Ideal PA rig?

[Truckstop]

Hello all, need a little advice!

Following on from the thread about getting a decent PA rig for less than a grand, I thought I'd ask for some advice on what makes up a useful, flexible PA rig.

I play in a 5-piece covers band covering everything from Paranoid (soon to be dropped though I think) to All Night Long. We are made up of 1xVox, 1xBV (doubles as a bassplayer too), 1x Bass, 1xkeys, 1xguitar and 1xdrummer. The band have been together for a few months, and I've been a member for just over a month. I've already played two gigs with them and we have another 12 booked in up to June and another few in the pipeline. So we're looking at being quite busy over the summer.

At the moment, we use a small, old PA system comprising of two tops (Peavey somethingorothers) for keys and vox and it simply isnt good enough for any room big enough for 50+ people. The drummer has to force himself to play quieter so he doesnt drown everything out! Any louder and the speakers fart out like hell, not very good at all! I'm terrified if we get a good gig in the near future (a wedding or a little festival) and we simply wont sound good enough to impress potential customers.

We're quite ambitious aswell; we all want to play week in week out in the future and we want to end up playing large corporate gigs. Because of this, we understand that sometimes we'll need a PA for a large room, and sometimes we'll only be playing in a spit-and-sawdust type room. We were also discussing lighting briefly; is that something worth thinking about right now?

So, basically, what makes a good PA rig? Lets say, for arguments sake, we can get £3k together. What can that buy us? Do I need compressors, reverb units, feedback destroyers? How big does a room need to be until we need to mic the drumkit up? And what's the difference between active, powered and passive speakers?

Once again, any help gratefully recieved and feel free to throw in any experiences you have. Every little helps!

Alex

Edited March 7, 2012 by Truckstop

[bertbass]

It sounds to me that you've got a lot to learn in a little time. My suggestion would be to spend a few hours, it will turn into weeks as it's very addictive, at [url="http://billfitzmaurice.info/forum/"]http://billfitzmaurice.info/forum/[/url] Everything that you wanted to know about P.A. and you can build the cabs yourself and have pro equipment at semi-pro prices. For speakers I use Otop 12s and T39s and couldn't be happier. You'll find details of these and the whole range of cabinets on the index page, but even if you're not inclined to build your own cabs, the amount of information on there is amazing.

Edited March 7, 2012 by bertbass

[leftybassman392]

[u]Speakers[/u]:
Active & powered mean the same. They're more expensive but worth it if you can afford them, because the built-in power amps are invariably tailored to the driver characteristics (so you get good sound quality and a little more perceived output for the rating). Also, they're easier to use as you simply take the o/p from your desk (usually XLR) and straight into the back. Most will have sound contouring options and a few other goodies built in. Because of the way they work they can be daisychained if you need more power (which makes them flexible).

Passive speakers require separate power amps. I'm not a fan personally so someone else will need to speak on their behalf.

[u]Desks[/u]:
You don't need to spend a fortune to get quality, but don't skimp either. For simplicity you might want to consider getting one with half-decent effects built-in. Plenty of good ones out there from the likes of Mackie, Yamaha and others. Aux outputs are useful for onstage monitoring, and you'll likely want at least 2 prefade (more if everybody wants their own mix). For the time being you can probably do without outboard, but in due course you may want to invest in some compressors and perhaps a couple of gates (some desks have them built-in as well), and maybe even some sound enhancement and feedback control.

[u]Mics[/u]:
With you budget you can afford some good ones. You might be surprised what you can get with change from £100. For ultimate quality go for condenser technology (though you may struggle a bit at that price level), but plenty of very good dynamic mics around at that sort of price. Make sure you get good quality stands (K&M are the benchmark) and cables (I'm pretty sure OBBM on this forum could help you out there). Mic stands that don't stay where you put them and cables you have to jiggle a lot do not make for a professional image!

If you have that much to spend, you might want to consider getting someone willing & able to do the sound for you. Saves you the bother of having to do it yourself, and will be able to sort out minor issues on the fly (not to mention getting the best from the equipment). Good corporate gigs pay well, and you'll be able to afford it.

Hope that helps. I used to do p.a. hire (albeit on a fairly small scale), so feel free to ask.

Edited March 7, 2012 by leftybassman392

[JTUK]

£3k...? Sounds a lot but you can easily spend it.

First thing you have to know is what is the sound difference between quality and general stuff.
I've posted before that most bands have awful P.A's and that doesn't give the vox a decent chance.
So assuming the vox are decent and can stand a good P.A, then you should listen to bands with a HK system. This is decent enough
and I would suggest the minimum you should contemplate if you are going to play a place where this stuff matters.
Most function bands that draw decent money know the value of a good P.A and will invest in it.
Priority number one is clarity and top end sparkle on the main vocal and then also on BV's.

Mid priced stuff that will cut it are Martin and HK. You can pay silly money for that or get lucky with e-bay.

Not so up on current RCF stuff, but JBL's are not the kit they were, IME... EV is ok and entry level.
Some people do ok with Mackie but some of their stuff is marginal, IMO.

If it were me with £3K to spend, I would search for cabs for £1000.. These would form the basis of the high end.
A couple of EV SA300's for monitors, so £500 there.
Amps...?? 2x600 watts. this is where you can scrimp to a degree as the critical component, IMO, will be the cabs..ie ..you'll hear more difference there than in a TOP amp.

Don't like the sound of Belringers desks myself so a Soundcraft or something as minimum. 16 ch sounds fancy but you need to work out what you will need.
You could start with 8.

But I still maintain you'll hear more clarity from the decent cabs alone that any nonsense from Desk or amp..

If you are good with e-bay you might be able to pick the desk, amps and cabs for £2000 or so. The rest in for mics, stands, light rig etc ..

After you have made sense of this lot...then consider subs. You need to be able to balance your backline before getting into mic'ing up tho ..as a bad single mic'ed up is
still a bad signal rammed down people's throats more.
If your backline sounds very good..then mic'ing up becomes easy...if it isn't, it is a nightmare you do not want on every gig.

[nottswarwick]

I'd got for a decent desk with built in effects (for the reverb), and 2 active tops to begin with, along with one active sub. You can then add another sub, or even rent in more powerful cabs for the odd larger gig if necessary.

Desk wise I live the Allen and heath Mix wizard 16/2. but the Yamaha MG series are also good, and cheaper.

[charic]

[quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1331141172' post='1568403']
[u]Mics[/u]:
For ultimate quality go for condenser technology (though you may struggle a bit at that price level), but plenty of very good dynamic mics around at that sort of price
[/quote]

It's worth noting a couple of very important negatives about condenser microphones (general):
- They're much more fragile
- They're much more sensitive

The second might sound like a plus but unless it was designed specifically for live use then you will almost certainly struggle with feedback control. It will also pick up the drums and god only knows what else.

I was recording an upright piano in a large classroom at college once and picked up the sound of a ticking clock very prominently in the mix. It turned out to be a clock in an adjoining room on the opposite wall!

[brensabre79]

It might seem old school or even controversial but I would avoid powered speakers to be honest. If the amp fails you have to replace the amp AND a perfectly functioning speaker or get it repaired - which might not be cost effective.

I would also say the biggest factor contributing to your problems is probably putting the keyboards through the PA. Keyboards cover a huge range of frequencies from sub bass all the way up to beyond hearing range harmonics and to reproduce all these frequencies you need something similarly powered to your bass amp. Same goes for anyone miking up the bass drum and sticking that through a vocal PA - it sucks all the power away from the vocals and distorts.

First off i would ask the keyboard player to sort out a decent amp and get them away from the PA system. See how it works then - you might not need to upgrade the PA all that much. you could also take a look at below and see if you can just add to what you have as some of it may be doing OK as it is...

Next I would invest in some mid/top pa [b]speakers[/b], we use Yamaha ones capable of about 400w RMS each and drive these with a Behringer iNuke 3000 [b]amp[/b]. Due to the impedance of the speakers we would never get more than about 600w in total out of this however we never need it because [u]only vocals[/u] are running through it.

You should get a [b]desk[/b] with built in FX (for ease) and you should get one with twice the number of channels you think you'll ever need. Because you never know... So if you have 4 vocal mics, get an 8 channel desk.

I would also strongly recommend a [b]graphic equaliser[/b] (and learn how to use it) to get rid of feedback frequencies - this will drastically increase the output level you can get to. I would get a stereo one and use one side for the front (running in Mono) and one side for the monitors...

Again, I would avoid powered monitors, they are a pain in the arse for the same reason as above. We use the other side of our iNuke amp to power the two [b]wedges[/b] we have, once again, because you are only putting vocals through these you don't need to spend mega money. Something capable of 300w in total should see you right on stage. We use Yamaha ones with 10" cones and a tweeter.

We frequently play large function rooms and marquees, we have never run out of power and because all of the amp/graphic/effects/desk are in one case, already wired in setting up is easy, just running 4 mic cables to the desk and 4 speaker cables to the speakers. Ring out the feedback frequencies (Front and monitor) and we're ready to go!

The key thing though is understanding the equipment you have and how to get the best from it. you could spend 10x your budget on top of the range gear but if you don't know how to use it you might as well sing into a paper bag.

Sorry for the long post, i guess theres quite a bit to cover!

[crez5150]

[quote name='Truckstop' timestamp='1331124386' post='1567992']
Hello all, need a little advice!

Following on from the thread about getting a decent PA rig for less than a grand, I thought I'd ask for some advice on what makes up a useful, flexible PA rig.

I play in a 5-piece covers band covering everything from Paranoid (soon to be dropped though I think) to All Night Long. We are made up of 1xVox, 1xBV (doubles as a bassplayer too), 1x Bass, 1xkeys, 1xguitar and 1xdrummer. The band have been together for a few months, and I've been a member for just over a month. I've already played two gigs with them and we have another 12 booked in up to June and another few in the pipeline. So we're looking at being quite busy over the summer.

At the moment, we use a small, old PA system comprising of two tops (Peavey somethingorothers) for keys and vox and it simply isnt good enough for any room big enough for 50+ people. The drummer has to force himself to play quieter so he doesnt drown everything out! Any louder and the speakers fart out like hell, not very good at all! I'm terrified if we get a good gig in the near future (a wedding or a little festival) and we simply wont sound good enough to impress potential customers.

We're quite ambitious aswell; we all want to play week in week out in the future and we want to end up playing large corporate gigs. Because of this, we understand that sometimes we'll need a PA for a large room, and sometimes we'll only be playing in a spit-and-sawdust type room. We were also discussing lighting briefly; is that something worth thinking about right now?

So, basically, what makes a good PA rig? Lets say, for arguments sake, we can get £3k together. What can that buy us? Do I need compressors, reverb units, feedback destroyers? How big does a room need to be until we need to mic the drumkit up? And what's the difference between active, powered and passive speakers?

Once again, any help gratefully recieved and feel free to throw in any experiences you have. Every little helps!

Alex
[/quote]

You should go speak with Ian @ Mercury AV. Not too far from you on Welwyn. He'll give you an honest appraisal of what you need. I'd still go with hiring some kit first so you can get a feel for yourself of what your requirements will be

[Truckstop]

Wow, lots to digest here!
Thanks for all your input, got a lot to think about.

I was thinking of a hiring a PA rig and then spending a day with the band chopping and changing different speakers and experimenting with keys and vox going at the same time innit.

Anyway, thanks again!

Alex

[JTUK]

Sounds a good idea.

As said, HK is pretty readily available and will be a decent enough benchmark....then you will hear why PV and the cheaper stuff doesn't cut it.

Not saying there is no use for that budget end...and in some ways it can be far more reliable than a better name brand using chinese tat...but
the sound is pretty limted/squeezed or squashed, IMO.

[mrtcat]

+1 for the bill fitzmaurice forum.

Speakers are the window to your sound. Get good ones from the off and you'll be doing yourself a huge favour.

I agree that powered cabs are more convenient but I find there's more selection in the non powered market and powered cabs can be pretty costly. For me there's NOTHING more important than good quality speakers and a good quality EQ. The Behringer DEQ2496 is brilliant as you can use it with an RTA (real time analysis) mic and it will really help you get the very best sound from your system. Couple it with a Behringer DCX2496 crossover (assuming you'll want subs) and you can even protect all your drivers with the limiter function.

My band plays the same stuff you guys do and we have the following:

4x Bill Fitzmaurice DR200 Tops
4x Bill Fitzmaurice T39 Subs
A Mackie Onyx 1640i mixer
A bunch of outboards (EQ's, compressors, crossovers, reverb etc)
2x Behringer monitors (an extra eq for monitors is a must)
Three power amps
Enough cables to wrap around the globe twice.

We don't take it all to every gig but we can play small pubs up to 300+ person venues with various combinations.

I know I'm not on your doorstep but I'd happily run you through what we have and how we use it before and during a gig if you ever ventured this way. If you get a gig this way (Wycombe / Milton Keynes / Alyesbury)in the near future I'd run it for your band if i'm not playing elsewhere myself.

[Truckstop]

Hello mate, thanks for your offer thats's great! My band play at the roundabout in Wycombe on the last Saturday of every month until July, it'd be great if we could link up and I'll nab some basic gear to see how it all works!

Cheers

Alex

[mrtcat]

No problem I'll check our calendar tonight and pm you to sort details. Some of our band are from Wycombe so I'll bring a few people along to watch too.

[Brummiejon]

+1 for a HK rig..... They sound great for the money..... My band has a small 600w LUCAS system...... Fits in the back of a car, amps and crossovers all built in (it's an active/powered rig) no worries about set up and biamping, it's all done for you ( great for a beginner). Just plug and play into a Yamaha mixer and we used powered behringers for monitors...... The 600w just about cuts it for a crowd of 50 but HK do a much more powerful LUCAS system now with digital speaker management..... When we upgrade to a bigger rig, I'm just gonna buy another LUCAS and daisy chain them together..... That's how much I like them. Martin Audio are better but much more expensive, HK audio.... HiFi quality at a good price.....
Ps.... Peavey PAs suck
BJ

[crez5150]

Have to say I've had the complete opposite with HK..... found them truly lifeless and uninspiring. Had the Elias and hire a Projector system.... not worth the money IMO. We have a few different PA systems including JBL SRX, DAS, K-Array (very nice) and a few Fohhn boxes too. We have the new HH Electronic products which are fabulous ( I would say that....) but I'd have to say that the DAS Audio is probably my favourite. Punchy as hell and extremely linear

[leftybassman392]

Yup, active is definitely the way to go if you want an easy life. It's just easier to get a good sound, easier to expand for bigger venues, and I know I've said it before, but having a sound tech FOH beats doing yourself any day of the week and twice on Sundays. (I know this because I've had to do both many times.) If the gigs are getting you the folding, think how much better you could sound with somebody doing it for you!

[Jack]

I've hated the HK stuff too, but I guess it must be popular for some reason. At uni it was in a few of the rooms that my band used to play in and that we hosted plays in with the drama society. I've sat on both sides of those rigs and not liked it, but they might just be sub-par installs.

I love that you want to put more and more things through the PA, and that is certainly the professional way to do things, but you have to wonder if hat's really the correct solution. In smaller rooms, I would have said to go with a mixer (maybe a powered one) and some smallish tops for just the vocals but you guys have keys which means that unless the keyboard player has a suitable amp you're really going to need to bring subs to every gig. Hiring might be easier, and it's certainly going to have you sounding better. The pros to having your own include consistent sound, you personally needing a smaller bass rig and having the equipment whenever you want it and not at the mercy of someone else's timetable. I mean, tell me you wouldn't use it for house parties if you had it in the garage.

On that note, I'd say you're looking at two tops, two subs (ideally, though one would do in smaller rooms), a mixer, crossover and either one (mono) or two (stereo) amps. Stereo is really, really over-rated for live PA systems and usually just means that half the bar wont hear half of your stuff, IME go mono. Buy an amp that can handle two tops on one side and two subs on the other. That way you can add another later for more headroom with no worries.

If I had 3k, I would go with 2x Electro Voice ELX 112 tops and 2x EV ELX 118 subs. The EV stuff gets fantastic, fantastic reviews and IME can't be beaten at this price point. I've never mixed on it but a local guy we work with has a little rig with this stuff and it's pretty amazing.* That's about £1500, £500 will net you two big power amps such as the Peavey PVi 3000. £300 or so for a decent mixer, of which there are many good models from Allen and Heath, Yamaha, Soundcraft and even Peavey.

Crossovers. If you're at all technically-minded, might I suggest a processor rather than a straight forward xover? Something like a DBX Driverack will let you eq your whole rig, crossover correctly, run low/high pass filters on the top and bottom of the sound to get rid of unnecessary crap in the signal, and very importantly delay your pa by a few milliseconds to the align it to the band's backline. This is the #1 reason why small-band, self-run PAs sound like ass, trust me. It's complicated an expensive (you're looking at like £400 for a new one) but if you can fathom an ipod or a laptop it would be really, really, worth it and would save you buying and carrying a massive rack to do all that stuff for you. At the least, £200 would net you something like a DBX stereo, 2 way crossover easily. Less on ebay.

At this point we've got maybe £300 left which isn't a lot but it will do. Ideally you'll have bought some stuff used or on special offer and have more like £500+ for this accessories section but you can always buy more mics and such later on. This money has to buy you a decent 6-8 space rack (room to grow!), speaker stands, good quality cables to wire everything up, a few mics (Shure SM57s and 58s are a godsend and can pretty much do everything reasonably well between them) and covers for your speakers if you're feeling really fancy. I'd also love to suggest £50 or so to pay a buddy or local tech to check everything out and make sure it's set up right and as much as you can justify on a decent usb soundcard for your laptop so that you can record a simple mono mix of everything your band does to listen to and critique later on.

You didn't mention monitors. If you don't have a spare amp channel (I gave you 4, so you do if you really want) the easiest thing to do here is buy some tops that can be laid down to act like monitors and run them parallel to the mains. It's not pretty and you don't get a separate monitor mix but you will be able to hear each other and isn't that really the point? Otherwise buy some powered monitors and run them off an aux output on your mixer.


* Which leads me on to a very good point. He's a good soundman. The more YOU learn the better your band will sound, for free. Some very basic but useful tricks and traps to google or search for on prosoundweb.com: 'Power alleys' 'aux-fed subs' 'backline delay' 'how to mic a drum kit'.




EDIT - Maths was messed up, didn't include the tops in the total.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Jack

[Truckstop]

Wow, again thank you all very much for your advice everybody!

Can I be proper noob-ish and ask what a crossover is? I'm struggling to work out what one would be used for in a PA!

Cheers again!

Alex

[Jack]

It sits between the mixer and the amps and puts the high-frequency content (tin whistles, violins and Axel Rose) through the tops and the low-frequency content (tuba, kick drum, Frank Sinatra and a little known and even less appreciated instrument called bass guitar) through the subs.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Jack

[mrtcat]

Very basically a crossover essentially splits signal sending everything below a pre set frequency to the low end speakers and everything above to the high end speakers. Many can split three ways low / mid / high. Lots of the better units have some other really useful features built in.

[mrtcat]

Jack beat me to it.

[JTUK]

[size=5][sup]Unless you are running hi-powered low end, then crossovers are less critical..esp with units that run their own controllers..like Martin Audio, for instance.[/sup][/size]
[size=5][sup]The controller will fix the x-over point to the subs anyway.[/sup][/size]

[size=5][sup]If you intend to mic kit and bass and keys, then you will have to contend with splitting the frequencies to cabs that handle it better..and the generic term fo doing that is a cross-over[/sup][/size]

[Truckstop]

Ah, so that's what it is!
I knew PA systems and more advanced bass cabs have that function but I never knew that's what it was called!

Cheers

And thanks for PM's!

Truckstop

[Brummiejon]

Funny how people have such different perceptions... HK has been great for us, we get compliments on our sound all the time.

We did play a Freshers Ball at the University of kent in Canterbury, that had an installed HK rig that looked the buisiness but sounded awful.... The reason wasn't that the rig itself was bad, the installers had compressed and limited the life out of it to protect it from Numpties who didn't know how to use it. Unfortunately it was all locked down and I couldn't access the settings to change it.

That is another point, you could spend a fortune on a good "seperates" rig but if you dont know how to set it up properly and tweak it, you wont get the best out of it and still end up with a bad sound.

The beauty of powered systems is that a lot of the tweaking has been done for you, OK you can't adjust it but its always worked for us and I've never had to adjust it other than a bit of EQ. As with reliability, OK if the amp in the sub blew, we'd be a bit stuffed (probably use monitors out front to save us and get it fixed for the next gig) but in 4 years of regular gigging, never had a problem.

If I were you, keep it simple until you really understand about bi amping, crossovers, limiting etc..... Good sound reinforcement is an art form in itself......

Good luck


*BJ*

[pete.young]

Someone in another thread recommended a book called Live Sound for the Performing Musician by Paul White. I'm working my way through it - seems like an excellent book with loads of really handy explanations of everything you need to know to get by.