100V dynamic processing

[TomHoward]

Sorry for such a boring topic, but what is everyone's approach to connecting a single switched dynamic mic or radio mic to a stack of amps for 100V line?

Usually I apply some compression and gating, which seems to help it sound slightly less awful (only slightly), and the gating helps with a radio mic to avoid capturing stray conversations when it's held at the waist between announcements.

 

I've got Behringer Sharks for this at the moment, but I'm not liking them as they have a confusing gain system, no gain reduction or real metering, and they forget their settings every time they are powered down. I don't know if that's just mine but they all do it.

The up side is they are compact, and have preamp, 48V, gating, compression and high pass all in one unit.

 

Most of the cheap single-channel preamps with compression like Art and the like all seem to be valve gimmicks... is there a unit from Cloud or something similarly installation based that fits the bill?

Edited June 27, 2021 by TomHoward

[kerry davies]

Why worry about quality when using 100V? If quality is an issue then use different kit. Why add complexity and more layers of kit when they can't even use the switch on a cheap mic? If 100V is called for surely the less fancy kit in a field under the control of stark raving luniacs (the general public) the better?

 

This is more or less the same as the topic on not overdriving dance school PA systems, give them something they can't break, a boombox in the dance school scenario, and they will still have a pretty good go at it. Keep It Simple.

[sunray]

Why the derogatory comments about 100V

Why differentiate between the way a microphone is handled on different sound systems?

If this is dry hire/unattended then KISS - NO; compression, gating AGC etc. as whatever is provided will be twuck beyond comprehendable use.

 

[Junior8]

Part of the fun of PA systems for the listener is hearing the picked up conversations, wind whistling, open mics picking up passing tractors, deafening clicks from dirty mic switches, and on one memorable occasion the vicar who was doing the announcements getting drunker by the hour. The poorer the quality and the more ham-fisted the users the better for me. If no steps have been taken to deal with delay it's perfect! Edited June 28, 2021 by Junior8

[sunray]

Part of the fun of PA systems for the listener is hearing the picked up conversations, wind whistling, open mics picking up passing tractors, deafening clicks from dirty mic switches, and on one memorable occasion the vicar who was doing the announcements getting drunker by the hour. The poorer the quality and the more ham-fisted the users the better for me. If no steps have been taken to deal with delay it's perfect!

There speaks the voice of experience, experience of lovely controllable theatres type environments, including outdoors, but I suspect not experienced in the wiles of the typical school sports day or church fete. Edited June 28, 2021 by sunray

[kerry davies]

Not being derogatory about 100V at all, I have probably installed more permanent 100V factory PAs and hotel room calls than anyone on here and we had a proper TOA set in the community festival kit. There is just such a thing as horses for courses and taking a basic 100V line system then adding lots of expensive bits to model the sound is over-egging the pudding. (Hows that for mixed metaphor?)

 

The best glitch I ever had was a squiffy 84 year old woman eating cake and telling 15,000 punters just what she thought of the mayor who was busy opening the event using the main stage PA. They were both onstage and could not hear what was going on so when the guest of honour dashed on and wrestled the mic off her it was hilarious. I got to the amps just after Jeremy Beadle got to the mic. Last I heard was; "He's after my cake!"

[TomHoward]

Well, I guess that's than then. I tend to use a bit of compression on 100V as it seems to get the sound slightly less honky (it's mainly to get good level whilst trying to avoid distortion). I have a load of the TOA Sound Projectors (basically a 6" speaker or so in a horn) as I find them slightly less painful than re-entrant horns.

I used to have the DNH Music Horns which cost a fortune but I could never get any decent noise of them.

 

I quite like 100V as there's no dealing with last minute musician requests, and nothing artistic about it, it's run the cables out, "1-2, 1-2, yep sounds terrible let's go home".

 

Delay is another issue but I just leave that one alone and try not to point too many speakers into any given area.

I might get an old Cloud CX335 with the front panel and stick it between desk and amps. Or I might just forget it and throw the Sharks away.

[Junior8]

Nice story Kerry. The best I ever heard was at a fete where Mrs J8 was trading in South Hampshire. A very voluable lady had been round selling raffle tickets with the enticement that she was a cordon bleu chef and one of the prizes was to come to your house and cook a meal for two. Sure enough the draw took place and the cordon bleu meal was won by someone (we all heard) from Lowestoft a mere 420 mile return trip away. How did we know? We all caught this lady saying off mic "Where are they? Lowestoft! If they b*****y well think I'm going...." before the mic was switched off.I think it was switched on with some very false excuse about a mistake and they had in fact won the free MOT just down the road.

 

Part of the fun of PA systems for the listener is hearing the picked up conversations, wind whistling, open mics picking up passing tractors, deafening clicks from dirty mic switches, and on one memorable occasion the vicar who was doing the announcements getting drunker by the hour. The poorer the quality and the more ham-fisted the users the better for me. If no steps have been taken to deal with delay it's perfect!

There speaks the voice of experience, experience of lovely controllable theatres type environments, including outdoors, but I suspect not experienced in the wiles of the typical school sports day or church fete.

 

 

No I love dire PAs at fetes and the like - it's all part of the fun.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Junior8

[sandall]

Or I might just ........ throw the Sharks away.

Good call

[sunray]

Well, I guess that's than then. I tend to use a bit of compression on 100V as it seems to get the sound slightly less honky (it's mainly to get good level whilst trying to avoid distortion). I have a load of the TOA Sound Projectors (basically a 6" speaker or so in a horn) as I find them slightly less painful than re-entrant horns.

I used to have the DNH Music Horns which cost a fortune but I could never get any decent noise of them.

 

I quite like 100V as there's no dealing with last minute musician requests, and nothing artistic about it, it's run the cables out, "1-2, 1-2, yep sounds terrible let's go home".

 

Delay is another issue but I just leave that one alone and try not to point too many speakers into any given area.

I might get an old Cloud CX335 with the front panel and stick it between desk and amps. Or I might just forget it and throw the Sharks away.

But why does 100V sound 'honky' in the first place? And it doesn't have to sound terrible.

 

 

Well for a start not all 100V is horns and then there are horns and there are horns, I have some very old Eagle HDB12 (12"x6" 25W) on a job someone asked how I got them to sound 'so nice' as he couldn't, I showed him my set up (Mixer, powerpod amp including GEQ) and he started asking where the processing is. Some time later I came across him and yes his sounded horrible, 5U rack with 4U of Behringer processing; far too much top and bottom smily face on the GEQ which the 2 feedback destroyers stripped straight out, heavy brick wall compression and severe gating, + 1U for music bed for every announcement. Madness.

 

Delay is ok ish for fetes etc as long as one is able to work out what delay is required and where and as long as the wind doesn't change direction, however like you I control it by LS placement/projection.

 

Music Horns... Yeah they sound OK but they need soooo much drive, oh and so many of them. TBH I find it easier to use basic cabs. I've never got on with sound projectors, I picked up 8 of the older TOA's in the silver extruded ali cylindrical enclosure in a job lot -used them a handfull of times and got rid when someone made me an offer.

Aat my grandsons sports day the PA was 2 tripods about 10m apart with 6 PJ200's each (No idea of tappings) couple of Trantec 5.5's and a 360W Toa running on a couple of small car batteries. He was running the system well into distortion (I often wondered if it was caused by running the RX's on the same battery as the amp) and no way was he covering the field, the mics had better range than the speakers. On top of that every year the batteries didn't last the 2 events (infants morning & juniors afternoon) and the distortion got got to the point it was hard to dicypher, prize giving was a joke.

 

 

 

I always regretted not replacing the very old pressure units for 42" horns as they failed, they sounded so nice...

I had 12 in the shed unused for 24 years, Ms Sunray finally persuaded me to part with them 2 years ago when she convinced me retirement due to failing health was the right thing.

 

 

Nice story Kerry. The best I ever heard was at a fete where Mrs J8 was trading in South Hampshire. A very voluable lady had been round selling raffle tickets with the enticement that she was a cordon bleu chef and one of the prizes was to come to your house and cook a meal for two. Sure enough the draw took place and the cordon bleu meal was won by someone (we all heard) from Lowestoft a mere 420 mile return trip away. How did we know? We all caught this lady saying off mic "Where are they? Lowestoft! If they b*****y well think I'm going...." before the mic was switched off.I think it was switched on with some very false excuse about a mistake and they had in fact won the free MOT just down the road.

I shudder at the number of rigged raffles etc I've knowingly announced, the old classic is the guess the weight of the cake, after a couple of guesses 'the plant' manages to be spot on... actually one of those the cake ended up on the floor so the rigged to ensure it wasn't won. Then there's the name of the teddy bear...

 

[Stuart91]

I shudder at the number of rigged raffles etc I've knowingly announced, the old classic is the guess the weight of the cake, after a couple of guesses 'the plant' manages to be spot on... actually one of those the cake ended up on the floor so the rigged to ensure it wasn't won. Then there's the name of the teddy bear...

 

One of our local gala days held a raffle, with the usual selection of prizes donated by nearby businesses. The £15 voucher for the hairdressers was won by the baldest man in the town. The draw wasn't fixed, as far as I could see.

[James]

I shudder at the number of rigged raffles etc I've knowingly announced, the old classic is the guess the weight of the cake, after a couple of guesses 'the plant' manages to be spot on... actually one of those the cake ended up on the floor so the rigged to ensure it wasn't won. Then there's the name of the teddy bear...

 

One of our local gala days held a raffle, with the usual selection of prizes donated by nearby businesses. The £15 voucher for the hairdressers was won by the baldest man in the town. The draw wasn't fixed, as far as I could see.

 

Aware this is getting increasingly OT...

 

I a Parish fair where the Curate managed to draw his own ticket for the large hamper of wine, seconds after pretending to have drawn his own ticket for a quick laugh... Given the shade of purple he went there was no way that this was anything but genuine. Obviously after joking about before hand he had to decline the prize and draw again for someone else.

 

Coming back to 100v line,

Yes I've always tried to stick with speaker placement rather than dealing with delays

Yes the wind can play absolute havoc with coverage on a bad day

Yes I will generally use a little compression if available on the primary mic but that is more due to poor mic technique from whoever is running the fair / sports day / event / whatever rather than for any musical reasons.

 

James.

[Stuart91]

the Curate managed to draw his own ticket for the large hamper of wine,

 

I had something similar happen at a fundraising dinner. The person organising the draw decided that, rather than do a traditional raffle, he'd write a message on the underside of one side plate, then put it back into the pile for the waiting staff to randomly distribute.

 

The plate ended up in front of his wife.

 

Of course, there was no way of doing a re-draw.

 

 

 

Yes I will generally use a little compression if available on the primary mic but that is more due to poor mic technique from whoever is running the fair / sports day / event / whatever rather than for any musical reasons.

 

 

In a normal non-covid year, there's a handful of events that I handle which use 100v line system. One of the larger ones could really do with something more substantial, but the cables are buried under a road and there's no practical way to run anything else.

 

I've usually got a small-format digital desk driving it all. I do attempt to time-align the different speakers, which seems to help the intelligibility, especially for those in areas where the coverage overlaps. Some compression can definitely help, partly to compensate for poor technique but it also brings the quieter parts out of the noise floor created by crowd and vehicles.

 

One important difference is that I'm on hand to operate for the duration of the event, it would be a very different scenario if the equipment was being set up and left.

[paulears]

If we're doing anecdotes - we had a bowls championship on Gt Yarmouth Seafront - with loads of horns cable tied to the lighting posts down the prom. During our evening show big panic as a chap came panting up the stairs and explained that Bobby Ball's microphone was loud and VERY clear down the seafront. They'd locked up and gone home and not switched the PA off and it was on the same channel we were using. We didn't comply with the request to stop using it. Next night it was Jim Davidson ....... now that would have been interesting, but I figured "Rock on Tommy" wasn't really going to upset anyone.

[sunray]

If we're doing anecdotes - we had a bowls championship on Gt Yarmouth Seafront - with loads of horns cable tied to the lighting posts down the prom. During our evening show big panic as a chap came panting up the stairs and explained that Bobby Ball's microphone was loud and VERY clear down the seafront. They'd locked up and gone home and not switched the PA off and it was on the same channel we were using. We didn't comply with the request to stop using it. Next night it was Jim Davidson ....... now that would have been interesting, but I figured "Rock on Tommy" wasn't really going to upset anyone.

In order to comply with licensing conditions yada yada yada... Bobby balls microphone is retuned to prevent interference to other users. Simples

 

Having worked with them it wouldn't have mattered to them and would have provided material for a whole different show.

 

Some compression can definitely help, partly to compensate for poor technique but it also brings the quieter parts out of the noise floor created by crowd and vehicles.

 

One important difference is that I'm on hand to operate for the duration of the event, it would be a very different scenario if the equipment was being set up and left.

The one thing I learnt a long time ago with outdoor function was to avoid compression on mics at all costs as the noise created by crowd and vehicles rises in the speakers when there are quiet parts in the speaking.

 

Being in the industry it get my hackles up when I hear a comentator at an event and all the garbage in the silent parts being brought up by the compressor.

Edited June 30, 2021 by sunray