More beginner PA questions

[mommythrice]

Is there a difference between 12" speakers and 12" monitors?

I thought I found a good price on JBL speakers - JBL jrx112m, but it turns out they are wedges. Does that matter?

Also found some used EV sxa360's. They sounded great (with my ipod) but they are pretty old and I can't find much info on them.

I understand the advantage of powered speakers, but when if I need (powered) monitors, too, it starts getting expensive.

[dcoventry]

Monitors are usually specific for near field use and to reproduce a narrower range of the sound spectrum, on the whole.

Front of House(FOH) speakers have a longer "throw" meaning they reproduce sound that is more coherent over a longer distance.

Google is your friend for questions like this, too. It's a great tool for leaning the vocabulary needed.

[Charlieshafer]

I like to have visiting bands use smaller speakers for the monitors, 8" full-range single drivers. I'm not interested in hearing big bass out of the monitors, just accuracy, and the bands get that concept, too. The good ones know that too much monitor sound on the stage, especially in a relatively small room where the audience is really listening, can muddy up the sound. Think of the sound of an instrument hitting you three times; once from the instrument itself, then from the main speakers for the house (F.O.H, or front of house) and then from the monitors, and if they're really loud, the monitors through the microphones and then through the mains again. All these signals are a nan-second apart, but really crup up the sound quality. That's why in-ears are becoming popular, but don't fret over those, they're pricey and as many people as there are that like them there are that don't. I can't count the number who gave them a whirl for a few months then ditched them. Others swear by them, so there's clearly "two right ways" here. For cost, pick up one amp with two separate channels, Crown makes a few of them (go digital, much lighter) and you can make a couple of monitors yourself with plywood and speakers (I use fostex from Madisound, here)

They can take a beating and sound nice. They're light on the bass, which in a small room is perfect, no booming from the stage. I Make mine with scrap cabinet wood. They're about 20" tall, so the sound is a little closer to the performer, allowing them to be a little quieter. Easy to build, cheap, bulletproof.

[dcoventry]

Also, folks do want a nice monitor sound, tone and all, but the monitors are used basically as a timing and pitch reference. After these essentials, a balanced mix with transparent and toneful aspect helps creativity and enjoyment, to be sure.

Typically a ten or twelve inch speaker and a one inche or so driver for highs(this would be called a two way system) is usually enough for most purposes.

[Ben Milne]

The JBL JRX112M is a dual purpose cabinet and has pole mounts for speaker stands in one end.

Referring to a speaker as a monitor specifies it's purpose.

[foldedpath]

The 10" and 12" sizes in both passive and powered speakers are often built with one side having an angle in the cabinet, so it can be used as either a main speaker on monitor. Other speakers are designed specifically for monitors.

The thing to pay attention to, is the waveguide shape on the horn, and whether you want a narrow vertical throw (to reach one person on stage), or a wider pattern to reach several band members at once.

[dcoventry]

Hey FP,

I had a weekly gig doing FOH at Kimball's Carnival in Emeryville, Ca. and the place had the two most massive Meyer monitors I have ever seen.....as mains!!!!

Had the regular Meyer monitors on the stage, too. GREAT stage sound. Only 2 mixes, but whoa, great transperency.

[foldedpath]

Yeah... Meyer is in a whole other category, the "real" pro stuff that puts affordable weekend warrior gear in perspective. Wish I could afford it. Or could lift it for the load-in and load-out, even if I could afford it. Or both afford it and pay roadies to lift it.

[Tim2723]

As FP said, there are cabinets (especially in the weekend warrior class) that are built to do both jobs, but there are also purpose-specific designs. It's important to know them apart. For most weekend warriors, myself included, a 12" monitor is a LOT of sound in your face. One venue we play provides the sound and they have a small stage (about 14' square) and use no less than six 12" powered monitors. The stage volume is overwhelming to us, although the rock guys that play there love it. They look at us like we have three heads when we tell them to turn off all but one monitor. Their sound system was designed and installed by a pro audio engineer who has credentials including the Grateful Dead and other big-name groups, but he had never worked with an acoustic Irish duo and the set up was just all wrong for us. Every year we play a couple of shows at the State Fair. That 'PA system' shows up in a pair of forty-foot tractor trailers.

The point of this being, as FP alluded, there is a world of difference between pro audio guys and weekend warriors. Playing an arena of 20,000 people is a world away from cramming yourself into the corner of a bar with gear that can fit into your van. As mentioned earlier, Google is a great resource for finding info, but you have to be mindful of whom your hearing from. Seek the advice of fellow weekend warriors, those who are doing the sort of things you'll do in the sort of places you'll expect.

Even the weekend warrior classification has a lot of variation. Someone playing in church every Sunday is just as much a weekend warrior as the guy playing to 1000 stomping feet in a dance hall on Saturday night. But the requirements can be remarkably different.

Toward that end, I don't recall you telling us much about where you expect to play. How big are the rooms? How numerous and noisy the crowd? How much space do you expect to have? The biggest crowd I ever played to was about 2,000 people in a professional auditorium. I wouldn't have dreamed to bring my little PA there, but left it up to the pros.

About 99% of the time I'm in small to medium restaurants and bars, or playing to crowds of two or three hundred folks outdoors. Most of the time I'm stuck in a corner of a room that was never designed with music in mind. What kind of things do you anticipate doing? I think we're all assuming your expectations are similar, but the more info we have the more help we can be.

[Steve Ostrander]

There are other options for monitors including in-ear systems and and the system we use for our trio, the Fishman Solo.

[Tim2723]

That one, and the Bose Compact will handle most small-medium venues without monitors and all their associated problems. That's what we use 90% of the time with no problems at all.

In the first thread from Mommythrice I promised I wouldn't mention Bose, but now I can't help myself. In the right venues (which is why I asked her about venues) and using one or two mics while standing in a semicircle, the Fishman and Bose suddenly become very desirable for ease of use, portability, speed of set up, simplicity, reliability, and sound quality without struggling, which are all things I think her family will benefit from at this stage of their journey. But they have to be the right venues.

[almeriastrings]

That one, and the Bose Compact will handle most small-medium venues without monitors and all their associated problems. That's what we use 90% of the time with no problems at all.

Same here. We have two SA220's and they are fast to set up, sound great, and have no problems whatever in the the small-medium venue type setting. They are also expandable, with a range of line-outs (and inputs) so you can easily 'extend' them if required. Scalability is very important for small bands..... you do not want to be lugging huge speakers and amps everywhere if your audience on occasions is 25 people in a small room. Different if you play stadiums, but then, you'll have the trucks and roadies to go with it.... hopefully.

[Tim2723]

While it isn't clear from their description, like the Fishman the Bose systems are just as expandable as any powered-speaker system, and as you say, that's important. You have to pay for the convenience and all, but for me it has been worth all the money (the Bose Compact and the Fishman SoloAmp are the same price. NOT the big Bose towers. The Fishman is 220 watts, the Bose is 250 watts. Irrelevant). And in the end, once you start talking about a top quality conventional system of the same relative size and capability, the Fishman and Bose aren't really all that expensive. And if you consider it, FP and the other top pro's recommend only the best stuff for very good reasons. That's why they are the top pros! Yet, if you fully read up on it, the majority of people having trouble with them are either using them wrong or trying to force them to do the job of much larger systems where they are doomed to fail. But it still comes down to the appropriate choice for the appropriate needs. That's what we have to understand from Mommythrice.

The Fishman and Bose are NOT, repeat, NOT the right choice for everyone, but they can be the perfect choice under the right circumstances. And I'm starting to think they might be perfect for her and her family group. But let's wait.

[TonyP]

If I remember right from your other post, you are doing a modified single mic, with a LDC(large diaphragm condenser) mic that the vocals are all going into. And if I remember right you said your friends whom you are basing your rig on didn't use monitors. There's a reason besides extra cost and weight. You are definitely going to the deep end of the pool here adding monitors. And from my experience, just like Charles, there is just no need at all for some big ol full range wedges for monitors. This is a case of logarithmic complication.

If you had no feedback before, you are about to know what it is, intimately.

Personally, I can't deal with no monitors. But I've learned to use them as a way of cancelling the mud of the reflections of the room bouncing back making all kinds of timing issues. Not to mention phase etc that causes some frequencies to sound louder, and others to be cancelled. And this distorts what you think your PA is sounding like to the audience. And for me turns into a major distraction from the music. I don't easily swap hats between musician, and engineer.

What you will find is the lo mid and low's from the mains are omnidirectional. You can hear them from behind the mains just fine. What you can't hear from them is the mid's and hi's when you are on stage beside, or behind the mains. This is where most of what you are playing, singing, and keying off of. So the solution is direct addition of those vital mid's and hi's, aimed back at the band, with just enough volume and in "real time" with the band to clear all that mud. Wedges IMHO can't do that. Technically, unless you have time aligned the system, they are going to be very slightly out of time with the mains because of the distance away from the mains. You end up with all this "smear" and if you are trying to send the full range of what's going out of the mains, it adds a bunch more unwanted frequencies. This just all turns into a snowball and turns into an engineering nightmare with feedback and a lack of clarity.

For me it was much simpler to add a couple of Mackie SRM 150's, one on each stand below the main speaker, aimed back at the band. With everything below 1,000hz cut out. And just loud enough to balance with the lows radiating out of the back of the mains. I also had to add a speaker management box to cross over the monitors, and to kill the feedback. So it's not cheap.

I guess buying a 31 band eq, eq'ing all the lows out of the wedges, and placing them next to the mains instead of on the floor in front of your mic's would be the cheapest route.

[Tim2723]

Tony P. The voice of reason.

Nevertheless, I recommend we hear more from Mommythrice and her specific needs before going too much further into detail. Give her the chance to expand on what she's told us so far. Very often the chance to think about what we really have to accomplish will shed great light on the actual requirements.

None of us are right yet.

[mommythrice]

I have no idea where we'll be playing. We're just starting to play around town more - mostly for tips so we don't have much of a budget. We've played a few retirement homes where we needed a sound system. We played an outdoor gig recently with a pitiful Fender Passport - wished we had our own sound system - and another outdoor venue with no sound system. We're scheduled to play at a local BBQ restaurant that has an outdoor stage & no sound system. A few more gigs that are providing rented sound systems (don't know what that will be like). Mostly pretty small crowds.

I'm not really planning on monitors right now, I just need 12" speakers, mixer and one more mic. I haven't decided on power/passive yet - I'm still (price) shopping. I am thinking about how easy it will be to add them later. Or maybe use the 12" mains as monitors later. We are planning to use our large condenser single mic with two more dynamics for instruments and one for the bass, so this is where we won't use monitors. But I know there will be times when we can use that condenser and will have to go with all dynamics. That is when we will need monitors, right? Can we get away with just one?

I also have a separate 15" keyboard/bass amp that we will might use for the upright bass.

[mommythrice]

I hate to admit it - but we are all a little too proud to use the Bose sticks. I've heard they sound great, but, well... they look like toys. I guess since we don't sound like the pros, we should at least try to look like them.

[almeriastrings]

I hate to admit it - but we are all a little too proud to use the Bose sticks. I've heard they sound great, but, well... they look like toys. I guess since we don't sound like the pros, we should at least try to look like them.

Not too sure about that. I engineered an evening, outdoor concert for a European classical sting quartet a couple of years ago and used those. They had about $3 million worth of instruments between the four of them (made a Loar look cheap) and all performed for major orchestras. They had their own Schoeps, Neumann and DPA mics. We used Bose towers with a sub. They sounded absolutely fantastic. Clean. Clear. Natural. Mixed them though my A&H PA28 board. They were about as professional as it gets, and had no interest at all in what the system looked like. They were big-time interested in what it sounded like, though. They were very happy with the sound that night.

[foldedpath]

Don't get hung up on the looks of the Bose L1 system. Like Almeriastrings says, in the right place and for the right purpose, it can be the right solution.

For your situation though, I think it can probably be shot down just on the basis of a limited budget to work with. Especially if you would need two towers for audience coverage or band monitoring. It's not a system that scales up easily, or cheaply.

It does provide an all-in-one monitoring function, but not everyone can get used to the sound coming from behind the band, in the default recommended Bose stage setup. Having the main speaker(s) placed behind the band (like Bose recommends) is also not something I'd recommend for a beginner to PA systems, using one or more stage mics. It's a recipe for feedback if you don't know what you're doing, or are still learning.

But again, don't get hung up just on how it looks. It's a viable concept for the right situation. We just do a lot of arguing here in the forum about what that right situation is, for a Bose system. And also about what else you could do, with that kind of budget to work with.

[TonyP]

I think mommythrice gets you don't get the luxury of knowing where you are going to play. I'm in the same boat. Unlike some of the pro's here, we don't have a steady gig. And wouldn't know what to do if we did So you pick a system that makes sense to you, and you work it. There's no free lunch, no one size fits all and a million ways to do the same thing. We all like what works for us(usually by experience) and our particular approach makes what info that comes in from others either applicable, or not.

So it's all relative and we all have valid input. I guess it's up to mommythrice what flys/sticks to the wall, and what doesn't. By the replies I would say you are ready to jump in. Go for it, the water's fine. Welcome to the wonderful world EAS.

[Ben Milne]

The jrx112s would be a good choice, they sound ood, have a decent output and as they as multipurpose, they can serve as wedges later on in your live sound reinforcement journey.
Don't forget to factor in some speaker stands to your budget

[Tim2723]

OK, so what we're really talking about is the weekend warrior standard fallback position of being as portable and flexible as possible for small to mid sized crowds and god-knows-what stage conditions.

Given budget considerations and all, I guess I'd still stick with a pair of 12" passive cabinets, tripods to hold them, and a powered 600-800 watt head with six or eight channels. Make sure the amp has some kind of line output so you can add small powered monitors later when budget allows and stage requirements dictate. That's a plain jane as you're likely to find and will look as professional as anything else. After all, that's pretty much where this all began and I really think it's what the OP had in mind in the first place. There's nothing wrong with those instincts. We've all used set ups like that and have been successful with them. Gear requirements, like everything else, will evolve and change over time anyway. Get the best you can for the money you have, learn to get the most from it, and be open to changing as needs change. Don't get too hung up on brands and labels but try your best to avoid wasting money on total junk or other peoples worn out, damaged gear.

That's all I have to contribute. I'm going back to earning my living with silly unprofessional toys now.

[TonyP]

I'm going back to earning my living with silly unprofessional toys now.

LOL! you made me blow coffee all over my keyboard Tim!

[Tim2723]

Well, my point is that just because someone comes up with a new idea doesn't automatically make the old idea worthless. I'll bet there's no one on this board who's been playing out for a dozen years or so that doesn't have a pair of passive cabs and a powered mixer somewhere in their past. Those old circuits made a lot of dough for a lot of players for a long time. Nothing wrong with the idea, even if improvements have come along.

[foldedpath]

Well, my point is that just because someone comes up with a new idea doesn't automatically make the old idea worthless. I'll bet there's no one on this board who's been playing out for a dozen years or so that doesn't have a pair of passive cabs and a powered mixer somewhere in their past.

(Raises hand!) I think you'd lose that bet.

I used passive speakers for years, driven by a power amp and fed by whatever passive mixer I could afford at the time. This is going back to the early 1980's. When I played drums back in the 70's as a kid, I don't think they even made powered mixers? I don't remember what we used (I wasn't running PA for the bands I played in, back then). I skipped directly from the old heavy rack full of power amp to powered speakers (Mackie SRM450's) when they started to hit the market, and managed to avoid ever owning a powered mixer. I never liked them... too many trade-offs. Once powered speakers arrived on the scene, there was so much more flexibility with using a compact passive mixer.

Those old circuits made a lot of dough for a lot of players for a long time. Nothing wrong with the idea, even if improvements have come along.

Well, what's wrong is that improvements have come along.

The big problem with powered mixers and passive speakers -- and this is just my personal opinion -- is that they lock you into a package that's difficult to upgrade later on, without starting over from scratch. It's also a system that won't sound as good as one using powered speakers (probably), and the mixer won't have the kind of EQ you can get on a compact passive board.

If you get to the point where you really can't afford to screw up an important gig, like a wedding or corporate event, there is more redundancy in a modular system. If the amp dies in a powered mixer, the show is over. If the amp dies in a powered speaker, you've still got other working speakers. I carry my antique Mackie 1202 mixer on every gig as a backup, so even if our main mixer dies, the show still goes on.

I know I'm in proselytizing mode here, so for the sake of balance I'll say that a powered mixer and passive speakers are a little faster to set up and tear down, due to the cabling issues. You can streamline that with loomed cables like the Siamese Twins we use (combined AC power and XLR), but those cables are heavier than the usual ones. And there is still a bit more time in hooking up mixer connections. The Bose L1 system is also very fast to set up, especially compared to a system using separate monitors. If you need to prioritize quick setup and tear-down, then this might be the way to go.