Acoustic PA Rig Rundown - Mackie DL1608 JBL PRX712 and DBX DriveRack PA2 Walkthrough
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ส.ค. 2024
- As a follow-up to my acoustic rig video which turned out to be quite popular (thank you!) I thought I'd walk through the PA setup I use for my acoustic shows. I recently bought a DBX DriveRack PA2 and will walk through how to RTA a room using my basement/rehearsal space as an example. Thanks for watching.
Wow, great video Ken.......I had the DBX DriveRack PX, loved it with my powered speakers, so now I am about to upgrade to the BDX PA2.............The song at the end of your video was so good......I wish it was the whole song. Thank you for posting, subscribed. Yea the rig/pa sounds really good.
thanks man - I've since updated :) I got a A&H Qu-16 console and upgraded the JBL's to EAW Redline's. It's a smoking rig - sounds incredible. There's a video of that rig on my channel as well if you want to check that out. Thanks for the nice comment...appreciate it. The song I'm playing is Marry You by Doyle Brahmall.
Yeah I did get the DBX PA2 and used my iPad to do the setup with the app. Great piece
Hey Ken I watched your video and researched some online material. What a great piece of equipment! My sound system sound 200% much better. Thanks.
Great to hear! It's not that difficult once you go through the steps a few times with it - the last thing you want to do is try to figure it out right before a gig. Do you have the DriveRack that you can control with an ipad over wifi? That is way easier then trying to do it on the smallish LCD screen on the front panel.
Great video Ken. I'm thinking of getting one. Just wondering do I still need to carry out a full eq sound check on my mixer before I connect to pa2 ? I realise the Pa2 cuts feedback but if the sound needs a little bass for example will the pa2 add it in ? Many thanks .
Scott here in Ireland 🇮🇪
I never really had much luck with or used the driverack system for feedback control. If you ring your system out right to begin with - you don't need it. That said, I don't use the driverack anymore anyway. :) Good luck!
Hey great video.
Trying to get my rig set up as well. I have the PA2, Soundcraft Si impact, 2 QSC KW 153, and 1 KW181 sub (i was torn between the QSC's and those JBL's man). Hey side note, i also have one of those drawers in each of the racks i have, and i put this little magnetic light i had bought for the camper in there. Its battery powered LED, but it has motion detection, so if you position it correctly it comes on and off as you open the drawer, you can get it just right so if you want it to come on say when the drawer is 1/2 open, or whatever. I cant for the life of me find the name anywhere on it, but i'm sure i bought it on amazon.
So i am pretty new to the sound end of things. My question is on setup when it asks me for the amp and then tells me to set the amp to such and such level, where am i supposed to do that? The speakers are powered. I tried using the gain knob, but after about 25 minutes of "the system is configuring the new settings" i backed out. Still trying to get the thing set up.
Great idea with that little patch bay thing on your rack. What a pin in the balls reaching into there to get the XLR's plugged into the drive rack while its mounted above something that is as deep as the rack case.
Great video... thanks for uploading. I am curious what SKB model you have?
I can't remember which model it is - small sized probably 8 RU in front with a slant top for mounting a mixer. I've moved to a Allen and Heath Qu-16 and had to do surgery on the case to make that work - but I put castors on it as well. It's a workhorse. Check out my newer videos to see that.
Hello Ken , Nice setup and thx for sharing. Could you do a vid on the M-one XL? do you use it for Vocals or Acoustic Guitar or both? things like that. thx again for sharing .
Hey Kewlt66. The M-One-XL is a great unit for the price. It's has 2 channels essentially so you could run them mono and have 2 discrete FX that you could use for vocals and acoustic guitar (not likely you'd use the same FX for both). If you check my channel you'll see I've changed my live rig quite a bit since this video. I use an Allen & Heath Qu-16 which has stereo FX built into the console (one of the many reasons I moved to it - don't want any more rack gear). Anyway, for the $$ you can't go wrong with the XL unit...the quality is nice and very flexible.
Hey Ken Thanks so much . Think I"ll give it a try.
Hi. If you send you mains true DriveRack PA2, how you keep the Eq on you Mackie 1608. Do you also keep you main eq on or off on the Mackie.
you use all the EQ you need on the Mackie - both on the the individual channels themselves, say for a vocal mic, as well as the main outputs. The Driverack will get you into the ballpark but it's not perfection so if you run through the PA2 setup and still hear a little something on the high end or in the mid-lows that seems like it's going to be a problem you'd tweak it there - not in the PA2 settings. So yes, use all the EQ you have available to you.
Donde conectas de la salida del procesador dbx¿ a donde va a un canal ?
no habla espanola! :) The DBX Driverack sits between the mixer and the speakers - it doesn't connect to a channel. You connect the mixer outputs to the Driverack and then there are outputs on the Driverack that go to the speakers. Look up the manual and it will tell you how to hook things up.
When you fix a filter on the volume for the mics does that mean it won't peak during the gig
I assume you are talking about the DBX feedback control feature? You don't 'fix' a filter. It's a two step process. First, the system finds out which frequencies are apt to feedback (if you watch the process you'll see that what you do is start cranking a vocal mic until it starts to feedback...when it does the DBX grabs those frequencies and pulls them a bit). Those become 'fixed' filters at specific frequencies (the ones in the previous step) but then you can have additional filters which can grab additional problem frequencies during the performance. You can set how long it pulls those as well - if you want to just attenuate it for a few seconds or permanently. It's a cool feature but I find actually that I don't use it really in practical applications. If I had a bunch of time to ring out a room with no one in there then yes, I'd probably do it for the fun of it...but when I'm setting up I'm in a club or restaurant where there are people around so creating a bunch of feedback on purpose isn't really a great thing. :) The key in those situations is to just properly ring out the PA/monitors and without using tools it just comes from experience...being able to hear where the problems are likely to occur and to shape an EQ to provide ample headroom without killing the sound.
Ken Lince thanks for responding
Hi Ken just subscribe to your channel. I just bought the DBX PA2 Driverack, and wants to use it with my JBL PRX 715 & PRX718XLF. Can you advise me on how to do the hookup
Hey Theresa - there are some good videos on TH-cam on how to do this and the manual is pretty good as well...but basically you'll send the outputs of your mixer to the inputs of the PA2 and then you'll use the main and low outputs to send to your tops and subs. From there you'll run through the wizard setup on the front panel of the unit (or via wireless which is easier if your unit has the RJ-45 ethernet connection on the back and can connect to a wifi access point). In the wizard you'll pick the closest speakers...mine Driverack didn't include the JBL 700 series but did include the 600 series which is what I used - close enough. Again, there's too much detail to include in a post here - highly recommend checking out the videos on YT as well as pre-reading the manual then doing some trial/error setups before you actually go to a gig and try to do this for the first time.
Thanks Ken.
With your SKB combo rack, is there enough clearance for the lid to close properly while leaving the XLR connections in place?
yes, with the Mackie rack there's plenty of room. If you don't run the patch panel like I have it in this video then you'll have the room available with cables still connected to the mixer - however the patch panel cables will probably have to be disconnected. I've gone to a different setup now (have an A&H Qu-16 racked up in this same rack now) so I can't go look/test it to see for sure.
I my opinion this rig is overly complicated for playing a simple acoustic show......you need a degree from MIT to run it. My acoustic rig : 1 guitar from pedalboard into mixer channel one , vocal mics into channel two and three . One floor monitor and two PA speakers on stands.just set your levels ...done . It sets up /breaks down in less than 5 minutes . Im there to play not tinker with thousands of dollars worth of gear for 15 or 20 minutes......that's a very nice rig to keep setup at your practice space but too much to lug out and set up everytime
While I appreciate your comment - I respectfully disagree. I have gone through several live rig iterations and none are 'overly complex' because I know what I'm doing and I know how to setup the gear. Also, digital mixers are incredibly invaluable as they allow you to save a show configuration. So, literally the next time I play there I simply recall those settings and I'm ready to go usually with no or very minor tweaks. I get consistent compliments from venue owners and other musicians on how great my guitar sounds live, the overall sound of the PA, the mix, etc... I like having options and I use the same rig whether it's a 5 piece band or my wife and I doing an acoustic performance. That's pretty powerful to me. You should look at some of my newer videos - I don't have one of my setup right this moment, but recently acquired a small rack mount Midas mixer and I use a Kemper Profiler to the mixer in stereo. It sounds sublime and my setup is one small rack to hold the mixer and kemper and 2 PA speakers. I started using in-ear monitors and all that's hard wired in the rack so I literally put my earbud in and I'm ready to play - don't even have to tweak wedges anymore. Thanks for stopping by.