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Vocals Only Through PA

tycobb73

tycobb73

Jul 23, 2006
3,744
807
Grand Rapids MI
#1
How big of a room can you play to put vocals only through the PA? A drummer I may start a band with has a 4 channel PA. She talked about using it to gig with. I know nothing about it yet, will find out Tues. But my thing is most bands are too loud anyways so maybe vocals only or vocals and bass would be good. How big of a room can we get away with this at?
 
#2
Depends on your amps. If you all have enough juice, you should be ok.
I have done it in my last band a few times and it worked out ok. However, you really have to go out front or have someone that knows a good mix to listen to how it sounds while playing.
 
#5
tycobb73 said:
How big of a room can you play to put vocals only through the PA? A drummer I may start a band with has a 4 channel PA. She talked about using it to gig with. I know nothing about it yet, will find out Tues. But my thing is most bands are too loud anyways so maybe vocals only or vocals and bass would be good. How big of a room can we get away with this at?
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Depends on what your trying to do musically but I would say a small room. If you want people to dance then I recommend getting a set up that you can at least runs some kick drum thru and that usually involves a sub.
 
#7
My band has been playing gigs like that for years and we get lots of compliments on our sound. It does help that my drummer is a somewhat heavy player with a well-tuned, big-sounding kit with a kick drum I've nicknamed "the howitzer." Volume has never been an issue for us. The guitarist plays a Vox AC30 (tube amp) that's plenty loud, and no one has a problem hearing my Mesa M9/Berg AE212 rig. Our biggest issue is usually keeping volume down, not filling the room with sound.

These days, in mid sized bars, we've added a small powered sub and mic the kick a little, but we don't HAVE to do that to get great sound.

We keep the dance floor full.
 
#14
aglide said:
Could someone recommend a decent priced powered sub for a situation like this, where you typically only want vocals in the PA but would like to add the kick drum?
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Your bass rig. It's already there and can do a reasonable job of it, just use a little mixer to add the kick. Cheap subwoofers are no better.

IMO the cheapest and most compact respectable subwoofer (considerably better than a bass rig) is the Yorkville LS608, not available powered. The LS801P is bigger and way more expensive (and kicks all kinds of ass). Normally one runs the PA mono to free up an amp for the subwoofer. Unless you have flagrant stereo effects nobody will notice or care if it's mono.
 
#15
Man, the LAST thing I'd want is kick drum blasting out of my rig.

The problem with running vocals only through the PA is that stage volume can get out of hand really quickly. My rig could probably carry a room up to 500 people without PA support, but then I'd deafen everybody on stage with me.

There's also the issue of coverage. Lows are omnidirectional, but above 80 Hz sound begins to travel in a straight line. This means one side of the room gets too much bass, the other side too much guitar. If your playing a long narrow room this isn't much of a problem, but in a wider room it's not so good.
 
#16
Speaker beaming is a MUCH bigger issue for guitar than bass. The larger the speaker cone, the lower the frequency point where beaming occurs. The rip of distorted guitar is at 3kHz or so usually from a 12" speaker, while there is not much going on with bass above 1kHz often from 10" speakers. 10" speakers start beaming at around 1.3kHz, 12" speaker start at about 1.1kHz. It doesn't matter much if the bass rig is off to one side. Guitar amps however should always be tilted up when driving the room.

And you get used to kick through the bass rig, it's just a huge space/cost saver compared to hauling a decent subwoofer. You still get paid ;)
 

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