If you continue to mix cabinets, Donald Trump will be your president. He will immediately outlaw the mixing of cabinets. You see where this is all going, right?
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Any Rules For Mixing Cabinets?
- Thread starter Mike SS
- Start date
It took me a very long time and lots of bucks to make a 212 vertically alignment work as allrounder. My favorite cab just by now.
And knocked me down I could find my personal tone with mixed stuff on a stage I giged a lot then at once with mixed crap. That's the more the environment/room and stage was very delicate and "boomy". Sometimes the skills and experience in science can't confince!
And knocked me down I could find my personal tone with mixed stuff on a stage I giged a lot then at once with mixed crap. That's the more the environment/room and stage was very delicate and "boomy". Sometimes the skills and experience in science can't confince!
Ric5
Inactive
- Jan 29, 2008
- 29,772
- 30,452
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- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
I saw them in Chicago in 73 or74 for the Dark side of the moon tour ... they had a quadrophonic pa that was state of the art
I think he meant "three sine wave signals whose frequency is 100 Hz".
Since no one has, I'll go ahead and mention a mixed-[and, at the same time]-matching setup solution (assuming present head, cab and the need for a full stack are set in stone - I agree with the poster above who pointed out a 410 is usually plenty for the gigging needs of a 15-year-old):
find another 410BLX, the cheaper the better;
find two 210s, better if unloaded (eBay?), dirt-cheap or built by yourself, each of about half the internal volume of the 410 (I don't know about all GK Backline 10" cabs ever built, but the series II ones are sealed, as per the Link Removed, so no need to figure out tuning freq - if you find two with the right volume but ported, block the ports);
load them with the drivers from the newly-acquired BLX;
the two cabs can be used in a tall and skinny stack which might be more manageable than the 410, depending on personal logistic taste, and disperse sound better than the square cab - also, one of them can be paired with the (loaded) 4x10 for a total 5.33 ohms, marginally more wattage out of the head, more...woofage with equal power distribution [EDIT: per driver] (of course, if need be, all three cabs can be fridged together in a full stack of doom)*;
sell the 410 carcass for a Benjamin or so.
Profit? Uhm, not really. Worth it if every component is acquired for peanuts. Also, the GK Backline series (with the notable exception of the 600 head) is not very highly regarded, so it would be a little weird to design a modular system around one of their cabs...
*Ideally the drivers would be 8 ohms, and you could have someone add a series/parallel switch to the 2x10s - your kid would then also have a cab solution (one 210, set to 4 ohms) for small gigs. Unfortunately, in this case, according to a cursory search the drivers are apparently 32 ohms, so no dice.
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That's incorrect in my experience. The cab that has the highest sensitivity would get most of the power. It is not necessarily balanced between the 210 and 410, as you say. Quite the contrary, I would expect the 410 to get the bulk of the power.
After 3 pages, I'll give the op my personal experience. (Then I'll go read the battle)
I had a juicy ass sounding 410, sounded great, rated 700 watts, then someone suggested I get the "matching" 115 to go with it...
Well 3 gigs later I noticed the 115 sounded scratchy and crusty..yep..I blew the 115.
It cldnt keep up with the volume the 410 liked.
As it turns out, I was feeding the same power to both 8 ohm cabs. The 410 loved it, while the 115 was being beaten to a pulp.
Woulda cost more to replace the 15 speaker than to buy a new cab.
(It was a very well respected brand)
I do NOT mix cabs anymore.
Ymmv.. (But not by much )
T $
I had a juicy ass sounding 410, sounded great, rated 700 watts, then someone suggested I get the "matching" 115 to go with it...
Well 3 gigs later I noticed the 115 sounded scratchy and crusty..yep..I blew the 115.
It cldnt keep up with the volume the 410 liked.
As it turns out, I was feeding the same power to both 8 ohm cabs. The 410 loved it, while the 115 was being beaten to a pulp.
Woulda cost more to replace the 15 speaker than to buy a new cab.
(It was a very well respected brand)
I do NOT mix cabs anymore.
Ymmv.. (But not by much )
T $
He's gonna make bass cabs great again!
To be honest, as of now, I wouldn't buy your 410 at the classfileds, cause it does very likely skunkwork over time.After 3 pages, I'll give the op my personal experience. (Then I'll go read the battle)
I had a juicy ass sounding 410, sounded great, rated 700 watts, then someone suggested I get the "matching" 115 to go with it...
Well 3 gigs later I noticed the 115 sounded scratchy and crusty..yep..I blew the 115.
It cldnt keep up with the volume the 410 liked.
As it turns out, I was feeding the same power to both 8 ohm cabs. The 410 loved it, while the 115 was being beaten to a pulp.
Woulda cost more to replace the 15 speaker than to buy a new cab.
(It was a very well respected brand)
I do NOT mix cabs anymore.
Ymmv.. (But not by much )
T $
I think I have got it
adding of two signals with 60 degree path difference but same time cycle.
Must be something wrong cause destructive interference starts at 90 degree phase difference.
Between 0 - 90 degree there must be (at least) some constructive interference,
+6dB with "phase" difference = 0 dgree
0 dB with "phase" difference = 90 degree
- (x) dB with "phase" difference > 90 degree
By the way 60 degree which is a very lot of "difference" means a loss of -1.9db. That is factual around +4 dB instead of + 6dB
Little minds claim it's inaudible cause it's as big (or as small) as the difference between 8 Ohm versus 4 Ohm cabs with ss amplifiers.
I'm still curious from where the common adressed nasty phase issues in difficult room invironment come from?
adding of two signals with 60 degree path difference but same time cycle.
Must be something wrong cause destructive interference starts at 90 degree phase difference.
Between 0 - 90 degree there must be (at least) some constructive interference,
+6dB with "phase" difference = 0 dgree
0 dB with "phase" difference = 90 degree
- (x) dB with "phase" difference > 90 degree
By the way 60 degree which is a very lot of "difference" means a loss of -1.9db. That is factual around +4 dB instead of + 6dB
Little minds claim it's inaudible cause it's as big (or as small) as the difference between 8 Ohm versus 4 Ohm cabs with ss amplifiers.
I'm still curious from where the common adressed nasty phase issues in difficult room invironment come from?
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dice actually. Your 2 210 cabs become 16 ohm each and one or both can be added with the 410.
In all my years of reading posts here, no one wanting to mix cabs has ever stated why. That in of itself tells me everything I want to know.
Shouldn't there be a penalty for posting that gif in the mixed cabs thread-of-the-day? That and the mixed driver police pedal car pic...
- Nov 24, 2008
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- Owner & designer, AudioKinesis; Auth. mfg, Big E (Home Audio only)
Actually the cab with the lowest impedance will get most of the power if they are connected in parallel (which is usually the case). The opposite is true if they are connected in series.
Here is an online calculator that might be useful for people who care about this sort of stuff and don't have a background in electronics along with a gift for doing math in their heads:
Speaker Impedance
Here are some rules of thumb I would suggest for combining different cabs:
1. Make sure the impedance of the combined cabs isn't too low for your amp. We don't want the magic smoke to escape.
2. Make sure the power handling of whichever cab is the weakest link will be adequate. See the online calculator at the link above. And try to make apples-to-apples comparisons... if you're looking at combining a $300 410 that's rated at 1600 watts, and an $900 115 that's rated at 500 watts, chances are the 410's rating is based on "peak power handling", which is typically four times the AES (Acoustic Engineering Society) rating that the 115 is probably using. Bonus points if you can also take the excursion-limited power handling into account.
3. While phase rotation in the bass region can reduce the amount of low end you get from the combination, it doesn't inherently put either the cabs or the amp at risk, so imo it's something to take into account if you can but it's not a critical concern. And if one cab is significantly louder than the other in the low end, the cancellation you get will be reduced because the louder cab will dominate anyway.
edit: See Downunderwonder's post #159 below, he has an EXCELLENT point that I hadn't thought of, which really casts doubt on the combining of different cabs.
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Which I covered in the rest of the post. I meant no dice as to adding a series/parallel switch (and expecting it to be useful: no one wants a 16/64 ohm switch). What I was mistaken about is assuming the head is low-powered, which it isn't: you could squeeze about a hundred watts out of it at 16 ohms, which might be enough for small gigs, and 350W at 4 ohms would mean asking for trouble with an entry-level 210 (if switching between 16 and 4 could happen).
Uhm, no there shouldn't.
how do you feel about phase rotation of mids?
Ime of mixing and comparing full range vs biamping there was a noticeable loss of clarity to the mixed full range stack.
I ran mixed cabs for years. I paired a 410 with a 115 because the GK115-blx that I bought to get back into bass playing was way too boomy by itself. So I already had that cab. I got the 410 to add to it to get the low-mids, high-mids, and highs that were almost non-existent in that 115. I figured if I couldn't EQ out the boominess, I'd just run the 410. However, the acoustic B410 doesn't have the best low end by itself. Adding the 410 and cutting the low EQ on my amp took care of the boominess pretty well. The combination of those two cabs sounded better than either one by itself. My single power-block amp put out 400-watts at 4 ohms so each of the cabs got 200-watts so they worked well and no worries about blowing anything.
Then I bought a dual power-block amp (WT500 hot-rodded up to 800 watts) with a "balance" knob. That knob is magic. I plugged the GK115-blx (200-watts power handling) into one side of the amp and the acoustic B410 (400 watts power handling) into the other side of the amp (separate power channels!). Both are 8 ohm cabs and got 240 watts each from their respective sides. Then I turned the balance knob about 3 clicks towards the 410 which sent more power to the 410 and less to the 115. Cleared that boominess right up with EQ set flat. That not only made the sound work great, it took away any concerns I had about pushing too much power to the 115. So, that's why I paired a 410 and 115 together and how I got it to work well.
Since then, I've purchased a DNA cab - DNS410 (8 ohm and 1400-watt power-handling) and I ONLY run that one cabinet. I run it with my amp bridged at 800 watts into 8 ohms and it just kills. No need to lug around an extra cab, much easier than lugging around an 810, and my amp just gets warm running it because it is such an efficient (loud and clear) cabinet. So, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. Now I'm down to a single top-quality cab and really don't need a second one.
