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1 pa for drums, 1 for vocals?

kringle77

kringle77

Supporting Member
Jul 30, 2004
8,880
4,291
49
Massena NY
#1
My current pa consists of a pair of powered 1x12 tops and a powered 1x18 sub. In some boomy rooms the sub is hurting as much as helping and even though it is a fairly resonable move (jbl prx618s-xlf), it still isn't fun. The bass and guitar are carried 90% by our own amps and just alittle goes into the pa to get some clarity above peoples heads. Sometimes the drums are starting to use too much of the tops power.

I have a pair of jbl prx635 powered cabs that are pretty flat down to 50hz. I was thinking about running only drums through these, set on the floor and then only running vocals or just alittle of the bass and guitar through the tops. I think that this could work, has anyone done anything like this? I have a driverack that I can use to set individual filters and eq's for each set of speakers. I'd run the drums panned hard right and everything going to the tops panned hard left.
 
#3
I think you'd be making it more complicated than it needs to be by running just drums through separate set of speakers. Just use the PRX635s with the sub for everything and you're good to go. Since your speakers are all JBL, they should play nice together even without the Driverack. Seems like you could benefit from bringing down your stage volume and letting your very capable PA carry the room.
 
#5
My main pa is the jbl sub and pair of EV powered 12" tops. I got tired of lugging the prx635 pair and actually prefer the sound of the smaller ev tops. I was just wondering if I could possibly get a more powerful sound from 80hz on up using all fullrange speakers. Like I said, I could just run all 4 fullrange speakers the full mix. I actually wish there was a good 2x12 pa top out there that was affordable and common. I was just wondering if anyone had experience using all fullrange speakers.
 
#6
kringle77 said:
My main pa is the jbl sub and pair of EV powered 12" tops. I got tired of lugging the prx635 pair and actually prefer the sound of the smaller ev tops. I was just wondering if I could possibly get a more powerful sound from 80hz on up using all fullrange speakers. Like I said, I could just run all 4 fullrange speakers the full mix. I actually wish there was a good 2x12 pa top out there that was affordable and common. I was just wondering if anyone had experience using all fullrange speakers.
Click to expand...

A pair of Greenboy Audio Fearless 212s would make for an awesome FOH array. Affordable? Well, that's another discussion.
 
#8
Okay, so I have to poke fun at you for saying you don't want to bring the PRX635s to use tops instead of the 112s, but you'd be willing to bring them in addition to the 112s.

All kidding aside, if you want to use the 112 tops and you're having problems with drums, then about all I can suggest is compressing the kick and snare and doing careful gain staging all the way through your signal chain. Make sure you have the "with sub" switches on the EVs turned on. At that point the filters on the sub and the tops are both at 100Hz if I recall correctly. If you have the xover freq set somewhere else on the Driverack, you're probably putting a hole in your sound. 112 tops are really convenient and I love my PRX612s, but they can't perform miracles.

The only other suggestion I have is to just run the PRX635s full range and leave the sub at home to lighten your load. However you end up working it out, let us know.
 
#9
we use a 15" cab and 800 watt square type pa head as a subwoofer. Normally we just plug kick drum into it and eq to taste. Vocals, guitars, keys go into the main powered mixer and "tops". So that's two separate PA systems basically.
We've done it the "proper" way with everything coming out of the mixer's built in crossover. It's not better sounding as near as I can tell, just more time consuming to set up.
 
#10
I'd say experiment with the shelving of the EQ on the bass drum and see if you shelve away the lower end it clears up the sound. Compression will bring up the level of the sound following the attack, which is how the TC Electronic amps work to make the output sound louder than the wattage. But by doing the EQ and compression you might be able to get the impression of loud bass drum without pushing lots of air and muddying the sound. A multiband compressor might be useful, but you could download a copy of Reaper and test that theory with its multiband compressor run in the insert point of the mixer as proof-of-concept.
 

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