norty303
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Posts posted by norty303
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Ive heard somewhere that cheap speakers cant take long durations of running, and get hot, thus putting a strain on amps, is this true?
In a vented enclosure its unlikely that the speakers will get so hot as to make a significant difference. High power drivers in horns that have sealed and small rear chambers can suffer from overheating but you have to be really abusing them. When a driver heats up its impedance can change but not so significantly that you'd suffer the problems you're experiencing.
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The only reason why your amps would start to clip/limit is if you actually increase the input signal.
So i suspect whats happening is as the night goes on, and your ears get tired, the crowd gets louder and more up for and you get into the swing of the gig you're pushing the level up on your mixer, increasing the channel gains, boosting EQ, etc and its causing the amp to clip/limit.
When you say 'they' start to limit, do you mean both the mixer amp and separate amp, or just one of them?
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But all this is overly complicated considering the original question.
But perhaps broadening some peoples horizons and options.
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Depending on what type of functions you do, I wouldn't bother with scanners. For functions where there are adults they don't seem to go down very well. At one function I noticed that people were leaving the dance floor when I turned them on so used them less and less until they were relegated to storage, only coming out for a teenage party.
I'd say that may well be more a function of the programs they were running than the fact they were scans.
Scans/moving heads are about the most versatile and impressive ligting type out there, but they rely on having a good desk (and I mean 2nd hand Pulsar Masterpiece as a minimum really) behind them, one that has an effects engine, spread capability and someone who knows how to use it.
My favourite effect is my scans, but you need a minimum of 4 to be worthwhile. For gigs that are standalone then gobo flowers and sound to light efects are the order of the day. Scanners are NOT (imo) a standalone effect.
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That link is to a trapezoid 10" cab.
Here's the Punisher one
http://www.speakerstore.nl/index.php?pg=11&c=21
If you think thats complex, don't even think of looking at the LAB Sub. :)
A point of interest with these cabs, where reflex and bandpass cabs go for the most sensitive driver possible, these high compression horns tend to have a fairly low sensitivity driver. this is because they have very stiff cones, long voice coils for high excursion all of which adds to the weight and makes them less sensitive. The trade off comes because you can then load them in a very sensitive horn which makes up the deficit. So when looking at specs for horns, make sure you look at the overall sensitivity, not just the driver's, because on paper many of them look very poor.
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12" are never gonna give a 'big' bass soundThere are many an argument as to whether 15 inch or 18 inch is best
Actually......
There are some very impressive horn loaded subs using 12" drivers. Commercial products such as the JTS Growler and Danley Sound Labs TH112 and DIY designs such as the Punisher Horn ( http://www.speakerstore.nl/index.php?l=en&pg=11&c=21 ) and Tom Danleys LAB Sub ( http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/f/3/0/ ) all use 12" drivers in what are usually very high compression horns.
They usually all have a high XMAX and are used over a larger diameter driver because the cone stresses are very high in those applications which means the larger unsupported area of the cone results in mechanical failure. 12" drivers act more like a piston and can be driven with more resistive air loads.
The bottom line is that 12" bass horns tend to give a far more accurate and 'faster' bass sound unless you're using 18" drivers with 5" voice coils that are capable of controlling the cone mass.
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My set-up last weekend was just the right speaker connected out of the bridge output. This speaker was then connected to the left speaker.
Without knowing the actual specs of your kit this is speculation, although I suspect is what your problem is.
Your amp is rated for a minimum impedance of 4 ohms per channel, or 8 ohms bridged mono.
By connecting 2 speakers together in parallel you are creating a single 4 ohm load. When an amp is in bridge mode this means that the 2 channels actually 'see' a load of half that (e.g. 4 ohms bridged means each channel is at 2 ohms)
So you are pushing your amp beyond what it is designed to do and as a result it is overheating and the thermal cutoff is stepping in to avoid damage to the amp. Once its cooled down it comes back on, only for the situation to happen again.
Run one speaker per channel at 8 ohms and you'll be ok, if a little underpowered.
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But make sure that you are buying the 'good' stuff of the known brand, because you are likely to be selling to a knowledgable market. The point I was making in your other thread about the JBL's was that if they are one of the 'bad' models then you will struggle to move them on as everyone will know that they are dogs.
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One other thing to throw into the pot...
If you are concerned about amount of use that you're going to get out of them, and your return on investment then THE best route to go is with big name brand (Turbosound, Martin, EV, etc see my post about JBL on your other thread ;) ) 2nd hand kit, be it ex install, ex touring or whatever. Buying from a big touring company means it will have been well used but also well taken care of with a known history and some honest description of its condition.
A lot of the old Turbosound TMS range have not really fallen in 2nd hand prices for the last few years and you have the added bonus that when you want to sell on you have a much larger market (live music venues, one man band PA companies, mobile jocks, etc) to sell to than just other people in the disco market.
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4 JBL's for less than £600 must be good
JBL trade off of the good name of their high end systems which cost a lot of money.
Without knowing which models of speaker they are its hard to say however at the budget end the cabs are often poorly made from cheap materials and there are often much better sounding options out there.
The old soundman joke 'Q. What does JBL stand for? A. Junk But Loud' rings true about a lot of their lower end stuff and its not particularly musical.
You may get a good deal but you would be wise to find out what they are first and do some homework about their real value and users opinions. They may also have been re-drivered with poor drivers at some point too. JBL drivers can be quite expensive to recone and its fairly common to find that a disco has bought cheap JBL speakers, blown the drivers and then replaced with Eminence or similar that aren't suited to the cabs.
Also, if these are mid/top cabs (rather than subs) you should check the tweeters/compression drivers carefully. JBL bullet/slot tweeters are great sounding units, but again, make sure they are original. JBL compression drivers are expensive to re-diaphragm (Eon15 is about £65 for a genuine unit, some of the 2" compression drivers are nearly £200 for the diaphragm alone) You can get copy diaphragms for about half that (which is why they are popular) but they are significantly worse sounding and you will notice this if you play the cabs next to each other if some have original and some copy diaphragms.
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100w green and 40w red are very HUGE sources!! I'm assuming you mean mW?
In order to get a balance, you need a lot more red than green, so in that case about 400-600mW of red to the 100mW of green. I've got a 100mW green that to the eye is as bright as a 300mW+ green. Once you get over 100mW a few hundred mW either way is not that noticeable to the eye.
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I haven't used the HP's but the old Abstract 250w Twister 4 was a great effect. You could set the head number when in stand alone mode so you got a different effect spread across the heads if you had more than 1 of them.
The EVL's are unique in the class I believe as they have digital dimming.
If you are prepared to risk it 2nd hand, you could also look at the Martin Destroyer which is still popular, an excellent effect, robust and with great control options if you want to go the DMX route.
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There were issues with the DCX about 18 months ago just before supply dried up. It was due to poor connections on one of the IDC headers inside and caused some of the outputs to experience a 'frying eggs' noise. I have one of these units which i simply remade the connection on. Some people went as far as replacing the ribbon connector but it was a minor issue (imo). There were a number of red herring reports of the problem linked to bad I/O boards and badly trimmed components shorting on the case (fixes included gaffa tape and cardboard shields under the board) but were i suspect only deemed successful because the problem went away afterwards, but most likely because to get the board out you have to unplug/disturb the aforementioned IDC header.
Since the resupply of the DCX about 1 year ago I've not heard of any similar issues.
There were a number of DCX which appeared on ebay that had the problems that still fetched good money because people knew how easy the fix was.
Behringer have a number of great and not so great products, its unfortunate that the whole product range gets slated because of a few dodgy ones. Composers, particularly the older ones are excellent value for money, especially second hand now.
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The Ultradrive is a great unit, but IMO is easiest to use without the PC link. It has one of the best and easiest to use UI's of just about any digital controller on the market (bar maybe Lake's and the ilk, but they're another ballpark entirely!) and is exceptional value for money.
You need to be spending much in excess of £500 before you start to get better features of noticeably better sound quality.
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And to get 10db more you need roughly 10 times the power - assuming your speakers can take the power!
3db = 2x
6db = 4x
9db = 8x
If you're talking about bass cabs, then running 2 off the same channel and having the 2 cabs together will gain you 5-6db in total, 2-3db for doubling the power (most amps will give 2/3rds to double their output power when going from 8ohm to 4ohm loads - again, assuming they can run these loads and the cabs are 8ohm to begin with) and 3db for the acoustic coupling of the drivers/horn mouths (depending on type of speaker) being within 1/4 wavelength distance of each other.
This why, if you use subs, its better to stack the subs centrally and have the tops on stands. You also minimise power alley effect through cancellation nodes, compared to having the subs separated. This is what causes those very bassy areas, and seemingly bass free spaces in a room.
It's often cheaper to spend a bit more on a high quality speaker with better sensitivity, that you can run with a smaller amp, than have a cheaper, lower sensitivity speaker that needs a big, heavy expensive amp to drive it.
Funktion One sound systems get very high sensitivity out of the cabs, the F218 bass bin has 2 450w drivers, where most other equivalent manufacturers use at least 600w if not 800w+ drivers.
Also, big drivers that need a lot of power tend to lose a lot of power to heat at high levels due to power compression, so you start to get rapidly diminishing returns.
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Been offline for nearly a month due to moving house/isp.
So, have the isolators from Tony arrived, and what do you think of them if they have? I've heard lots of good things about them from other users but as this is a different forum I'm interested to hear your comments
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Your problem is the flightcases. They stop the rubber mounted feet on the decks from doing their jobs as they put a nice piece of dense foam all the way round the deck, nicely transmitting the vibrations to the platter and needle. Taking your decks out of the cases would probably cure it, you're not packing a huge rig so the bass can't be excessive.
From experience, I'd say that the Freefloats are not an ideal solution, wobbly and prone to damage eventually (due to being inflatable).
Don't know if you've heard of A.S.S. soundsystems, but they used to make some serious speakers (now only doing very expensive hi-fi stuff) and Tony A.S.S. has developed some deck isolators for use in the most demanding nightclub environments. They are made of a composite sandwich and have been used to good effect by a number of the members of pro audio forums.
There's a thread here if you're interested, with pictures, and testimonies, and you can contact him via the forum if you like.
http://www.speakerplans.com/forum/forum_po...=14576&PN=1
P.S. I've got no commercial interest or links with these, but I've listened to and engineered on Tony's systems for a number of years, and have benefitted from his wealth of knowledge on a number of occassions, so thought I'd let you in on what he's offering our forum members.
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It sounds as if the magnet or pole piece has shifted as a result of the impact and has pinched the voicecoil in the gap. You can get them re-centred but they have to demagnetize them first and it's very expensive, simply not worth doing on that driver.
To be fair, £85 is about average for a reasonable 15" driver. If you wanted to go for a cheaper driver you'd have to replace both really as they'll sound different, and you'd need to ensure the replacements are suitable for the box tuning. Mid bass drivers that are designed to meet a compression driver/piezo tweeter have quite different characteristics to those designed for bass only applications.
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I run most gigs with some 'sides' of amps spare. No problems at all.
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Try Penn-Elcom, they'll cut to your sizes.
Failing that, we have someone on our forum who makes grilles to order, rolled edges, etc, whatever you need and very reasonable prices.
PM me for some contact details
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If you don't need the gobos to move around, might be cheaper to get some projectors like Solar 250's and some slide holders and get the slides made up/printed. They do a rotating holder too.
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For most mobile DJ setups and moderate sized lighting rigs, good quality mic cable will do the job just fine. Although the DMX standard is 120R, you'll find that even the stuff being sold as DMX cable rarely tops 110R. Decent mic cable is around 90R so not much in it.
I did a main festival stage last year using only mic cable, as we do for all of our events, and have never had any problems apart from the obvious failures with any sort of cable. Be careful of cables made up with screen to chassis though, DMX doesn't like these.
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For all your opti needs.....
I've got a lot of solar 250's and they're a fantastic effect, for atmospherics and special effects. Some of the special items like cassette changers and prisms go for a lot of money still but they just go on and on....
I've got an early one with metal gate that was built in 1975 that is still like new, lots of collectors of these still around.
The genuine oil wheels are good but i find them a bit 'slow'. A lighting crew called Bubble Vision make their own custom wheels which use thinner oils and have pieces of thin material in them which create a differnt type of effect.
Check out their youtube vids for the stuff they do.
They sell some on ebay sometimes, or you can try contacting Rod direct.
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Formula Sound make a product called an AVC2
My favourite piece of kit in the rack!
Affords me the opportunity to NOT have to babysit DJ's with poor technique/knowledge for 12 hour stints!
The only thing that I'd add to enquirers post about impedance/nominal impedance is the way that the driver loading can change the impedence. Reflex boxes have impedance spikes at points above the port tuning frequency. This is not normally too much of a problem as it occurs over a narrow band. Where a bandpass box is employed with a very narrow bandwidth tuning these can be very close together and change the impedance for the cab over most of its operating range.
Horns can also significantly change the nominal impedance of a cab, compared to the driver rating.
Rating A Rig
in Techie Talk
Posted
The only really effective way to describe a sound system is to quote output in decibels over its operating frequency range with a + or - deviation across that bandwidth. e.g. 136db 40hz-20khz +/-3db. Once you have a good flat response to work with, polar plots and time domain measurements will give a good indication of how clear it'll be over its coverage area.
However, most people wouldn't understand that, so you might as well just put down whatever number you feel makes your rig sounds the most impressive. Most people who quote rigs by watts do this anyway. You'll find few people who could tell you the difference between 2 and 4k.
On most gigs the size of the rig only matters if its not big enough. After that its sound quality all the way....