Members Coaster Posted March 27, 2011 Members Share Posted March 27, 2011 ok, just did a gig last night. really gave this a lot of thought while we were playing about having yet another source to have to try and concentrate on - and decided it is again ridiculous. now i have to run 6 lines to the mixer and take up six channels, have another amp and another speaker, taking up more room on stage and in the truck, requiring another FOH board (16 channels tapped out as is). nope. absurd. mono is fine. in fact it is hard enough to balance a mono signal into one speaker on stage and hear myself/not wipe out others. i aint seeing it folks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Reson8tor Posted March 27, 2011 Members Share Posted March 27, 2011 I will say this: even though powered/active PA speakers do sound great take the guess work out of matching up the spkr. cabinet to the proper amplification, they actually complicate things quite a bit when you're at the gig: you have to ALWAYS make sure you have the pwr. cords you have physically run pwr. cords/extensions from the spkr. stands (usually in front) to a pwr. source (usually in back), snaking them all over the stage You're doing it wrong. Or at least, doing it the hard way. The easy solution for powered speakers is to use loomed cables -- AC and XLR audio combined in one cable, with a sleeve. You can either make your own, or buy them pre-assembled. I'm lazy, so I bought the ProCo "Siamese Twin" cables. I carry one 50 foot and one 25 foot loomed cable for the mains (since the mixer is usually at one side of the stage), with another 50 footer in the car as a spare if I need a longer run. For monitors, it's a 25 foot loomed cable from mixer to the first one, with a Y-split for AC power for the rest. All the Siamese Twin cables connect both audio and AC power right at the mixer area, hooking into the AC supply in the mixer rack. Very convenient; I'm not looking for a half-dozen separate AC power connections for the speakers. You can't forget the power cables if they're combined with the XLR cables you're running for audio. The only downside I've seen so far, is that loomed cables are heavier, and they don't like to coil nicely. They also need some strain relief at the top of a speaker stand, due to the weight of the cable pulling on connections. But for me anyway, that's a minor thing compared to the ease of using loomed cables with powered speakers. It looks cleaner (just one cable running up the stand), and it's a bit less of a trip hazard on the floor, since you're cutting the number of cables in half. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GigMan Posted March 28, 2011 Author Members Share Posted March 28, 2011 I will say this: even though powered/active PA speakers do sound great take the guess work out of matching up the spkr. cabinet to the proper amplification, they actually complicate things quite a bit when you're at the gig: - or they can serve as actual microphone cables when needed, so I get more value from them. The Siamese Twin cables that have the TRS on one end might be worth considering to use for my monitors if they weren't so dang expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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