You haven't got the pad switch down have you ? that would knock about 20dB off!
Other than that it's a case of getting the singer to eat the mic, making sure the mic cable is balanced with all 3 cores wired and it's connected into the Mic XLR in \ not a line in.
In general you need the Mackies turned right up, the desk master fader at 0dB and then start with all channel faders down. The Mackies won't run at full pelt until their volume is fully open, master fader is at 0dB and channel fader wound right up. If you run the system with the Mackie volume down then you will clip the master bus of the desk before getting anything like full power.
What mics are you using ?
Our singer uses a Sennheiser summatoranother, seems more resistant to f/b than a Shure SM58 cardioid.
If she's quiet you might need to get a condensor mic like a Shure Beta 58A
Originally Posted by paultheoneyoulove
Pad switch? There isn't one as far as I'm aware? Only a low cut.
K
Senheisser E835's
K
Jut re-read your post and it's not really master volume I'm after. I'm just concerned that the vocal levels barely move the meters.
K
Had a quick look at the 2442 manual online .....
Experiment with the "MIC TRIM" control - you could easily be getting a lot of signal cut from that.
There might be a pad switch on the mic (some do some don't) as well, make sure it's off - that's for using a sensitive mic in front of a Marshall 4x12 !!!!1
No I know
First bit of the post means pad on the desk channel. This is pre fader and will knock about 20 dB off the mic gain before it even gets to the EQ and Fader. The switch sometimes doubles up as a line switch so then called Line \ Pad. With no 1\4 jack inserted it acts as a pad on the mic input
Second bit of the post was just to say don't gig with the Mackies turned 1\2 down, to get max headroom (which you will need with 400 watts) you need to run the mackies and desk master fader @ 0dB.
Check what Jal just said about the Senn's trim ( trim means gain in this sense ) Our Senn's have adjustable gain, maybe yours is set too low ?
I'm not familiar with your model of Senn but the Senn EW100's we have also take different internal modules, some modules are for loud rock vocals, some are suited to quiet voices etc.
The trim control is the control I mentioned earlier that is almost all the way up. It's contradictory because here I'm bing told to turn it up and on page 1 I'm being told to use as little gain as possible?!
The mic definitely doesn't have a gain control.
I think it's personally because the singer is quiet. When she belts it out (ACDC, etc) it's fine but then the levels drop right off on some songs.
K
Ok, when talking trim I was referring to the trim control on the actual mic. Our EW100 Senn's have an actual trim control built into the mic, if yours doesn't then we assume there's no mistake there.
There's no right or wrong position for the gain control on your desk in theory, you just need to set it so the girls voice has much more signal than the background noise (noise floor) but not so much signal it clips on the loud bits. Most mic pre amps will have a minimum gain of about 10dB and a max of about 70dB ish. If she needs all the available 60 or 70dB then she may well just have a very quiet voice or perhaps she holds the mic further away than normal. Maybe she can get more on the mic, as close as possible to avoid spill and feedback.
Our singer has really good mic technique but we still use compressors on the vocals, even with the best technique in the world some singing parts will always be louder than others. The compressors tame this and make the vocals easier to mix. We have DBX one's now but we were using a Behringer Multicon, which is 4 X compressors in one rack space ... for about 100 quid
I thought that's what you meant, but there's a knob called trim on the 2442fx, hence the confusion.
As mentioned previously, when she belts it out the meters bounce around perfectly. It's only when she sings normally that the meters drop right off.
Never paid attention to her mic technique. Will keep an eye on that.
K
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