PA system

[milpool]

Okay, so malsackj posted some pics of his pro audio rig. This means I had to stop being so lazy, and share some pics too!

Here is my main board. It's the Presonus Studiolive 24.4.2. Digital rocks... no more racks of processors. Now I just carry a small rack with a dbx DriveRack, a Furman power conditioner, and a router so I can mix remotely with a tablet. I also carry a MacBook for better control of EQs, compressors and gates, and to record.


Here is the tablet I use for remote mixing. It is so much easier to make great mixes when you can move around the venue and make adjustments from anywhere.


The mains are JBL SR4732s. They are loaded with two 12's, a 2" horn and a 1" horn. The subs are Yamaha cabs loaded with EV 18's. And the monitors are Yamaha 15's.


The amp racks have been changed up a little since this picture. They have more QSC than Crown in them now.


These are my B system and C system rigs. Good for when I'm double booked, or just as rentals. Mostly they just collect dust, haha.

 

[PaulyT]

Nice. That tablet idea is great! I'd love to play with a digital board sometime, have only had (limited) experience with smaller analog units.

 

[milpool]

Thanks PaulyT. After mixing remotely, its become hard to imagine ever going back. There are some events where I have to set the board up in a much less than ideal location, making it critical to move my mix position. There have even been a few shows where I only went up to the board at set breaks, and spent nearly the entire time walking the venue.

Even cooler, is that musicians on stage can connect their iPhones to my network, so they can control their own monitor mixes.

 

[PaulyT]

Awesome. So what sort of shows do you do - like rock or pop or indoor/outdoor... or just whatever you can get paid for?

 

[milpool]

All of the above. My steady work is with some local cover bands. I'm an occasional house guy at a couple of clubs (everything is DJs now). I also contract with a school district and a city business council. I have some annual performances I do at the fairgrounds and zoo. So yeah, a little of everything.

15 or 20 years ago, I worked for a large-ish sound company as my full time job. I was a house guy at 3 clubs, and mixed rock bands 4 nights a week. But I hung that up to open a studio instead. That only lasted a few years, then I grew up, lol. I was telling malsackj that a friend of mine asked me to help out his worship band a few years back. I was instantly hooked again. That is when I disappeared from this forum (I go back to the S&V forum days).

Bands are my passion. But band work is different now. Everyone has their own gear (crappy, but owned). And clubs don't pay well anymore. Maybe half of what they used to pay back in the 90's. So while it is my favorite kind of work... I have to take on corporate gigs to justify the cost of this hobby.

 

[Zing]

[/url]

Yowza! Roman Angelo could have one hell of a backyard CD release party performance with this setup! :handgestures-thumbup:

 

[Botch]

Even cooler, is that musicians on stage can connect their iPhones to my network, so they can control their own monitor mixes.

I was thrilled to have in-ear monitors with custom mixes the last few years of my band days; I just missed the "iPhone self-mix" by a bit, but our sound man for my last band was an absolute gem! All you had to do was get eye contact, and his eyebrows went up just a bit which said, "Whaddya need?" I could point at the guitar and move my hand down 20%, and the mix was adjusted perfectly, almost real-time!
He always had his digital board at the FOH position, but in the medium clubs we played that often wasn't ideal; throughout the gig he'd pace to different positions, stand and listen, and then run back to the board to "tweak"; he'd've been an ace with a tablet mixer (which I'm sure he has, if he's still doing this kind of work). I loved watching him tune his PA to the room after setup, but before soundcheck with the band; he used a couple of movie themes, and his mixer had parametric rather than graphic EQs, and it took him almost no time whatsoever to dial things in; fascinating to watch/hear!
I need to give him a call, its been years... :|

 

[malsackj]

QSC and Behringer are introducing small digital boards along with last years Mackie's.
The Behringer 16 channel should be around $750. QSC has not released a price.
Mackie is around 1000. IPADs are extra for these. The Behringer will support both the IPAD and Android.

Working with a friend we have time on the Presonus, Seen the SoundCraft SI, and Yamaha mixers. The presonus is fun and easy. We do some recording and mix sessions on the Presonus for bands.

 

[milpool]

Malsackj,

There certainly are a ton of small to medium digial boards on the market now. No longer just for the Digico and SSL crowds (those are some sweet boards though). Presonus was very early to the small digital board party, and there are things I like better about the newer Soundcraft Si and Behringer X32 boards. But none of them are as intuitive to me. The Presonus workflow is much closer to an analog board... no layers. A good friend of mine has the X32, and it is pretty sweet. Just a little too bulky for a one-man operation. And speaking of recording... I just mixed down a handful of tracks last night, from a gig last week. Unlimited fun!


Botch!

Good story, thanks for sharing man. Tuning a room is still as much of an art, as it is a science now. I use SMAART and dbx DriveRack for quick calibrations. But nothing beats spending a few extra minutes to walk the room, and adjust manually. This board has SMAART built in, and uses a pair of its 8 graphic EQ's to save its adjustments to. I use the dbx DriveRack for parametric tuning of the components. Makes it pretty smooth. This board has gaudy DSP. All 24 channels, 4 groups, and 12 auxes have 4 fully parametric EQ's, compressors, gates, and limiters. But the mic preamps are the star of the show. Good stuff. What kind of music did you guys play?