Looking for input on this audio arrangement

Hi guys,

I've understood Martin's recommendation all along about using a single pair up front for a *wet* set if you want to most *accurately* hear the set as intended, it's just like headphones, except you don't wear a pair of speakers with 8" drivers on year head!

Since I have 3 pairs up front I decided to experiment, no more, no less, and I'm just one of those audio perfectionists working within the reality of what I have to use, but I'll keep trying to make an improvement instead of settling for just o.k. or good enough.

I'm the opposite, although I will also agree headphones sound great, I very much dislike wearing them (probably has something to do with wearing a headset all day at work?) no matter how good they are, and along with not only giving myself something awesome to listen to every time I play (it's my outlet), I want the same when friends come over. So far anyone who's heard it has been blown away. My issue with my live sound has either been lack of detail or lack of spaciousness and a compromise one way or the other, this recent change / addition of the front mix-down just upped the ante by 25% on my sound and provides both quite nicely, I would say it sounds better than headphones at this point, or at least has a much more pleasing sound. Will this work for the next person? I don't know but I would think it would. Give it a try, if you don't you like what you hear you can always easily switch it back. Make a back-up copy first if needed.

In any case, I always enjoy testing and experimenting, and I'm happy to share what I've learned here if someone can use it to their benefit. Maybe I'll come up with a diagram of what I did and post it here.

Marc

Here's a couple simple drawings I whipped up so you can see what I'm doing. Nothing here is to exact scale, but will give you the basic idea of how I have things arranged.





The sub is on mix-down as well. For the sub I'm just pulling a line off one the amp's (that's on mix-down) *record outs.* Tune the sub to your liking using the crossover and you're good to go.

Marc

Mike,

You wrote earlier that you were having two problems with external audio. #1 - lack of detail. "I have trouble discerning individual notes that I can easily hear with headphones. #2 - coloration. For example, some stops just don't sound anywhere near the same as they do with headphones. Strings are less lush. Mixtures are screechy. Some ranks lose their attack."

I was noticing exactly the same, and as I reported earlier it seemed there was a compromise I had to settle for when using my speakers. Either I got detail but mixtures etc. were too screechy, or everything just blended together too much and I lost the detail of certain ranks. This latest layout and audio routing seems to give the best of both worlds.

Marc

I've been messing around with various options today. I'm actually using 4 stereo pair. The first three all have the same speakers. The fourth is a set of high end audio speakers which I've always just dedicated to the pedal. Today I tested sending everything to the 4th pair. I liked it pretty well. It's also closest to what I think Martin is recommending.

Anyway, still testing.

Mike

I tested the above layout / audio configuration (see drawings) this morning on a couple *dry* sets I have. Same results, outstanding clarity and realisim, the sound is so clean and clear, so this works nicely for dry sets as well.

Also tested further with a few more *wet* sets. Hereford is incredible, like you're sitting right there in the choir stalls, you can hear the various pipes speaking from above, the 16' on the pedal absolutely rules, it shakes the place without being annoying, just like the real thing. Haverhill was also transformed into a new and outstanding sounding instrument, and I still haven't touched the voicing at all on any of these sets. Pretty amazing.

Marc