Okay, this section will go over the types of gear that you need to put together a sound system. I want you to really be familiar with all this stuff for a few different reasons. Maybe you're a small club or a church that wants to build your sound system from scratch, or maybe you've been thinking about upgrading what you already do have. Now I don't expect this section to give you everything you need to know to design a massive sound system for Madison Square cans, right. But this will definitely get you up to speed in terms of what all the components do and the types of features that you might want to keep an eye out for in the specs of any particular gear. One thing's for sure, if you're enlisting an outside contractor or even a local music store to put this together for you.

This section will teach you all the ropes and all the lingo so you'll be able to speak that same language as Your sound design contractor which begs the question, can you design this yourself? Well, maybe I mean, I say maybe because there's a lot to consider when designing a sound system. And the best people who do it are the ones who are designing this stuff week after week. So a local music store clerk who sells us guitars may not be the best bet. You should always be enlist the services are professional in this area. Some music stores in larger cities may have pro sound departments with really good people in them.

But I also wouldn't call it a lot of people talk a good game and they may know how to plug a mixer into a powered speaker, but you know, maybe not much else. So here's where I have a golden rule. Learn from other people's mistakes. In other words, reach out to other venues or churches that have recently had installations find that their referrals and What the budgets were, what they've learned or what, what went wrong. People are also ready to share what they've learned. And if they're satisfied with their choice a vendor, then they'll pass on that information to you.

And then you can be sure that they you know, they're referring a professional that has done that kind of job before and is nothing try to match the job that has been done with your job. In other words, if you have a really large boomy room with square dimensions, and reflective surfaces, don't be satisfied with a referral of a guy who put together a little PA system in a cozy little coffee shop. Hopefully you can find a similar venue, because whoever put that system together would have overcome the same obstacles that you'll face right now. Do you now understand how important it is to choose a proven vendor? Yeah, for instance, I'm pretty good at choosing equipment and wire all together, but in terms of acoustics, and treating rooms, Probably wouldn't be the best person for the job and I would refer a fellow acoustic specialist for that job here.

Anyway, there are lots of qualified companies and individuals around, just do your homework and find satisfied customers who have who've completed an installation that is similar to your job. And with that being said, let's look at an overview of what a sound system is actually made up. On the stage here we have all of our inputs. There are microphones, guitars, keyboards, drums, and so on. These feed into a mixing console, usually halfway out in the audience in a sweet listening position. This mix the text all of the inputs from all those things on stage and mixing them together with the help of effects that might be built in or maybe in an external rack.

The mixer then sends those mixed sounds out the amplifiers and speakers that make up what the audience hears. These are Front of House or main speakers. The mixer also sends sound out to smaller speakers on the stage that helps the musicians hear themselves. These are called monitors. Sometimes the monitors are mixed on a completely separate mixer on the side of the stage. In other words, the inputs are split into two feeds.

One that goes out to the main mixer that feeds the main speakers, and another split that goes to the monitor mixer that feeds the onstage monitors. To be honest, it's it's a little difficult spelling out some of the stuff because some of you guys might be yawning. Right now you've known this stuff for years and others might be saying slow down. This is all new to me. In this case, I'll leave you to fast forward and rewind, how you see fit in terms of your familiarity with this subject. If you want some more clarification on any of the gear that we'll be going through, you'll see caught up in a link at the bottom of the screen for further reading.

So Let's start at the top and look at our inputs, we have to get the sound from our sound sources on the stage like guitars and microphones or whatever, from the stage out to the mixing console. Well, we could run massively long cables to the mixer, but then we'd have a big mess of cables to deal with and a far better solution would be a snake like this. That way we could connect a bunch of inputs out to our mixer in just a single sleek multi core cable. Sometimes they are many too many like this sometimes called fan to fan. Sometimes they might terminate in a handy little box like this. Sometimes they go right into a wallplate depending on how your system was originally set up.

However, the physical aspects of these snakes are set up, the purpose is the same. Get your inputs to your mixer in a clean way and sometimes the run all the way out to your mixer is really long one and the digital snake is a better solution. Basically, a digital snake converts your inputs into a digital signal right at the box right on the stage. And then you can get away with a single thin little network cable that can go a really long way. And these single digital cables can carry hundreds of audio channels certainly saves on copper. However you get your signal out, it will terminate the main piece in your sound system, the Grand Central Station of all the connections and that's your mixer.

The mixer is the place that you will spend most of your time as the sound guy. It's the place where you mix all those inputs together, add some effects, and so on then send those mixed signals out to main speakers and also back on to the stage through a monitors to help the musicians hear themselves as it has to mix all those inputs. A primary feature on the shopping list at any mixing console is that The number of inputs that it has, if you run a little coffee shop with an open mic night, then a few per foot, you know, with a few performance coming in and play, then you might get away with a little mixer like this one here. Just count up the sound sources, maybe give yourself a little extra room for expansion in the future. And that's how many channels that you'll need for your mixer.

And here's the deal, you probably need more channels than you think. Let's count up the channels on a typical band. We have a drum set with separate mics on the kick, snare, hi hat, three Toms, and two overhead mics that's eight channels already. Then there's a lead vocal plus three other background vocalist through guitars, one bass and keyboard that is 16 channels. And we have even more if we wanted to say do two channels in the keyboard if it was a stereo keyboard maybe The mic on the snare drum with two mics top and bottom, you know, to get the buzz out of the snare, you can see that you can eat up your child's man very, very quickly to plant the future. If it cost a lot more to get a 32 channel mixer than a 24 channel one, then I believe the investment is worth it because you know what's in the future.

By the way, that also goes to the snake I mentioned before, if you're paying to have an installer make a long run all the way from the stage to the mixer position, maybe through walls or under the floor, then plan for the future and have a lot more channels than you need right. Now. Does that make sense? So in terms of mixes there, let's kind of look at a few different examples of the general types that are out there. While there are many ways to categorize the multitude of mixes out there, we'll just call them small, medium and large. But a small mixer might take say, eight channels or so I'd be perfect for a small coffee.

Shop or a conference room is that a mid size might be more like, like 16 or 24 channels that can mix the small to mid size band. And then a large metal 30 to 48 or even maybe 64 or more channels, there's enough for a large concert or say a mega church or whatever. on any of these mixes there. Here's some of the features that you might see. And we'll look at mixes in detail in their own section later on. But for right now, these are some of the big ones.

We've already said the number of channels input channels are important you need to have enough for all of your inputs you need and also planning out for the future. Think about another one powder non powder, some mixes particularly smaller ones can have built in apps that can run your main speakers without any external apps. Typically larger mixes don't have this option as that you want to have you know the most flexibility in terms of pairing your main speakers internal effects Some mixes have internal effects like delay and reverb, maybe even compressors. If your mixer does not have internal effects, you're then you'll need to add your own in an in an external rack. The other ones how many bands of EQ. Some mixes may have only basic bass and treble for each input, while others may have three or maybe four bands of EQ.

And how many accents or accents are a way to send independent mixes of monitors, and also, our effects the more the better. subgroups, larger mixes can group together all of your drum channels into a single group to make mixing easier and help with more advanced mixing situations. A mixer that has 32 channels and eight subgroups might be called a 32 into eight or a 32 eight. Another thing to consider is analog or digital traditional mixers have always been a lot analog but in the last maybe decade or two, a lot of become digital which brings a lot A lot of benefits, not the least of which is the ability to store all of your settings in a snapshot for later use digital mixers have a lot of flexibility and as your signals converted to digital straight away, and then it goes through the routing entirely in the digital realm with instant recall the settings, unrivaled routing options.

And typically a lot of Intel effects. Look there are there are many more features that I can help you decide what type of mixes to buy. But you know, these are kind of the big ones here. And by the way, we have an entire section on using a mixing console where we'll go through all of the features on a mixer, a digital one and also an analog one but I just kind of wanted to give you a quick overview and any other help in choosing a mixer look for articles and the buying guide at the link below. Okay, so on to amps and speakers. I've grouped these together as we can't really have one with without the other.

We will Know what speakers do, but the signal coming out of a mixer is so small that it needs to be amped up to a level that can adequately drive your speakers. There are generally three different configuration of configurations of amps and speakers. The most common ones a discrete system that has a separate mixer, amps and speakers, the mixer only mixes the separate amp or amps amplify the sound in the speakers then turn that signal into sound. The benefit of this is that you can make separate buying decisions but each part of that equation you'll see to make sure that you match your amps to your speakers. Pretty much on the mixer side, any mixer will work with any amp speaker combination. However, you should match your amps to your speakers.

Generally you'll look at your speakers capacity and then match an app or apps to give it enough power. I mean, you don't want a speaker that can handle to her what's being powered by a little piddly 21 sample blast visit. Generally, you'll want an app that outputs around twice the RMS power that a speaker can handle given that same load. In other words, in a two hour what RMS speaker example then the general rule is to get a power app that can deliver around 400 watts RMS given that those two under the same own settings. Now let's quickly start to clarify a couple of these terms that I'm throwing around here. What is a measurement of power and RMS is just a fancy way of saying average.

So a speaker that can handle 200 watts RMS, it can handle an average of 200 continuous watts. It can handle more than that in real quick peaks or spurts, but an average of two are watts. You also see ohms mentioned in speakers and amp specs. ohms is a measurement of impedance or resistance. So to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples, then a basic to one ratio should be applied if your speaker has a nominal impedance of eight ohms then your aspects would be correct for that same eight ohm load all that to say if your speakers are eight on five and the drive that same eight ohm load at about twice the average rating of that speaker so 350 watt RMS speaker would need an AF about 700 watts, right? A 500 watt RMS speaker would need to have an app that can output an RMS that's right about 1000 watts.

That's the second snare would be if they have a mixer that has a built in app to power the speakers. This is my probably my least favorite. As you're stuck with the power of that app. If the app is turn watts then you could only really run very small hundred watt speakers and what happens if the AMP files or you want to upgrade it? I mean you kind of stuck with what's built in Third of the scenarios is becoming more and more common. And that is that the apps are built into the speaker.

If the app comes already inside the speaker box, then you can be sure that the specs are going to match, right? Who knows better? What kind of amp to place in a box to match the speaker, the manufacturer of that speaker itself, right? Does that make sense? These powered or active speaker span all the way from you know, little powered guys like these guys here. And they're useful in a small conference room or coffee shop through the mid size ones like these guys that are great for a small club or church, all the way up to these giant systems that have an array of multiple powered speakers that can be angled, and focus to fill a largest facility.

So getting back to this little guy that we saw a little while ago. This has all three of the components that the mixer, the app, and the speaker all built in. Clearly this all in one little pa wisdom. As far as a maybe a conference room or a little coffee shop, if you wanted something, maybe a little bigger than something like this might do with a pair of powered 15 inch speakers, if you wanted to amp up the low end, bump that up, then you accomplish that with a powered subwoofer or several subs. For really large installations, then array systems work really, really well, because each individual speaker box in the rack can be angle and focus to hit any part of the room. This array type system quite often has a very cool ability that you can connect each box with a computer and special software that you can tweak the EQ and delay of each box in that array to equalize the listening position, you know, no matter where you are in the room.

I haven't mentioned some of the processing that might actually be in between the app and the speakers, that processes the things that the crossover points between the individual speakers in the cabinet. Other things like compression, and limiting and delay. These processes can either be between your amp rack and your speakers or actually even built into some of your powered speakers. So yeah, after all of that your head, your heads probably spinning right now, with all of the options here. Let's actually look at several scenarios. A small set up like a conference room or a coffee shop.

In this situation, I would either go with a complete all in one box, like the one I showed you a little while ago with a mixer, app, and speaker you know, all in one or a small powered mixer and say a passive speaker system. By the way, passive means no parent a built in. This is probably the only place which I would use maybe a powered mixer. In the mid size situation. The easiest method go would be a pair of powered patinaed speakers, then perhaps a subwoofer or two. If you wish, you might want to go with an AMP rack.

With multiple amps driving a bunch of speakers remembering that you need either a stereo amp to drive a pair of speakers or two mana amps to do the same, that if you have more speakers than that then you probably need more and more amps obviously, you probably need some processing that can split those signals into multiple speakers with compression and limiting to protect your speakers. But like I said, if you go with the active speakers then you know all this processing like by amping and crossovers and all that speaker protection are kind of built right in there. Now in a larger situation then more and more installations are really going the array system as all the speakers have all the stuff built right in and a matched pair and for each driver crossovers and speakers protection that's all built in. Typically you can connect a computer to them and tweak each box in the line array to balance and focus the sound to your listening environment.

It's absolutely amazing what can be done with a line array. With the connectors computer specialist can play a sweep of sound through them and analyze exactly how to tweak them. To make the whole room sound district without question, they are the most flexible solution to tweaking a room. For instance, in a curved array like this covering a room like this, you could have the top box, putting out more top end or treble as the people are further away top end or treble sounds dissipate over distances. You know, this one is a party down the street sounds very based in nothing else, right? You can't even hear the top and so you can boost the treble or top in the top box and even play with the delay to compensate for the different distances that everybody sits away from these boxes.

So much can be done with a race systems and with all this flexibility is normally handled by an expert in the field who spends a whole day just paying out the whole system and in tweaking it once and for all for your particular room. So you can see that I mean, there are many different scenarios to choose from in terms of speakers, amps and rack processing. For further reading and also a buying guide, see the link below. Now along the lines of amps and speakers, let's look at monitors. Just like we send the main out of our mixer out to M main or for an A house speakers, we can also send a mix of instruments back to the stage so our musicians can hear themselves. You may not have really thought about this before, but quite often musicians are far apart on the stage and they may have trouble hearing each other.

Maybe the drummer isn't an isolation booth and can't hear the vocalist. And listen to the vocal and musical cues. Maybe the vocalist is downstage about 30 or 40 feet between her in the drama and the sound she's hearing through the air is about 30 or 40. milliseconds late, which is screwing up her timing. There's lots of reasons we need to supply musicians with the modern mix that they that she wants that will help them. Let's look at a scenario like this one. We have the musicians on the stage, a sound guy out here in the middle of the room, who is building the main mix that goes out to the main or kind of house speakers.

That goes out to the audience. Now these speakers are pointed out to the audience, and musicians don't really hear it we need to fold back a mix to our musicians through either on stage monitors or more and or in ear monitors. We'll look at how we do this specifically in using a mixer section in the course but let me say really quickly, that is done through or extends on either main mixer or a separate monitor mixer on the side of the stage. In most small to mid sized situations your run the monster mix From the main mixer here, you'll see the musician from the stage and maybe they'll say something like, can I have more more keyboards in my monitor? Or maybe you can you can kill a bass in my in ear monitors, I can hear him fine because I'm like right next to him.

In any case, every musician will have you know, a different may have different tastes in what they want their mind to mix, and I'll have nothing to do with the mix that you blend for the audience through the main speakers of the front of house speakers. The blend out of the main speakers should sound like a record right? Full mix of all instruments, but a musicians need in terms of their monster mix is completely different. Like for example, a background vocalist might want to hear the lead vocalist for vocal cues and also pitch maybe a blend of keys and little drums for timing. Maybe the bass plant wants no backing vocals and just drums so he can play really tightly with that drummer, you know in terms of timewise now This, my friends is where you need to think like a musician, don't just put on your geek hat and say, well, they can have all the same mix.

If a musician has the right blend of instruments, and vocals that help him or her playing time, and then pitch that helps everybody, right? Very often all, you know, hearing guitars who is consistently playing behind the beat, and I realized you know what, I think they're, they're actually far apart from the drummer, and he's in one of those isolation booths, and the guitarist is simply can't hear the drummer or if he does hear, the sound is taken too long to get through the air. Often I'll have a little hi hat and snare the guitarist Martin mix and find the guitarist gets back in time instantly, just like that. So that's why in a larger situation where the sound guy is a long way away from the musicians that are dedicated monster mixer is placed just off to the side of the stage. That way, the music can communicate their needs more easily when there is a dedicated person running monitors just off to the side of the stage.

This is kind of a tough call isn't many times it's hard to find one person to be the sound guy alone, let alone the luxury of having a second guy off to the side of state. But if you can, that person can be a really great life saver in terms of being close to the band. And also having an added benefit to be kind of a runner or troubleshooter kind of person. So you don't have to leave your front of house position, mix a position and run all the way up to set anyway you do it, you know, basically, monitors are a crucial part of the sound system and a good next century musicians will always give you the best best performances. In terms of gear, it's very similar to the speaker amp thing that we looked at. You can have powered monitors on stage, or you can have separate amps and monitors, even in ear monitors, as well.

Both of these solutions are fed by orcs and that we'll look at in detail and using the mixing console later on. There are even solutions that place the martyr mixing decision on stage with the musicians having their own little personal mixes to their own monster mixing but but a general overview of monitor mixing, you can see articles and also our buying guide at the following link below. Okay, so everything we've looked at has been some part of the signal chain between getting the signal from the stage through to the mixer through the amps and speakers, kind of like just boringly moving the signal long but sometimes you want to add a little spice in the signal chain, you can do that with effects. If you have a fancy digital mixer like this guy here, you probably have a ton of effects built right in here. Maybe you have a mid sized analog mixer with just a couple of built in or maybe you have absolutely no effects in your mix and you'll need to add them in the form of A rack full of cool effects that you can hook up to that.

So that makes it. Here's some categories of effects that are useful to have in your bag of tricks. reverb is a big one I can take, you know, a drum sound that's pretty wimpy and just make it sound really big delay is useful for doing the form your sound, maybe you can thicken up your sound with just a very short delay or add some really cool long echoes echoes echoes like that. Compression also has an effect that controls your dynamic range of the sound and make it overall punchy and bringing up about the mix. There are noise gates as well that closed down a signal once it falls below a certain threshold really great, the noisy guitar amps and also isolating drums you have gravity choose that slice up your frequency spectrum of 31 bands so you can boost and cut little notches of your tonal spectrum.

Truth is that there are as many effect processes out there as there are spices in a master ships, Patrick But more often than not, there's so many there. The main few that keep on coming up are reverb delay, compression gates, and EQ. Now these can be placed across a single channel like an example of compressing a lead vocal, or placed across multiple channels on differing amounts like reverb across drums, vocals and guitars. We'll look at how to route them in the using a mixer section and also how to use them in a mix in the mixing section here but for now you can see the related articles and buying guides at the following link below. Okay, so rounding out our equipment section that are the microphones and also wireless systems back in the old days, you just had a couple of handheld mics like the know the shoe is empty, I just plug them into your mixer straightaway and mix it and away you go right there.

There are many different types of microphones today and also ways to connect them wirelessly into your mixer. Let's Start out with the two main types that you'll be coming across. Dynamic microphones are the simplest and most dirty types that you can get. They work really well for environments where there is a high SPL high sound pressure level, like a screaming singer or right next to a snare drum like that or a loud guitar amp now condenser mic like this guy here is designed a little differently and they're a little bit more delicate. You might generally see these more in recording studios than on stage though there are a number of the more sturdy ones that have come out recently great for you know miking up pianos things like that if a smooth high frequency response is important, then condenser mic is probably the way to go.

For instance, on say the overhead of a drum kit where you want to bring up the shimmer of the cymbals then a condenser mic would be my choice not particularly this one but in to give you an idea, if allowed snare drum then probably a dynamic here. One thing to note is the condenser mic does need to have power to operate them. Dynamic mics are passive, you just plug them in and play condenser mics either need a built in battery, or maybe phantom power supplied through your mixing board. We'll look at mic selection and placement in its own section. In the setting up of the stage part of the course soon I just want to kind of give you a quick look. While we're here.

There are handheld mics for vocalists, overhead hang mics, the choirs clip on level is for people doing speaking engagements, even head one ones that are barely visible. All these mics are engineered for specific application and like I said, we'll look at their selection and also placement in the setting up the stage section in a moment. Now one thing to consider is whether you are going to be going wide or wireless. Some applications lend themselves to wireless others Frankly time, I mean, it's little to be gained by using wireless mics on a drum kit that doesn't move doesn't go anywhere, just plug up some wired microphones, and run the cables and you're good to go. But it's another thing with a vocalist who's running all over the stage. Great thing for a while system, while systems are somewhat expensive, so you probably don't want to invest in more than you need.

And our system consists of a transmitter and a receiver. Normally, a microphone is connected to your snake that goes out to your mixer position here a wireless mic transmits through the air and is picked up by the receiver which in then is in turn connected through your mixer. As you want the distance between your transmitter and receiver to be as short as possible. I would normally like to have all my receivers out there on stage. So to keep that line of sight, you know very short, you normally have a line going out of your mixer, just connect the output of receiver onstage and then come Up here, just like that wide mic would be and you're away. If for some reason you don't have a spare line on that snake that goes from the stage here to the mixer, you could place the receiver right here next to mix it in the middle of the room.

The only downside here is you've increased the distance between your transmitter on stage and your receiver right here and you might start getting some interference. By the way, the same thing goes with the guitars, you can get a little belt packs that allow guitars to move all around the stage. With the receiver being right at his or her app. This is probably less of a concern to you as it's on. It's kind of generally part of the guitarist Rick, a great use of a wireless system is bought a speaker's head one or the either head one or the level and mic that way a speaker I mean, I mean the person who speaks not a speaker, that person speaks and what no one is around the stage unencumbered by anything. You see this in All the time with a pastor preaching a sermon while just you know wandering all around the stage.

Now, I keep mentioning that we'll get into mic selection and placement, as well as all the attributes of a microphone like things like pickup pattern, or controlling feedback and all that good stuff in the next section called setting up the stage. But for now, if you need any better articles, and also the buying guide, visit the following link. So I guess that's a quick rundown of all the tools of the trade in a sound system. We have inputs, either microphones or instruments going into a mixer through a snake or other cabling method. Then that mixer sending out a mixed signal into the main speakers through answering processes for the audience to hear, and also back to the stage for the musicians to hear. You can also tweak and sweeten the sound via some effects on board right here.

That's kind of the nickel tour of everything that's going on. Let's take a practical hands on view. In the next section