Hi all—long time lurker, first time poster.
I'm trying to track down the cause of a problem in the theater that I have recently inherited as manager.
Disclaimer/Warning: I am not remotely a sound engineer. Anything that sounds vague or hand-wavey is probably me hiding my ignorance. Please ask incisive questions.
My first question, is this a bad idea?
That shot is the back of the amp feeding our eight, dedicated monitor outputs. Those monitor outputs are built into the stage, four upstage and four downstage. Note in the image that there are two leads running from each amp output, one to an upstage output plug, and the other to a downstage plug (So Upstage #1 and Downstage #1 are receiving the same signal).
So is that regular practice? I remember trying similar monkey business with my home boom box when I was twelve, but does anyone sense a problem with this set up where reliability and quality is at a premium?
And I'm asking because we have a problem: those monitor outputs built into our stage are pretty much unusable. When we plug in monitors, each output has its own problem. One sounds like it's underwater, one doesn't put out anything audible, etc.
For context, here's our audio chain: Unpowered monitors -> dedicated outputs on-stage -> amplifier (wired as pictured above) -> digital signal processor (Lake LM44) -> Digico D-Rack -> sound board.
So here's what we've tested:
Possibly wild speculation:
From my limited understanding, if the LM44 is set in Mesa mode, then it is passing the four signals from the board to the amplifier, after processing each of them according to its programming. I could imagine that if they were misconfigured, those four processing channels could cause the kind of problems we're hearing. My first thought when I heard the faulty monitor set-up was that someone had screwed up the EQ.
Phew.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. And I'm happy to try and clarify anything.
I'm trying to track down the cause of a problem in the theater that I have recently inherited as manager.
Disclaimer/Warning: I am not remotely a sound engineer. Anything that sounds vague or hand-wavey is probably me hiding my ignorance. Please ask incisive questions.
My first question, is this a bad idea?
That shot is the back of the amp feeding our eight, dedicated monitor outputs. Those monitor outputs are built into the stage, four upstage and four downstage. Note in the image that there are two leads running from each amp output, one to an upstage output plug, and the other to a downstage plug (So Upstage #1 and Downstage #1 are receiving the same signal).
So is that regular practice? I remember trying similar monkey business with my home boom box when I was twelve, but does anyone sense a problem with this set up where reliability and quality is at a premium?
And I'm asking because we have a problem: those monitor outputs built into our stage are pretty much unusable. When we plug in monitors, each output has its own problem. One sounds like it's underwater, one doesn't put out anything audible, etc.
For context, here's our audio chain: Unpowered monitors -> dedicated outputs on-stage -> amplifier (wired as pictured above) -> digital signal processor (Lake LM44) -> Digico D-Rack -> sound board.
So here's what we've tested:
- The monitors themselves are fine: in any other set-up they work as expected
- The D-Racks are operational: no matter which D-Rack output we run to the built-in monitor outputs, the audio problems are the same
Possibly wild speculation:
- I think it's unlikely that the plug connections for the monitor outputs are the problem, because they would all have failed in slightly different ways at the same time.
From my limited understanding, if the LM44 is set in Mesa mode, then it is passing the four signals from the board to the amplifier, after processing each of them according to its programming. I could imagine that if they were misconfigured, those four processing channels could cause the kind of problems we're hearing. My first thought when I heard the faulty monitor set-up was that someone had screwed up the EQ.
Phew.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. And I'm happy to try and clarify anything.