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Dj's United


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Everything posted by norty303

  1. No, you need to address head 1 as 1, then head 2 as 17, 3 as 33, etc I suppose you could try setting a head to go from 4 onwards and use channels 4 on from head 1 but it's confusing if you want the lights to be addressable independantly
  2. Are you 100% sure all of the speakers are 8ohm? It sounds typically like an amp running too low an impedance but you'd still expect the fans to run. Most amps should thermal before burning up like that. I take it you were daisy chaining the speakers together, so 2 off each side, running 1 cable to 1 speaker then out of the other socket in the speaker to the next one? Were you using speakons at the amp end or bare wire?
  3. http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=10996
  4. Drivers do change with time as they 'wear in' That's not to say that you need to run in new drivers, they should be capable of taking full power straight out of the box. But the characteristics change as they bed in. Most decent companies will do their measurements to provide specs after they've put a good load of hours (around 50) on them, to give the suspension a chance to become supple. I run some Precision Devices PD123ER 12" on my mids and they took 40 or so hours before they were properly sorted. they now need very little power to achieve the same output that required full power w
  5. The new Mania series look good, the EFX500 which is a sort of cut down Wizard and the SCX600 scanner with rotating gobos. Both look good for life on the road and not too pricey
  6. Don't get down on the suppliers for this, it's most likely that they are only going on information from Behringer. If Behringer keep on putting the release date back they can only go so far as to update their website as soon as possible with the new date. They're not going to issue a statement saying 'Behringer's mucking us about - sorry!' are they (at least not if they want to remain suppliers)
  7. As an indication of how you can't go by those RMS figures tho... My cabs are (mostly) horn loaded and have sensitivities anwhere from 4 to 8 db higher than any reflex loaded system out there. That means i can hit the same SPL as a reflex loaded 10k rig using under 4000 watts. Benefits are 2 fold, i can carry less/smaller amps, or have plenty of power in reserve so my sound is cleaner. Downsides are initial expense, size/weight of cabs (especially large sub horns which go low). Funktion 1's 218 bass bins are very well designed, being only 900wrms for the whole cab, but they are very sens
  8. It all depends on how much noise you want to make. Have you considered renting in a rig for this gig rather than trying to supply it yourself? Otherwise you may end up with a garage full of speakers that you only ever used for this gig. And they may also end up being rubbish because you skimped on the outlay. When you start to get beyond small disco size things change rather radically. For a start you don't really want to be botching lots of different cabs together or it will sound terrible. I'm doing a gig beginning of April for about the same number and i'm buying new mid/tops
  9. norty303

    Bass Bins

    QUOTE power handling of 1500 watts due to the cones being Kevlar inpregnated The kevlar only serves to stiffen the cone part of the driver giving it better sonic qualities because it's stiffer. The parts that may break on a driver are the spider and surround (and glue used to fix them) or the voice coil which is prone to melting under high power. The times when you'll tear a cone are when the driver is mounted in a high compression horn which is why the trend is leaning towards smaller, stiffer drivers with longer excursion so they function more like a piston.
  10. QUOTE Which is just about what the average human ear can detect. I've often wondered about this. When i dial in 3db more on my LMS i can hear a significant increase in the SPL. I can also hear the difference with less. I wonder how that figure was scientifically found?
  11. QUOTE I prefer to have an adequately rated amp, and have the speakers ticking over. Not always an option if you're required to produce a specified SPL for a gig.
  12. Also, be careful of phase shift when using any filter that isn't 24db/oct as every 6db/oct introduces 90deg of phase shift which may need to be compensated for. If available Linkwitz Riley 24db/oct filters are about all you could desire unless you're doing something special
  13. Depends on the cabs you're using, whether the tops can play cleanly down to the required level, whether the subs can play cleanly up to the point you want to cross them at. If it's got a hi-pass (low cut) feature you really should be employing that as well
  14. Generally 1.5 to 2x the RMS rating of the speaker, but only with good quality speakers. This is why people have problems, they ask pro sound guys for opinions, then apply it to their Gemini/Skytec/Soundlab/[insert 'DJ' market manufacturer here] cabs which are frequently not up to the job. Lets get this in perspective though - RMS is based on power handling for a continuous tone, so therefore your cabs should hold up to a sine wave continuously at the max volume (before clipping) of your amp if the cabs are rated the same as your amps. Music doesn't ever get close to this, even with si
  15. Spend money on a decent sound system if i was you. A 'sound enhancer' will still be limited by the abilities of your speakers, and any enhancement on a good rig should be achievable by good use of the EQ. If you're after special effects thats another story. I see sound reinforcement as making a true image of the recorded material, but louder. If you want to add lots of bottom end using a harmonics genrator then you are detracting from the original content. Also, when i want more bottom end I simply EQ more in. I have a rig thats capable of doing it, with enough headroom. I know of a f
  16. I also 'roll my own' so to speak and you don't have to go down the whole design path yourself. there are a number of great, well proven designs out there using easily available components which won't kill the bank. Try: www.speakerplans.com (and check out the forum for lots of good knowledge) in particular look at the X15, a 15" and 1 or 1.5" compression driver (a couple of options there) full range or mid/top cab. I've got some to the original design which i love but they've now been modified so they're a bit smaller and can double as a monitor wedge if needed. Not too heavy either
  17. Thats not to say that you can't experience undesirable effets from UV lamps though. I use a number of UV cannons in my area of work, doing a lot of trance events where UV backdrops and decor is a major part of the production. Whilst you don't seem to notice the high power of the lamp due to its UV nature, it can still effect your eyes like viewing a white light of equivalent intensity. I try to place units as far from the crowd as possible and make use of the flood effect rather than concentrated focussing. I've expeienced first hand the 'white dot when blinking' effect and it's laste
  18. A lot depends on whether you want to use the feedback suppression built in or if you want to pull the freq's yourself. The old 8024 Ultracurve also had 6 bands of feedback killer on it and can be had for a lot less than £100 now. If you're going to set it up manually then a normal 31 band EQ will befine
  19. I've never had any problems with Thomann when i've dealt with them. Are we talking about the same place as the OP?
  20. They're new and not available as yet. I'm keeping my eye out for them to see what the opening price is going to be. You're prob best to wait a while anyway as the price will drop once a lot of retailers get them and the competition factor kicks in. They are also doing a 150w discharge version SCX700 with 1 more glass gobo and indexing on the gobos. I love the fact they've got built in macros and like previous lights in the Martin range they have a mode of DMX operation where you just use the DMX channels to control the music triggered patterns rather than having to program every step.
  21. QUOTE The Behringer has an LCD version of the AVC's led ladder which, like the Formula Sound, does not pump up and down. Is that the Dynamic EQ you're talking about? The limiter screen does pump with the music. It was the the limiter on the DCX which caused the blow on my sub incidentally. If it was a DLC you would be able to hear the level drop as you wind up the input level. As it is, you continue to hear the bass (haven't driven any of my other sections that hard yet) level go up as the average level increases, even with the limiter lights showing. The dynamic EQ on the other h
  22. QUOTE Formula Sound's industry standard AVC series limiters used to have a description on the blurb which stated: "....protects your sound system from accidents or recalcitrant DJ's....". Technically the AVC is a dynamic level control as it actually reduces the gain rather than just compressing with a infinite ratio. I own one and it's probably the favorite single piece of kit i own. Do not place too much faith in limiters to save your drivers. A lot of people have a false sense of security with theirs. Compression effectively squashes the peaks down meaning you can raise the input
  23. To be honest, that ebay amp looks like a dog. 3U high for only 2 x 250 wrms is excessive. Also the back panel connectors are very strange for a PA amp. It looks like its got RCA outputs to speaker as well!! And no XLR inputs. Have a look at the Thomann T.amp range (same as Audiohead AH series). The TA450 looks about comparable with that one for alittle more but i'd go for the TA1050II if it was me. http://www.thomann.de/gruppe-PAAP-3.html?i...54a85bb7e9a3dea Tried and tested and cheap and smaller than that other one with better performance.
  24. The other issue against active (for me) is that once you get much above a pair of speakers and a sub, the amount of power and signal cabling becomes unwieldy. I can run 14 boxes of rig with just 4 main speaker (using 4 core cable) runs from the amp rack and a single power run to the distro.
  25. QUOTE Regardless of reason, when an amp goes in a passive speaker system, it's the end of the entertainment until another amp can be sourced, but with an active speaker system, you can at least carry on with one channel. I'm confused by your reasoning there, it's common thinkng that it's the other way round. If you lose an active speaker you lose one whole box. With separate amps you can run in mono by paralleling existing speakers off the remaining good side of the amp. It's VERY rare for both sides of a single amp to go at the same time as they're generally 2 mono amps running from
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