Dyn-B Discovery

[Monte]

My apologies to those who are on the 2xbasslist and may have already read this.

Ok, I'm not much of a sound guy, so I'm hoping someone can help explain why
this worked.

When playing the Dyn-B through cheap PA systems without much headroom, it
would often be boomy and indistinct when my channel was turned up to a
reasonable volume. I combat that by using an ART tube preamp which allows me
to cut the signal going to the PA and it cleans it up much better.

Anyway, I had some trouble when going into a cheap PA system on election
night at a watch party. The PA was where I couldn't control it, and in spite
of my admonition that the gain needed to be at almost zero for my channel, I
later found out to that guy it meant about 2 or 3, way hotter than I usually
do. Trying to clean it up, the guy put me into an Auxiliary input. Voila,
clean microphone sound. No tone controls, but none were needed either. Since
then I've tried this on 3 other PA's, with similar good results.

I assume it is cleaner because it is not passing through anything but my
preamp and the power amp on the PA system. Am I correct? At any rate, maybe
this will be helpful to someone who has had a similar problem. I tried it
with my Acoustic Image Contra going through the effects loop which bypasses
everything but the main volume with similar good results.

Any comments to help me understand?

Monte

[Francois Blais]

Originally posted by Monte
The PA was where I couldn't control it, and in spite
of my admonition that the gain needed to be at almost zero for my channel, I later found out to that guy it meant about 2 or 3, way hotter than I usually do. Trying to clean it up, the guy put me into an Auxiliary input. Voila, clean microphone sound. No tone controls, but none were needed either. Since then I've tried this on 3 other PA's, with similar good results.

As I understand it, the level of your signal is line level, not mike level (which is much weaker than line level).
Of course, if you're bypassing an additional (and unnecessary) preamp stage, you get a cleaner sound.
You were also probably saturating the mike level input, resulting in distorsion and boominess.