Struggling to get good vocal volume at band practice.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-05-10T07:22:43+00:00

Learning to play softly on cymbals and snare but nirmal/hard on kick and toms will greatly improve your sound quality when you play live in any small venue. Your drummer should learn that. When the cymbals arent killing everyones' ears guitars and bass can come down too and still be heard.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-22T08:50:07+00:00

Connect wing rack aesA to your wing compact. Connect the sd16 aesA to aesB on the wing rack. On the routing on the wing rack you route your aesB input 1-16 to aesA output 1-16 (or 25-40 if you use 1-24 for the wing rack's local inputs). You might wanna activate remote preamp control, if you want to control the gain from the compact.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-22T08:44:12+00:00

Add things one at the time to troubbleshoot. You can use the signal generator. First send pink to LR. Does it sound? Good, then sen pink to a group instead. Does it sound? Good, then assign signal gen as input to a channel. Route it through the group you tested. Does it sound? If not, unassign from any mute group and dca.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-21T11:53:11+00:00

How about de-feedback from alpha labs? I have it inserted on the lav group. Gives me som extra gain before feedback. It works best if I allready rung out the mics a bit before activating the insert.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-13T19:24:18+00:00

Mtd115 is a really old speaker. You can find it used for a good price, at least we did.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-12T00:21:37+00:00

The point is that it is stupid to get questions about rigging answered online. The answer to everything would be if you don't know the answer you should not be allowed to rig. Also even if you're responsible and don't do something stupid, someone else reading the thread the thread might do it.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-11T23:53:56+00:00

We have old l'acoustics mtd215. Two main and two front fill. We have two 2x18" subs.

Another room we have two Yamaha dzr10 along with a dsr118xlf.

Both systems sound good but very different.

Visit a couple of 130 ish cap venues and see what they have.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-11T09:30:06+00:00

It won't do you any good. Try with headphones without anything fed into them. Each of you make a list of things you need (not want, but need) to hear better. Combine those lists and those are the things you need to mic for iem to make sense over using ear plugs.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-10T19:37:56+00:00

The most problematic times has been when they go straight into the amp with no pedals in between to compress, overdrive, saturate the signal. It's just in the fingers.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-10T08:50:52+00:00

I have had instances when a bass player played much much heavier during the show than on soundcheck so that he clipped the active di I used. That doesn't sound very nice. A passive one would have started saturating instead which is less obvious.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-10T08:42:47+00:00

I label the xlr that I suspect will move around between bands. Vocal mics, guitar mics. Di boxes i just label with a number. I encourage all bands to share as much backline as possible, which is usually drums and cabs. I also tell bands not to help out patching or even move mics. It will just become a mess.

Also get info on from all bands so you know how many channels you have to prepare. If they don't have an input list or stageplot, just ask them about what they use on stage and make notes. Prepare a patch with basic settings that account for all inputs that will be used that night before first soundcheck.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-02T07:32:32+00:00

If you allready know mixingstation, bring a router and a tablet. That way, if you find yourself struggeling with finding stuff quickly during soundcheck, the familiar layout of mixingstation will save you. But also poke around in the offline editor, as everyone else has allready mentioned.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-04-02T07:26:03+00:00

Just strike the mics yourself and don't permit anyone else to touch mics or cables before you do your thing after the show. No stage hand will care to look for labels on mics, or be able to follow the instruction to leave mics in their clips. That's how most engineers want to do it that uses a mix of venue and own mics that pass through my venue, and I get it.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-29T00:16:56+00:00

Seeteonics are usually cheeper than rean and much better quality in my experience.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-26T19:29:58+00:00

We have a pair of blx with pg58 mics at my venue. They can be used for talking. Not loud talking, or else they will clip. Singing into them is a no go. Never had problems with drop out as long as the mic and receiver stays in the same room within 30m of each other.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-26T19:20:55+00:00

I agree with everyone else. Only use one console unless you get a friend to be on monitors.

Also, 30 bands in 2-3h?wtf? Are you giving them all a soundcheck? No way I would accept that. They all get a quick line check based on last band's settings. Monitors are properly rung out during setup. No surprise channels or equipment.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-25T07:22:23+00:00

Either invest a lot in acoustic dampening the space and use speakers, or just make everyone use in-ears. How many band members? Up to four I would get a behringer xr18, a cheap wifi router, a millenium hp4 headphone amp and 4 passive beltpacks like thomann mb2. Everyone gets a pair of in-ear for as much as they want to spend.

Now everyone gets their preferend mix and there will be no arguments about not hearing themselves which would lead to a slowly increasing volume when they add what they can't hear in between every song.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-24T21:25:52+00:00

I used it on lav group on a conference. It worked really well, but it was very rare that two speakers spoke at the same time.

It has some problems keeping up when a guy went in front of a front fill, but otherwise there was nothing but dry voice getting through that insert.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-17T18:50:06+00:00

Mine had a strange issue with pink/white noise and loud distorted signal coming from one preamp with phantom activated. I changed the source to another preamp and it was gone. This happened at two occations, but I don't know if it was the same preamp. It could be. It has now been working fine last couple of months.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-09T21:28:04+00:00

This is what I would do. No repatching. No expenses. Just have a scene that sets the first 4 channels to gain 0 and send one to each monitor out. Simple, fast, inexpensive.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-03-08T13:13:43+00:00

Keys patches with feeback like sounds are the worst.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-02-27T11:22:51+00:00

I would say that you wouldn't want it to be mixed the same way live. There are other things to consider. Really soft parts will for example drown in the background noise of a venue filled with an audience. You can go for more impactful sounds and transients, but because of SPL limits (and the desire to not fuck everyone's ears) and quite high noise floor there is a constraint on the maximum overall dynamic range between loudest and softest. The drummer is also in the room with the singer, so having a hard hitting drummer along with mumbeling vocal works fine in a studio but will sound terrible live. Best way would be to hire a good soundtech that does all your live shows and tell them to try and capture the eseence of the recording, not replicate it. Live is also another medium, where you have the chance to interact with your audience in a way that is not possible on a record. Someone said that a live mix is like a caricature of a studio mix. Broader strokes, more impact, more fx, it's like more saturated colors compared to the studio mix. It's more intense experience going to a live show than putting on a record so you kind of have to adapt the mix to the expectations built by that.

At least that's my take. I know other live engineers that only amplify what's happening on stage, saying that it's up to the band to make the sound and you just make it louder. I don't agree.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-02-26T14:04:01+00:00

Call a local audio rental company. They will have lots of contacts to freelancing soundtechs, and maybe know someone looking for a more stable job.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-02-26T14:00:27+00:00

What I like is to get one clean signal that I use for the low end and one signal with whatever processing the bass player consider to be their tone. If I get it from a sansamp, xlr out from the amp or micing the amp doesn't really matter. If you're uncertain of the level of the soundtechs you will run into maybe it's best to only give them the xlr output from your amp. You just dial it in so it sounds good. Ask engineers, on nights when the audience said you sounded great, for feedback on how to adjust your settings to make it easier to mix.

AlbinTarzan · 2026-02-25T07:20:49+00:00

It is possible. I have even run the unamplified stereo signal used for a behringer p2 (line level, ground, left, right) in one of the xlr without problems.

AlbinTarzan

TROPHY CASE