what it does is at rehearsals.

As above most class D amps aren't repairable. when someone borrowed and blew my Behringer a few years back I did find someone in the UK who stocked replacement boards. At the time is was around £100 for complete amp and power supply which I thought reasonable. It will have gone up but you might be lucky.

The useless bloke is absolutely not useless, he's working hard to solve problems he's not causing himself and approaching things systematically. Those sound levels are scary if accurate. Female voices aren't usually as loud as male voices and few female singers in my experience have the confidence to pull the mic in closer and really belt it out. Quite apart from which the SM58 has a marked proximity effect which will make her voice sound unnatural as she is singing and instinct will make her push it away. The Laney is rather dull sounding in the crucial mid-range so she won't be getting the detail she needs to pitch and at the mic I suspect the band is more or less at the same level as her voice so turning her up amplifies the mud instead of lifting her out of it. I'm off to a gig in a couple of hours so I'll have a think and get back to you tomorrow. The proper solution for her is definitely in-ears and for the band to turn down but there are a few marginal gains to be had.

As a design aid I use a calculated value at 1m. The real life measurements I based my rule of thumb on were taken at the musicians ears as they were taken for health and safety reasons. The drummers experienced higher levels than 100 db but some of their drums are going to be less than a metre away. It will be interesting as to what you find but don't take it too seriously, taking a sound pressure level isn't quite point and shoot. They won't measure all frequencies accurately and will consistently under measure low frequencies and short duration peaks, the data needs interpretation. Sound meters including the ones on phones (which are pretty good) measure in standard ways which both filter in terms of frequency and time. Your meter may be A weighted which filters out bass and high frequencies C weighted which is less filtered or Z weighted which is flat response. Most only offer A or C weighting. They are also time weighted (averaged out over a time period) You'll be offered slow or fast and maybe impulse. Slow is measured over 1sec fast 125ms and impulse 35 ms. On top of this the microphone in your meter or phone won't be flat response or cover the whole frequency range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_level_meter Use C weighting or Z weighting if that is available. If you have a meter I'd stick to 'slow' and accept that I'm not getting any peak measurements. If you use a phone it will be able to record the data and yield more information but that will depend upon which app you use. I'm not sure how you will interpret this to your band, that will be the difficult bit but I'm really interested in how you get on. Good luck

Decibels are useful to know about, but just like watts they don’t tell the whole story. Hearing is also frequency dependent and the correct unit for how loud something sounds is the Phon. Midrange sounds are the loudest and that is why guitar amps sound so loud compared to bass amps. Guitar speakers also have huge peaks in their response in the 1-3kHz region where our hearing is most sensitive. For the record the 120db sound level I use as a rule of thumb for bass is a peak level. The loudest sound I’d want a bass amp to make without distorting. I needed something as a target when designing my first bass cab and it is chosen so that a bassist can match a loud drum kit. I found some figures from “a well known festival in Somerset” showing average sound levels at the musicians ears of around 100db and randomly selected 40db as my dynamic range. So 120db is a peak level and 80db would be lost below the audience noise. Since then that figure has proven to be robust with commercial cabs not able to reach that level sounding a bit weak in the loudest bands but it’s all good for those exceeding that level. sorry this is a bit of a thread derail but since I’ve been quoted I might as well come clean about where that no comes from.

If you are looking ar the RCF TT series then I’m guessing the budget is good? My duo gig with a fairly modest PA, a couple of RCF 310’s. We run two vocals, electric bass, guitar and programmed drums. So far we have managed all our gigs bar one with this modest set up. The most demanding was an outside gig with people sitting 50m away at the far end of the garden. We were loud enough that they could continue their conversation with slightly raised voices which was what the host wanted. The only gig I brought bigger speakers for was an outside gig where they wanted band level sound. For a jazz trio I think a couple of good 10s should be enough. Im wondering if you need a sub with double bass, acoustic feedback can be an issue so you’d probably high pass the PA? If so then the frequencies below 80Hz aren’t going to be a huge issue for the speakers. I’d be really happy with a couple of TT10As or RCF910s and you could add a 702 later only if you found you needed it. Without the kick drum in particular the need for a sub is reduced. Ive probably got a very stereotypical picture of a jazz trio, lowish sound levels, high sound quality, appearance is important. A few people in duos and trios are turning to the line source/stick systems which work well at moderate sound levels but look much tidier than speakers on tripods. Ive used my ART310’s as backline, they need a bit of bass cut on the floor but work well

I don’t know if you’ll want to hear this but to date the best floor monitors for your buck IMEare the RCF 310s. I’ve never tried the QSC12.2s as monitors but we used them as PA for years and they have some harshness, fine speakers though they are which would make me look elsewhere as a monitor. You mention a loud band. I’m assuming you can get feedback if you turn everything right up? If so you don’t need anything louder. The 310s strong point for me is feedback resistance, the response is free of nasties so gain before feedback is good. If you are running the 310s into distortion/overload then unless you’re on huge stages you are just too loud. They do need eq though. On the floor there is way too much bass as they are set up to work on poles. You don’t want low frequencies in monitors anyway. I shelve the bass response @150hz down 6db and then HPF as well. If we are close to the PA I will cut the bass even more as we get more than enough from there. RCF and others don’t use the big horn drivers in their smaller speakers because they don’t need to. The crossover point can be higher because the smaller drivers have a better response in the mid range so there is no gap to close. There comes a point particularly on small stages where just pouring more sound in makes intelligibility worse, we just aren’t designed to work in 100db environments.

It’s worth noting that midrange frequencies sound 12-18db louder than some bass frequencies so 115db of Guitar is a lot louder than 120db of bass. You really don’t want to be on a small stage with a fully cranked Vox AC30!

It can be. Basically though don’t worry about it because wattage is only part of the story. Sound is usually measured in decibels and some speakers make more sound for each watt than others. The other thing is that our ears are cleverly designed to cover sounds from the tiniest whisper to incredible volume by squashing down the loudest sounds. Ten times the power is needed to double the sound. A 500W amp is only a little louder than a 300W amp. Going from 100 to 400W sounds like a big step but is only 6db. A bass speaker might give anything from 90db to 102db or more so 100W into an efficient speaker might be louder than 500W into a less efficient one. Then the advertised power is often a lie so you’ve little chance of buying the right amp based upon power alone. Generally speaking though 300W through most bass speakers will cover most gigs.