Monitor feedback

[Phaedrus]

[quote name='spinynorman' post='666203' date='Nov 26 2009, 01:28 PM']@Phaedrus: I saw some reviews of the dbx231 that said it was noisy. How have you found it? It's a bit more expensive than the Behringer, so I was expecting it to be better.[/quote]

If there is any noise, it'd be pretty hard for me to tell if the 231 was responsible or whether it was the Peavey mixer, or one of the sources, or the in-house power supply, or the speaker's proximity to any lights, or any number of affecting factors. I guess the best thing I can say that may be of any help is that the 231 is effective at cutting/boosting EQ. I can't say it's noisy or it isn't. Sorry.

For us, one of these made a big difference:

[url="http://www.thomann.de/ie/millenium_as2001.htm"]http://www.thomann.de/ie/millenium_as2001.htm[/url]

Placing it to his left (he performed stage left) pointed the guitarist's 2x12" combo right at his head and not at the back of his ankles. The amp was miced, so we really only wanted the guitarist's amp to act as a sort of monitor for the band while the PA took care of FOH - as it should be.

My current guitarist uses a 4x12", so that's not going on a stand . . . we'll work that out when we get there.


Mark

[NickH]

A sneaky trick I learnt from a very wise man. Instead of one big vocal foldback speaker, get two cheapies. Make sure they have a phasing option. Put one out of phase with the other. If you're running one active monitor with a slave cab which has no phase option, custom-wire yourself a phased speaker cable. Mark it clearly as the phased one though! Ditto with two active cabe fed from XLR's from the mixer, or if one has a signal out XLR (As will be the case with the Mackie SM450 mentioned) - solder up a phased XLR lead and use that between the out of the first cab and the input of the second.

Set them up a distance apart, both toed in towards your signer. This should nicely point them into opposite back corners of the stage or thereabouts.
The trick works because a mic is a single sound-receiving source whereas your signer has two ears a distance apart which can work very well independently. The mic receives two signals from the monitors in antiphase which means it feeds back very little.

[LawrenceH]

[quote name='NickH' post='669598' date='Nov 29 2009, 11:00 PM']A sneaky trick I learnt from a very wise man. Instead of one big vocal foldback speaker, get two cheapies. Make sure they have a phasing option. Put one out of phase with the other. If you're running one active monitor with a slave cab which has no phase option, custom-wire yourself a phased speaker cable. Mark it clearly as the phased one though! Ditto with two active cabe fed from XLR's from the mixer, or if one has a signal out XLR (As will be the case with the Mackie SM450 mentioned) - solder up a phased XLR lead and use that between the out of the first cab and the input of the second.

Set them up a distance apart, both toed in towards your signer. This should nicely point them into opposite back corners of the stage or thereabouts.
The trick works because a mic is a single sound-receiving source whereas your signer has two ears a distance apart which can work very well independently. The mic receives two signals from the monitors in antiphase which means it feeds back very little.[/quote]

I know it sometimes gets touted but my experience of phase reverse-type tricks has not been good. Your monitor/mic/singer positioning has to be accurate and remain constant. And although common sense says it shouldn't matter, I've had early reflections from multiple speakers apparently stuff things right up. End result is things on stage have sounded freaky and wrong in a way that's hard to get to grips with.
It's useful having a phase-reverse switch built into a monitor system as something to try, but it's going to be very case-by-case. But if you've had experience otherwise, then of course I respect that and I'm glad it works for you

[Phil Starr]

Just to say we have the same problem with a female vocalist and the sm58. We now use a cheaper Samson mic and it does a better job for our vocalist. The biggest problem with the shure is that you really need to get right up close. (there's a rude comment about putting things in your mouth there somewhere). we found that our vocalist has the mic closer when she hand holds it rather than leaving it in the stand meaning we can reduce the gain.

Feedback is caused by resonance so moving the speakers around is always worth a try. lifting them off the ground means all the lower frequencies are radiating in free field rather than half space ( A posh way of saying that the sound isn't reflected off the floor in the same way) and this can clean up the sound and improve the intelligibility.

Of course the main way of reducing feedback is to turn everybody else down and reduce sound levels on stage. Good luck with that!