Question about Allen & Heath merit.

Bucky

Member
We bought a GL2400-24 and i was wondering what everyone out there thought of this type of board, also i have been have trouble getting everything to sound right with the rest of our setup we have a DBX driverack 260 signal processing, A QUC ISA-280 Amp for our fills, and a QSC ISA-750 amp for the mains, For fill speakers we have QSC AD-S82's, and EV T52's(which are like 20 years old i think and are the oldest part of the system) and our sound snake is a 10CH. w/ 2 returns
 
From all reports that I've heard, it's an excellent board. I've used the GL2800-40ch in a festival mix situation, and it's a very nice board, had no problems with it. Allen & Heath is one of the most respected manufacturers of upper-midrange boards in the industry. About on par with Soundcraft, IMO.
 
I was hoping someone would say that because went spent like 3K on it i just cant figure out the Matrix on it yet
 
Oh, matrices are fun. Read the manual, try to figure out how A&H has set this one up. I can't remember very well. Basically, adjust the knobs for each submix that is labeled in a matrix until you have as much as you want of each submix (aux, group, main LR or LCR or mono mix), and then adjust the matrix master to suit.
 
i dont know mabey its the whole Mixer within a mixer thing thats got me confused like i said i dislike sound but the sad thing is i still know more about it then any other student in my school
 
There has to be at least some musicians in your school. Any gigging musician probably knows enough sound stuff to get by.
 
There has to be at least some musicians in your school. Any gigging musician probably knows enough sound stuff to get by.

I should kick myself for saying that.
Where are you located Bucky?
Maybe I could find you someone who could give you some pointers.
 
I should kick myself for saying that.
Where are you located Bucky?
Maybe I could find you someone who could give you some pointers.
i am near london Ont. canada i already am talking to someone by the name of bob hulme he is amazing like dont geat me wrong i have been doing tech for like 6 years now i started on sond and moved to lights after my first year
 
I might possibly be in Toronto next month, so there's a very small chance I might be able to stop by for a bit if you'd like.
 
I might possibly be in Toronto next month, so there's a very small chance I might be able to stop by for a bit if you'd like.
no thats ok right now i have everything tore apart cause i am replacing the cones in our fills on upgrading somewiring
 
the A&H is a good analog mixer reliable, excellent support. Your question and comment leads me to believe that there is another problem in your chain, but you have not given enought detail re what does not sound right to make any comment

So just some general things, speakers don't age well but at the same time the matching of the speaker to the box is a lot of art and science, so your comment re changing some cones raises some questions re what you had and what your are moving to

The driverack 260 has a good reputation, far better than the driverackpa, but if it is set up wrong, it certainly can be causing all sorts of problems

One of the major problems is someone who is not all the experienced with setting up one of these type of units gets a RTA and a mic does some pink noise runs. and the sets all sorts of eq settings thinking this is going to work, result is typically the system sound awful... so, you might want to see what settings are and how they were determined

Sharyn
 
the A&H is a good analog mixer reliable, excellent support. Your question and comment leads me to believe that there is another problem in your chain, but you have not given enought detail re what does not sound right to make any comment
The driverack 260 has a good reputation, far better than the driverackpa, but if it is set up wrong, it certainly can be causing all sorts of problems
One of the major problems is someone who is not all the experienced with setting up one of these type of units gets a RTA and a mic does some pink noise runs. and the sets all sorts of eq settings thinking this is going to work, result is typically the system sound awful... so, you might want to see what settings are and how they were determined
Sharyn

its just the room sounds "muddy" we have had our room EQ'ed by a pro and had our Drive rack set up right

So just some general things, speakers don't age well but at the same time the matching of the speaker to the box is a lot of art and science, so your comment re changing some cones raises some questions re what you had and what your are moving to
the reson we are replacing our cones in the fill speakers is because we blew them up. well we blew the cones AND the fuses in the speakers.
 
Not to offend anyone, but these days anyone who charges you is technically a pro. I'd need to know exactly what the "pro" did when they set up the Driverack. Reason is alot of "pro" still really don't understand how to set up these systems, use the old RTA and then alter the curve, and these installs tend to have you type of problems.

Again I'm a zillion miles from your venue, but, and this is just an off the cuff statement, the room sounding muddy is usually a problem with a combination speaker placement but more likely it is room configuration, that needs to be corrected not with EQ but with acoustic panels. There are a lot of people, well intentioned that try to use the eq in the DSP type units to correct fro room reflections and it is just the wrong way to correct the problem and does not work, even though people sell these units with the expectation that they will resolve the issues.

The DSP drive rack etc should be set up to correct for SPEAKER Response issues, basically tailoring the response curve of the system to correct for speaker/ driver/ cabinet, tuning issues.

You need to be careful when you replace the speakers in the fill units to get the same speaker, simply dropping in the same size speaker is not going to "work" since the speaker and the cabinet and the porting and any crossover etc and the other speakers in the system all need to match to work properly.

Sharyn
 
I've made comments several times re setting up devices like the DriveRack etc and thought I might expand on it just a bit.

At one time, people simply used a reference mic, set it up in the room, did a pink noise test and altered the eq to "flatten" the response. This has proven to have poor results. There are several reasons, mainly that the position of the RTA mic is from only one position, is subject to the room reflections and really does not work in practice.

Instead, typically what is now done, is to use a program like Smaart, and compare the signal from the source, (could be pink or what ever) and what the mic is picking up but with the mic placed in such a way as to not get the room sounds, but to correct for the response curves from the program source thru the complete chain and out the speakers. So you are tailoring the response of the system, not the room.

Most of the alterations for the room are really for placement for time alignment speaker placement.

Lastly in most cases when you then use the rta mic in the room, you are moving it around, trying to detect problems with reflection/absorption, and then correcting it with placement and direction (for instance the main reason for the line array success was to be able to have the sound dispersion pattern be more focused and to reduce the "room effect".

We have moved along quite a bit from the old days of the massive pile of speakers stacked on each side of the stage pointing right out at the back wall, sending sound out not just to the audience area but the side walls, ceiling etc.

It is amazing what proper placement of the speakers, choosing the right dispersion pattern and use of some room treatment can do to dramatically improve the room effect.

Sharyn
 
Instead, typically what is now done, is to use a program like Smaart, and compare the signal from the source, (could be pink or what ever) and what the mic is picking up but with the mic placed in such a way as to not get the room sounds, but to correct for the response curves from the program source thru the complete chain and out the speakers. So you are tailoring the response of the system, not the room.
Most of the alterations for the room are really for placement for time alignment speaker placement.
Sharyn
I know thats how we set the system up in the first place Bob our "pro" sound eng. (whom we paid) used smaart and his RTA mics to set it up with how we had our speakers placed in our Cafatourm for our show
 
Then you should be able to look at the work he did and talk with him and try to determine surface treatments that you can use to resolve the room issues. The description you are giving would lead me to guess that you are getting excessive room reflections, you might also want to check the speaker placement and run some music thru the system and walk around and see how the response varies by location, as odd as it sounds if you cup you hand behind your ear, you might also see if you are gettting excessive rear and side reflections, Don't know how the space is setup, but sometimes an audience space that has a high ceiling and cat walk area, gets a lot of interfering reflections from the upper area, and putting sound absorbing drapes up on the side walls of the cat walk can help.

Typically when someone does a pro setup with a system like this they will not only work to resolve issues with the sound reproduction chain but also make recomendations and measurements and tests about room characteristics that panels drapes etc could assist with.

At the same time I would make sure that your fills are all timealigned and any phase problems corrected.

Sharyn
 
There has to be at least some musicians in your school. Any gigging musician probably knows enough sound stuff to get by.
lol most giging musicians who went to my HS knew just enough to be dangerous.
 

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