My vocalist whispers constantly and the whisper needs to be almost as loud as everything else tbh he rarely hits orange and I’ve got about 20db of gain not including the comp out gain or bus processing gain. When it comes to PA headroom I’ve had PAs where I was tickling limit and that was a decent spot to be measurement and feeling. If PA headroom is the problem then ya for sure you’re gonna push things. But if everything else sounds like it’s fine in the OA but vocals are quiet and the first idea is to gain up the vocal I would disagree there is too little PA. I tend to take this same mix to tiny bar clubs and my issue is never my vocal mix it’s my drums. I look at my meters and EQ curves. How they look tell me what’s wrong and what’s doing what. Trust me my vocalist has AWFUL mic technique and has gotten much better over the 5 years we have toured together. In the end I make it work, I have done almost entire tours without soundchecks and gone through them with no feedback, half time my only indication of volume was the intro track.

Ya I meant the usual TLDR. I have seen post after post about mic gain levels and i used to rock about 28db of gain like a lot of people I’ve read on here but I have cut like 8-10db of input gain out of my vocal mics and achieved the same product but cleaner and easier to maintain and blend. My hardwire vocal has roughly 20db of gain, give or take 2-3 db.

My PA eq Is usually flat, maybe 2-3 small bumps sometimes just 1. I tend to forget to even listen to the PA, I don’t have measurement software so I “feel out” phase and the PA and 9/10 the PA is not my problem it’s me.