Hey all, wondering if some of you seasoned players / sound people can lend some insight here. I'm getting an unberable amount of distortion in my stage monitors, but my wife tells me the sound out in the congregation is o.k. Its a long post, but I'm trying to paint a picture of our setup.
To describe our setup:
I play in a church praise band, small to medium size church I guess. Typical Sunday morning sees about 90 to 120 in the pews. The sanctuary has a capacity for about 350 I suppose. The main portion is about 150 foot long x 80 foot wide; including the altar area. The ceiling is vaulted, probably about 25 foot in the center and perhaps 12 foot along the edges.
This is an older building, built in the 1920's, so acoustics in general & certainly not a live band were not on the horizon for construction design. Lots of stained glass, plaster & lath walls, oak pews with no cusions. No sound damping material in general other than the carpeting.
The band is set up in the front of the chuch, we are just in front of the alter, but off to the side. Our music stands & moniotrs occupy the 1st pew on that side.
Gear wise: We have 2 guitars, Keys, bass (me). Lead Guitar player and Keyboard player share lead vocals. Rythem guitar sings backing vocals. Drums on a occasional basis.
All our amps are run through the PA via line outs or mic'd.
There is a mixer in the back of the church that all vocals, instruments & the wireless mics for pastor etc. all go throuh. House Mains are driven off the mixer through a 500 watt power amp; and a pair of 1x15" cabs hang in the rafters above roughly the 3rd pew back. A line out from the mixing board is send back down on a buss circuit back the snake cable to the front pew and we have a small powered mixer head that serves as the amp for the stage monitors.
We have been noticing distortion, mostly in the highs, keys and vocals, off & on in the monitors for a month or so now.
As a test, I unplugged everything else and played music via an I-pod through the amp & monitor speakers. Played a wide variety of stuff and drove it hard, no distortion.
If we pull it back to just one instrument, or one vocal, its fine, but as we add musicans, it just builds and gets worse and worse. This morning I tried making some adjustments, initially I felt the vocals were distorted even in the mains. I cleaned them up and scooped a little midrange out, they improved. But then the stage levels were untolerable (at least in my opnion). Guitar player is constantly telling me tha the can't hear me; & OTOH I don't want to be the obnoxioulsy loud bass player in a church with a very mixed congregation. My current rig is an Ampeg SVT3 and an Epifani UL210 cab (8 ohm).
We do not have a sound tech. Its generally either me or the lead guitar have to not play, and then go up and tweak things while the others play & sing to set levels. Its a small church type thing, so none of us are paid; and we obviously cant pay a sound engineer.
I'm thinking the distortion has to be coming from the bus signal out of the mixer; just at a loss as to how to fix it.
Even if you could point me in the right direction for some good reading material, it would be great.
thanks much!
To describe our setup:
I play in a church praise band, small to medium size church I guess. Typical Sunday morning sees about 90 to 120 in the pews. The sanctuary has a capacity for about 350 I suppose. The main portion is about 150 foot long x 80 foot wide; including the altar area. The ceiling is vaulted, probably about 25 foot in the center and perhaps 12 foot along the edges.
This is an older building, built in the 1920's, so acoustics in general & certainly not a live band were not on the horizon for construction design. Lots of stained glass, plaster & lath walls, oak pews with no cusions. No sound damping material in general other than the carpeting.
The band is set up in the front of the chuch, we are just in front of the alter, but off to the side. Our music stands & moniotrs occupy the 1st pew on that side.
Gear wise: We have 2 guitars, Keys, bass (me). Lead Guitar player and Keyboard player share lead vocals. Rythem guitar sings backing vocals. Drums on a occasional basis.
All our amps are run through the PA via line outs or mic'd.
There is a mixer in the back of the church that all vocals, instruments & the wireless mics for pastor etc. all go throuh. House Mains are driven off the mixer through a 500 watt power amp; and a pair of 1x15" cabs hang in the rafters above roughly the 3rd pew back. A line out from the mixing board is send back down on a buss circuit back the snake cable to the front pew and we have a small powered mixer head that serves as the amp for the stage monitors.
We have been noticing distortion, mostly in the highs, keys and vocals, off & on in the monitors for a month or so now.
As a test, I unplugged everything else and played music via an I-pod through the amp & monitor speakers. Played a wide variety of stuff and drove it hard, no distortion.
If we pull it back to just one instrument, or one vocal, its fine, but as we add musicans, it just builds and gets worse and worse. This morning I tried making some adjustments, initially I felt the vocals were distorted even in the mains. I cleaned them up and scooped a little midrange out, they improved. But then the stage levels were untolerable (at least in my opnion). Guitar player is constantly telling me tha the can't hear me; & OTOH I don't want to be the obnoxioulsy loud bass player in a church with a very mixed congregation. My current rig is an Ampeg SVT3 and an Epifani UL210 cab (8 ohm).
We do not have a sound tech. Its generally either me or the lead guitar have to not play, and then go up and tweak things while the others play & sing to set levels. Its a small church type thing, so none of us are paid; and we obviously cant pay a sound engineer.
I'm thinking the distortion has to be coming from the bus signal out of the mixer; just at a loss as to how to fix it.
Even if you could point me in the right direction for some good reading material, it would be great.
thanks much!
