Technical P.A. Question....

[DavidE]

My acoustic duo is heading to Put In Bay, Ohio on Friday for a 3 day gig. The club bought 1/2 a house sound system. Essentially they bought a power amp and hung some mains speakers. We have to provide everything else.

I understand from a friend who did the gig a week ago, the power amp only has XLR inputs. I have 4 boards (2 powered) and all have 1/4" main outs. I planned to take my Yamaha EMX 5000 board to use the internal power for our monitors and for effects.

All the boards have 1/4" UNBALANCED outputs at line level, so I need to go from that unbalanced output to a balanced XLR input. 2 of them unless the amp can be bridged (I don't know if it can).

My friend who played last week made his own adapters while he was up there and loaned them to me, but he said there was a drop in output and he had to crank everything to get any kind of volume.

I have to take everything I need to the island with me. There's no music store out there, so I need to figure this out before I get there.

Can I just use two direct boxes in place of my friend's adapters?

Any other suggestions????

Thanks

[tafkathundernotes]

DI boxes should work much better than his adapters, actually - if I'm understanding correctly.

As an aside, I was flying to Chicago from Boston years ago and saw the Lake Erie islands from the plane. Beautiful place!

[DavidE]

Very nice place. Now fill it with drunks and a bunch of bands. Makes for a good time.

I found out that one of my mixers has 1/4" balanced outs so could use that and get some converter cables. But its effects are kinda poor and I'd still have to bring my PV powered mixer head to power the monitor.

I asked more questions and found out that my mixer will have to plug into a line mixer that goes into a compressor and then to the power amp. The line mixer is 30' away from where our mixer will be. Who came up with this setup?

I ALSO found out that they do have a 1/4" cable that runs to the line mixer but doesn't reach the area where we'll be playing. However, I can use a female to female coupler (I have one) and could hook up another 1/4" cable to my mixer. Then I could bring the Yamahamahamaha.

ARghhhhh

[Dutchman]

I would use one(or as many as you need) of these as short as possible, (1 foot)

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Hor...mp;src=3SOSWXXA

to a balanced cable of length needed. That 30+ foot of 1/4" is going to be a noisy nightmare.

The compressor is going to amplify all of the artifact and radio stations and whatever from the 1/4" cables, keep them as short as possible. Clean in equals clean out.

I would make sure the cables are balanced from the compressor to the power amp also.

Check the back of the compressor for a switchable line level to increase gain to the amp or from the board if needed. Set the compressor during sound check, this is an important piece.

Good luck and have fun...

[DavidE]

I would use one(or as many as you need) of these as short as possible, (1 foot)

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Hor...mp;src=3SOSWXXA

to a balanced cable of length needed. That 30+ foot of 1/4" is going to be a noisy nightmare.

The adapters I have from my friend who used the system last week would be the equivalent of those cables, but without any cable. hi z on both ends, 1/4" to xlr.

What about one of these plugged into the output jack of the board??? I know I have one around here somewhere.

[Dutchman]

This is what I've used in the past for those type of situations.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Archer-274-017-1-4-F-t...VQQcmdZViewItem

I don't know of any other way to show you what they look like.

I also used the same with the male 1/4" plug. You don't loose any signal with this type of device.

The short cables where the only things I could find in my hasty search.

Your friends adapters will work, if you loose some gain see if the line levels on any devices will allow you to jump up a few db's without adding artifact. Just keep the 1/4" (HiZ)cable if used as short as possible. The Lo Z can be as long as you need it.

Let us know how it turned out.

Outdoors with alcohol was always one of my favorites. Hopefully it will be hot, and the girls will be misbehaving

[DavidE]

That transformer is similar to the one I meant to link in my last email, but the 1/4" side is male so it would go in the jack on the board.