Had some sound trouble at our gig last night

Last night our band played at a gig for a new biker chapter in the local area. We were in the corner of the bar, and the room size was about 60x80 - 8-9' ceilings. We brought our small system which is 2/15's, 1/12" monitor, Peavey XR8600 head (600x600).

The place was filled, barely any standing room and people were about 5' from us. We had the mains up on stands to the ceiling and about 20' apart. Normally with the smaller system, we never have to turn it up past 1/2, but last night we needed to go higher, but had terible feedback problems in the monitor. The feedback ferret on the Peavey head didn'nt give us any indication of problem freq's,so we really didn't know what to do. Along with the feedback, because we were playing so much louder the amps were just blaring, and we couldn't hear our selves in the monitors, and actually lost track of the beat several times because we couldn't hear the drums in the monitor (we used a programed drum machine last night).

I'm looking for suggestions here...are we to the point of mic'n the amps to keep the stage volume down? Did the full bar suck up our normal volume? It also seemed that we really weren't getting too much more volume buy turning up from 1/2 to just under 3/4.

Suggestions?

Cyber

you need to get a good eq for your monitors, and yeah it sounds like you were under gunned. watts are king in the land of live sound. people soak up volume and frequencies. that's why when you play it doesn't sound like sound check.

I agree with Chuckocaster. For the PA you need lots of clean watts to keep the sound good.

If you end up shopping for a more powerful PA system, remember the power rule: Doubling the power only gets you 3 dB more volume.

Also check your PA speakers' efficiency rating. A less efficient speaker will eat up the PA power big time. For example, if you were to end up with a 2X more powerful PA, but also got new speakers that are 3dB/w/meter less efficient than your current speakers, you will end up with no net increase in volume.

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Originally Posted by cdw2000

I agree with Chuckocaster. For the PA you need lots of clean watts to keep the sound good.

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Something I've discovered - the better, or more linear your PA equipment is, the less you need to EQ. The minute you try to push your PA past it's linear limits is when the problems start multilpying.

exactly!