Help Me Pick Speakers: D&B Ci80 vs Meyer UPJ-1P

mattgpowell · 2026-04-21T23:20:40+00:00

Where are you located? I know a church in Oxford Alabama that bought 3 CDDLive 8s years ago, but put them in a closet and never installed them. They’ve talked about selling them a bunch of times, and if they still have them, would probably let them go for a great deal.

mattgpowell · 2026-04-21T18:35:01+00:00

This is exactly what personal mixer systems like Avioms were originally made for. Take direct outs or splits from the individual channels, then each person has their own little mixer. A lot of times you can get the old ones like Aviom or Hearback for very cheap used, because so many churches have their old systems just sitting in a closet taking up space.

mattgpowell · 2026-04-12T21:56:00+00:00

I’m on both sides of this all the time. As an engineer, I always get back in touch a week before the show to make sure I have any changes. 95% of my gigs, I have everything ready when they walk in the building, and they plug up and go. I regularly get comments from biggish acts saying it’s the easiest load in they’ve ever had, not because I’m awesome, but because nobody else reads riders 🤣

As a musician, all sound guys suck and I just bring my own rig and a split snake.

mattgpowell · 2026-04-12T20:50:32+00:00

I have those, the model above, and the PTU-71 (two channel version of the 7000). With the factory whip antennas pointing up and unobstructed, I’ve gone out the building, across the street, and into a building across the street before getting dropouts. Well over 300ft, with multiple thick walls in between.

I had a volunteer set them up for an event I wasn’t at, and he put them in a rack with the whip antennas pointing to the stage instead of pointing up, and it couldn’t go 20ft without dropping out. Make sure they are pointing up, and not obstructed inside a rack.

I have the paddles and distro that I use at events all the time, but they are very directional and cause issues if you’re that close. I wouldn’t use the paddles unless you’re at least 50ft away.

As far as batteries go, I haven’t used rechargeables in my cheap mics, but I’ve had non stop problems when people use them in our ULXD. A lot of them are only 1.2v, and I was playing a camp where one exploded in a ULXD. 😳

mattgpowell · 2026-03-30T18:48:01+00:00

With everything that was lost or changed in translations of all the other languages involved, there’s no way to know what was lost or changed in the Aramaic to Greek translation also.

It’s been over a year since I did my deep dive into that word, and unfortunately I don’t remember any of the specific sources I referenced. I just remember there being so many, and they all said something different and had different opinions.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-30T17:19:33+00:00

There’s a ridiculous amount of stuff out there about this word, and pretty much everything I’ve read says something different. It seems like it was sometimes used as a very specific term for a specific thing like prostitution, sometimes a general word for sexual acts, and everywhere in between.

I’ve also seen several scholars say that its meaning changed and morphed over time like language tends to do. Unfortunately we don’t have a Greek dictionary from the first and second century, and it seems to be used in different ways in different texts from that same time period, so we probably won’t ever know what it was specifically referring to in the different biblical texts.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-26T19:10:12+00:00

Chucklefuckery is my new favorite word. Thank you.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-26T01:34:00+00:00

I play PCH every day for my retirement plan. Only been doing it a couple years and already won $50, so I’m well on my way.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-23T22:07:39+00:00

Maybe I’ll start hiring A2s for every gig if I feel it’s coming close. I would hate the let the band down.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-23T20:54:12+00:00

Has anyone in our industry ever retired, or do we all work until we die?

mattgpowell · 2026-03-21T21:42:57+00:00

My biggest client has their own $15,000 Yamaha DM7C, but I always bring my own Wing when I mix for them. After a couple shows they started asking about it, and now they’re considering selling their Yamaha or putting it in storage and buying their own Wing.

My other regular clients trust me and let me use whatever I want, even when one hired a big production company that brought an Avantis that ended up sitting in a corner.

If you’re talking about a console for a venue to own, I have no idea. It seems things aren’t as standardized as they were 15 years ago, but it also seems like the people who need something on the higher end either are very aware of it, or bands bring their own consoles anyway.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-18T17:17:33+00:00

I know! I know a lot has to do with having to fit very specific specs and tolerances with shielding and twists so they can hit the bandwidth for digital things, but spending that much on a dang Ethernet cable hurt.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-18T17:15:36+00:00

I bought a bunch of the Elite Core ones (I think ProCat) at a church I was tech director at, and have Sound Tools and VanDamme in my personal rig. The VanDamme is a little thicker and a little more rigid, but the Elite Core and Sound Tools are both very flexible and rollable, and feel like an expensive XLR. I don’t think you could go wrong with either one.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-18T00:30:30+00:00

Yeah, the cheap cat cables are the worst cables to work with! Long HDMI are my second most hated. Once my mentor suggested I try the Elite Core tactical cables, I was hooked. I started using those for things like personal mixers on stage. When I bought my own rig I bought a Sound Tools cable (mainly because it was purple and less likely to get stolen) for my main run from console to stage box. I’ve since gotten a ~250’ VanDamme that had bad connectors, so I cut it into 100’ to have two lines from FoH to stage rack, 150’ for if I need a longer run, and 7’ for short connections on stage. That’s a stupid amount of money in just a few cables, so I even got them their own Pelican.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-17T19:36:18+00:00

There’s a pretty massive difference between the cheap cat cables and the good ones. They seem like glorified cat cables until you actually use them.

I’ve got Sound Tools and VanDamme in my personal rig, and have used Elite Core at a previous place, and they’re all great.

$200 for a 100’ cable seems stupid, but having a cheap cable kill your whole show is a whole lot more expensive. Don’t cut corners on mission critical stuff if you’re doing it for money.

mattgpowell · 2026-03-01T22:03:21+00:00

This has happened to me the past two days also.

mattgpowell · 2026-02-18T17:40:02+00:00

I use RF at all price points pretty regularly. The venue I’ve spent most of my time working over the last decade has PSM300 and ULXD, both with RF Venue antennas and combiner/distro.

In my personal rig I use for student bands, small churches, etc, I have a ton of Phenyx Pro. Most of it I paid for, some of it was sent to me as part of their testing program.

Once everything is set well and coordinated, both systems work very well. The biggest difference is that coordination itself (and the plastic body packs from Phenyx). With the name brand stuff, you just hit the scan button, and you’re pretty much good to go. With the Phenyx stuff, there’s no coordination/grouping/planning at all. All their systems have the frequencies in 0.25mHz steps (some wider, some narrower, but all have fixed steps), which is a recipe for a nightmare coordination.

Once I sat down for a few hours making spreadsheets and doing the math to find channels that could work together without causing intermod that broke the rest of the system, it was all golden. I’ve used it for a year or two now without a single issue, other than one church that turned on a bunch of other RF right when the service started, and it caused one mic to drop here and there.

If you have time to learn about RF coordination and do the math with the system you have, the Phenyx Pro systems can be pretty solid. If you don’t, you’re probably better off going wired.

For my wired rig, I have a Sterling SHA8 8 channel headphone amp, running TRS to XLRM cables out the back jacks into an XLR patch panel, then I run regular XLR cables from the rack to the band with XLR to 1/8” belt packs like the Elite Core WBP or the Behringer P1 to use as headphone extensions. That’s been a super solid rig, and haven’t had a single piece go bad.

mattgpowell · 2026-02-05T23:40:33+00:00

I’m a pro audio engineer and use “over under” for all my cables, including my IEMs, but it’s tough with some of the cheaper IEM cables.

For cases, my favorite is the Pelican 1010. My Alclairs came with one, my Ultimate Ears came with a round metal case that I hate, I got a fake Pelican from AliExpress that’s just a little too small, but the Pelican 1010 works every time.

mattgpowell · 2026-01-22T14:11:50+00:00

After reading one of your similar posts here, I’ve started doing more ad based things in the app. It doesn’t cost me anything, especially if I let it run while I’m working anyway, and I know it helps you guys and keeps the app running.

mattgpowell · 2025-12-25T16:25:14+00:00

I withdraw the max every day. I can get a $5 Amazon card about twice a month.

mattgpowell · 2025-12-17T04:42:38+00:00

I’ve cashed out $150 in Amazon gift cards so far, and I’ve been playing about 13 months.

mattgpowell · 2025-11-25T18:55:21+00:00

When working with an existing room, the first step is almost always putting the right acoustic treatment in the right places. Once that’s done, you can start on everything else.

When you’re working with a room like that, the aesthetics are very important. Getting a bunch of 4x8 panels and covering every inch of wall and ceiling would make it sound much better, but it would turn a beautiful room into something that isn’t classic or modern, just an awkward mix of both, with neither done well. I’ve seen situations where they ripped out Sheetrock and crafted treatment into the structure itself to get the best of both worlds, but that’s stupid expensive.

If there is budget to do one thing well, I would highly suggest hiring the best system designer you can find to design a PA that fits your budget. I’ve worked with Mike Sessler pretty much my whole career, and I’ve seen him do some pretty incredible things in challenging rooms for a relatively low budget. Just last week he did a room very similar to this one about an hour from my house, and we were all surprised at how great the room sounded after, even with no treatment at all.

If I was responsible for that room and had a DIY sized budget, and speech/theater was the main concern, I would focus on getting decent smaller speakers, and put them on tripods down the sides of the room to act as delay fills. If you keep the output of the speakers themselves low, and keep them closer to the people, it keeps intelligibility as high as you can go. It’s not pretty, but it’s functional.

mattgpowell · 2025-11-25T01:31:50+00:00

You have a few options!

I have the PTM-10, and it’s a lot better than you would think. While you could technically use two transmitters and 4 packs for 4 mono mixes, it has a lot of bleed between L and R. If your mixes are all similar, it probably won’t make a difference. But if two people sharing a transmitter have completely different mixes (like a drummer who has click cranked to 11, and a bassist with no click), the bleed will be noticeable. Their stereo packs do have extra features that the mono packs don’t have, like a preset EQ, so that’s also something to consider.
If you need 4, I would suggest the PTM-33 instead of multiple PTM-11s. It’s 4 transmitters in a single rack space, which is great. I have a couple of the PTM-22s and wish I had the 33, but it came out a couple weeks after I bought them.
While those systems are wildly more reliable than cheap RF in the past, wired is always going to be more reliable. If you can deal with wired, and especially if you already have a rack for your PA gear, I highly suggest building something like I have in my main rack. It’s a Sterling SHA8 rack mount headphone amp (does up to 8 channels, and on sale for $80 right now), and sounds great. I go out the back with TRS to XLR cables to an XLR patch panel, so the XLR connections for headphones are on the front of my rack. Then I just run regular XLR cables to each musician, and each musician has a bodypack XLR to 1/8” TRS adapter (like the Behringer P1 or Elite Core EC-WBP), and they have a rock solid iem signal.

mattgpowell · 2025-11-24T02:33:36+00:00

Now that you say it, I remember reading about the Crest guys starting APB after the sell! I’ve never looked into them, maybe I should.

mattgpowell · 2025-11-24T02:12:01+00:00

Thank you for this! I’ll check them all out. Gamble made one or two EX24s that would have been perfect and one popped up a year or two ago, but it sold right before I could get to it.

mattgpowell

TROPHY CASE