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Driverack with a digital board

troy mcclure

troy mcclure

Mar 5, 2007
3,299
931
Central Florida
#1
I recently acquired an older digital board to eliminate most of my out board equipment except my crossover in my cover band pa. Still not getting the desired sound I know my speakers and amps are capable of, I have read 2 books on sound and teaching myself.

A buddy of mine told me he thought the system would benefit from a drive rack.

Who has experience with them? My tops are JBL MRX 525s so I know they have a preset but my subs are Yorkville elite's and I don't think they would be in presets.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
#2
What is the mixer? We use an older Yamaha 01-V, had all kinds of issues (some distortion, low head-room) with it until we discovered another "layer" in the software where there is a digital pre-amp on each channel, that were turned all the way up. Dimed. Maxed.
We tweaked those back to a correct level, and everything was sounding great after that. The whole fix was hidden in one 10 word sentence buried in the middle of a 50 page operation manual.
 
#5
troy mcclure said:
4 mal The vocals are muddy and the guitar kinda thin.
Click to expand...

I advise getting a driverack, but that's more because it is useful as a crossover, mains EQ, limiter, speaker delay, etc.

What you're describing has more to do with (no offense) your abilities as a soundman, though. Muddy vocals and thin guitars are caused by factors that are not necessarily (or directly) the domain of the driverack.
 
#6
Along the same vein as AndyLES, it seems that you are trying to fix a mix/eq problem.
I don't think that a Driverack is the proper component for that.

Muddy vocals and thin guitar are likely to be more easily remedied by better mic technique, different EQ, etc.
 
#8
AndyLES said:
I advise getting a driverack, but that's more because it is useful as a crossover, mains EQ, limiter, speaker delay, etc.

What you're describing has more to do with (no offense) your abilities as a soundman, though. Muddy vocals and thin guitars are caused by factors that are not necessarily (or directly) the domain of the driverack.
Click to expand...

Agreed. You'll have to address these issues at the front-end: mics & placement, channel strips, external processors (FX, EQ's), etc. The DR, however, would be a great addition to your rig but it won't perform miracles.

Riis
 
#9
There used to be a great Eq-Tutorial on the Presonus site. I've asked them to restore it. That will clear up a lot of the mystery I think. They do have an article on compression and dynamics in general that I'm about to dig into.

I've liked their articles so far. They have a certain real world flavor I
find helpful. I may have a PDF of that EQ tutorial, If so I'll put it up on my ftp site.
 
#10
+1 to the digital boxes not correcting for mixing skills, but i think driveracks do have presets for yorkie elite cabs.

what bugs me is that (AFAIK) you can't go "digital" from the board into the driverack; it seems like by now you should be able to bypass all the A/D and D/A conversions of these various digital components and their inherent losses and latency, and stay digital at least up to the power amps.
 
#11
walterw said:
what bugs me is that (AFAIK) you can't go "digital" from the board into the driverack; it seems like by now you should be able to bypass all the A/D and D/A conversions of these various digital components and their inherent losses and latency, and stay digital at least up to the power amps.
Click to expand...

The Rane speaker management system I use (RPM26z) does have a stereo digital input, but the outputs are analog.
 
#15
MNAirHead said:
It's for matching crossover and eq settings for speakers
Click to expand...

It does more than that (like delays to time align woofer/tweeter, optimizing the signal to the amp to best drive characteristics for the speakers) but to the ear, the presets make it sound like the driverack has done a nice job eq'ing.

If it doesn't have a preset for your cabs, you use the RTA microphone and while listening to pink noise it will adjust to produce the desired eq curve ( you have a few choices including flat). So not having a preset for your cab is no biggie.

The 3rd option is to get parameters from the speaker mfg and type them in. I don't know anyone who has done this.
 
#16
correct... figured there was a point in the anwer that we be the internet goof that says to read the manual

fretless_bill said:
It does more than that (like delays to time align woofer/tweeter, optimizing the signal to the amp to best drive characteristics for the speakers) but to the ear, the presets make it sound like the driverack has done a nice job eq'ing.

If it doesn't have a preset for your cabs, you use the RTA microphone and while listening to pink noise it will adjust to produce the desired eq curve ( you have a few choices including flat). So not having a preset for your cab is no biggie.

The 3rd option is to get parameters from the speaker mfg and type them in. I don't know anyone who has done this.
Click to expand...
 
#17
fretless_bill said:
It does more than that (like delays to time align woofer/tweeter, optimizing the signal to the amp to best drive characteristics for the speakers) but to the ear, the presets make it sound like the driverack has done a nice job eq'ing.

If it doesn't have a preset for your cabs, you use the RTA microphone and while listening to pink noise it will adjust to produce the desired eq curve ( you have a few choices including flat). So not having a preset for your cab is no biggie.

The 3rd option is to get parameters from the speaker mfg and type them in. I don't know anyone who has done this.
Click to expand...

...which is what we do as the mains & subs are not directory-listed. Does a nice job, too. I was just wondering what a model-specific EQ template would look like...I always have to run the "custom" route (**sob**).

Riis
 

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