I am a little concerned about your comment "finally wired in stereo". As Wayne noted, just having three speakers or arrays does not make it an L/C/R
system and your comment makes me wonder if the
system is actually intended to be a true L/C/R
system or stereo plus center
mono or perhaps it is actually an exploded
mono cluster with each
array covering a different area of the seating. This is a critical
point as this is not your living room or a studio and unless the
system was properly designed so that the left and right arrays each evenly
cover all of the seating, you may not get the result you want.
As far as I know, it was designed to be a stereo
system originally. From what I've been told, about five years ago a group came in to "fix" the PA
system. Before them, it was a stereo
system with the subs, pit monitors, and center speakers coming from aux sends while the L and R were just run left and right. They group in fact, as far as I can tell, really screwed the PA. They rewired it into
mono with the L and R speakers run through a
crossover and then the subs and center speakers
fed directly from the board (not through a
crossover), all with the same
mono feed. They also installed
XLR connectors on all of the speakers and cables. To me, that sounds like a pretty shoddy job. So yes, from what I know It was designed to be a stereo
system. If it matters, our
auditorium is about 1100 seats and quite a
bit wider than it is deep.
In addition, today we were trying to figure out why one of each of the L and R speakers weren't working (each side is a pair one hung above the other). Not only were the
XLR connectors totally shot (IDK why they even used them on speakers in the past 30 years...), but upon taking the speakers down and opening them up, I find out that a) the woofers in the speakers are actually car subwoofers and that b) one of the internal crossovers is in fact an old
crossover from a ~1975 JBL home theater
speaker, like the kind with the little knob on the back that sets the high response. And that one of the cables running from the
crossover in the
speaker to the
tweeter is an old piece of extension cable. Then I find out that when the group came in to work on the PA, they also made new boxes for the speakers and supposedly just put the old drivers and
crossover, wiring
etc, into the new box. But these subwoofers are clearly no more than 5 or 8 years old. As far as I can tell, the guy switched out the old woofers for his car's subs. Not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed off after that.
So following that rant, I like the idea of running the mics out the center
speaker and then using the L and R for other stuff. However, out center
speaker sounds pretty crappy without the L and R. THe L and R are really tinny and the center is a
bit muddy, but together they balance out alright. Not good, but approaching acceptable.
There are also probably some differences in how you want to use panning as once again, instead of an audience seated in a small defined area like a home listening environment, you have a larger audience spread out over a much larger area. Every listener has a different visual and aural perspective to the action on
stage. If you pan based on an audience member dead center in the room that may vary from the visual and aural perspectives of people off to either side or at the front or rear of the seating. For
mono sources, which includes any actors, panning for most rooms and systems typically has to be fairly subtle and may not be as much of a
effect as you envision.
Good
point. It would more often be used to place sound effects I imagine. But any suggestions to how to better place people and effects would be appreciated.
Providing more information on the
system and application would help people provide more directly relevant and useful responses. For example, what mixing
console do you have? That could definitely impact how signals may be routed and what options are feasible.
Good
point, forgot about that last night. Our board is a Crest HP-8. Right now, the L, R, and M feed all run through separate EQ's to help with
feedback and then into crossovers to filter. Obviously after that each is run to a separate amp
channel.
Sorry if some of this doesn't make sense, today was a tough
first rehearsal day.
Wolfgang Devine