Digital Mixer - Odd Venue Issue

Smallmouth_Bass

Smallmouth_Bass

Dec 29, 2005
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
#1
This weekend my band played a venue that is known to have a bit of an odd setup. The stage area has two XLR hookups (mains - left and right) that go to the house which is a whole bunch of smaller-ish satellite speakers spread out over the bar and terrace that the overall volume is controlled from a DJ booth. I would say their speakers could not be bigger than 2x8's in size, but probably more likely 2x6's (long rectangular shaped).

They have their own mixing board, a Mackie CFX MKII - which looks like a standard analogue type board, and a couple of stage monitors. The board has only two aux outs. As 3 or 4 of us are using in-ears and require at least 4 stage mixes, I brought my Soundcraft Ui24r. So, I took my mains out and patched them directly to their wall hookup and get nothing. No sound. I checked all the usual suspects: is the system muted (no), are the fader levels up (yes) and the physical dials on the front up (yes).

So, as a last resort, we setup their board and we went from our digital mixer into two regular channels of theirs and the used the master volume and it worked. If my board was somehow not giving any output, then using their as a go in-between shouldn't have worked either. Right? One last troubleshooting; I changed the XLR cables to the wall input (using theirs, the ones that worked) and still nothing.

So, I am baffled as to why our digital mixer didn't work directly. I have used it directly successfully in other venues, while I have had to go into other boards too because they have a power amp setup. My preference is to bypass a secondary mixer just for simplicity and the possibility of screwing up levels and getting unwanted distortion.

Any ideas of why this would happen? Anyone have similar issues and how did you solve it?
 
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#6
Mike Caldwell said:
So to double check.....connecting your mixer outputs to the wall jack system inputs you had no sound from their in house system.....you then took their Mackie mixer connected your mixer outputs to two of the Mackie inputs, connected the Mackie outputs to the wall jacks and it worked?

So was the Mackie connected to anything or just setting disconnected and unused?
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That is correct. The only thing the Mackie was doing was being used as an in-between from our digital mixer to the wall inputs to the house satellite speakers. The only purpose being to give it a signal level, I suppose. That's why it was baffling me to why it didn't work direct.
 
#8
Mike Caldwell said:
Actually I meant before you used their Mackie mixer was it already being used in the system somehow?
Where do the wall jack lines go as in what are they connected to?
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No, the Mackie mixer is solely for the bands and not connected to anything else (if I understand correctly). What is happening from the XLR mains hookup to the house speakers, I don't know. Other than there is a volume slider in the DJ booth for it.
 
#10
Both mixers are balanced line level out.
When you said you had no output when directly connected as in no buzz, hum, distorted audio at all?

Maybe the wall jack lines have phantom power on them and the Ui24 outputs did not like getting hit with that and the Mackie has better DC blocking on the XLR outputs....again a big guess.
I'm assuming both mixers are using true differential balanced outputs, if one is not that could be an issue on miss wired wall jack input lines.

What's on the other end of the wall jack lines is anyone guess, good, bad or ugly!!
To be safe when I need to plug into a house system unless I truly know that system I will always use isolation transformers, sometimes there needed just for grounding noise issues anyway.
 
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#11
Mike Caldwell said:
Both mixers are balanced line level out.
When you said you had no output when directly connected as in no buzz, hum, distorted audio at all?

Maybe the wall jack lines have phantom power on them and the Ui24 outputs did not like getting hit with that and the Mackie has better DC blocking on the XLR outputs....again a big guess.
I'm assuming both mixers are using true differential balanced outputs, if one is not that could be an issue on miss wired wall jack input lines.

What's on the other end of the wall jack lines is anyone guess, good, bad or ugly!!
To be safe when I need to plug into a house system unless I truly know that system I will always use isolation transformers, sometimes there needed just for grounding noise issues anyway.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. What are isolation transformers. Do you have a link to the type of thing you are talking about?
 
#12
My first thought was that the house mixer was a powered mixer and therefore you had no amps powering the speakers, but that one you mention doesn't appear to be powered, so I'm stumped too.
 
#13
Can’t diagnose the problem that you had but have a suggestion for the future. Hook your Soundcraft up like normal. Take two XLRs from the main outs on the Soundcraft and patch them into two channels on the house mixer.

You’ll need to mix your FOH from the Soundcraft but you should have no problem patching into the house mixer. You will also retain your AUX mixes for your own monitoring.

If you had enough AUXs on the Soundcraft, you could create submit groups and then send those over to the house. Eg Vox group, guitars group, drums group at a minimum.
 
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#14
DirtDog said:
Can’t diagnose the problem that you had but have a suggestion for the future. Hook your Soundcraft up like normal. Take two XLRs from the main outs on the Soundcraft and patch them into two channels on the house mixer.

You’ll need to mix your FOH from the Soundcraft but you should have no problem patching into the house mixer. You will also retain your AUX mixes for your own monitoring.

If you had enough AUXs on the Soundcraft, you could create submit groups and then send those over to the house. Eg Vox group, guitars group, drums group at a minimum.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I did and it didn't work. That's what's boggling me! There should be no need to use their board as an intermediary. And even if we did, it shouldn't have worked based on the fact that it wouldn't work directly.
 
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#15
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#20
I am guessing something to do with the signal chain through the cables.

Two xlr hookups at the stage, and you ran your mains to those? Where exactly did those terminate and did they have signal?

It's possible they weren't even hooked up to anything.
 
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