Took advantage of Sweetwater's 48 month financing deal to buy a Soundcraft UI16 digital mixer and Shure PSM300 IEM. As soon as I get them and get them set up, reviews will be forthcoming.
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Sweetwater's 48 month 0% financing is a dangerous thing. That's how I ended up with a L6 G70 and Senn EW300 last year. 
And now I'm eyeballing a L6 Helix....
And now I'm eyeballing a L6 Helix....
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,317
- 4,966
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
Nice. This showed up from Sweetwater yesterday:
The main intent is to use it for IEMs for the band, and also for the luckily dwindling 'bring your own PA' gigs we'll use it for FOH as well. The idea is that the two splitters below will take up to 16 mic/lines from stage, into the Soundcraft for our monitor needs (currently wired not wireless) then the DI outs will go to the house snake.
Also, as a quick tip, if you order a handful of stuff, go through your Sweetwater rep. We did and saved about 1/3rd off their already good web-pricing.
The main intent is to use it for IEMs for the band, and also for the luckily dwindling 'bring your own PA' gigs we'll use it for FOH as well. The idea is that the two splitters below will take up to 16 mic/lines from stage, into the Soundcraft for our monitor needs (currently wired not wireless) then the DI outs will go to the house snake.
Also, as a quick tip, if you order a handful of stuff, go through your Sweetwater rep. We did and saved about 1/3rd off their already good web-pricing.
Ok. Finally was able to use both the Soundcraft board and the Shure IEMs. Here goes:
Soundcraft UI16 board:
I took some time to dive in to the interface and try to learn as much as I could about settings and saving shows and scenes. It was actually a cinch to set up each channel using the factory presets for effects, EQ, and compression. For the most part they all worked with just a bit of tweaking. I did make a few changes to some of them to match the frequency response of my QSC K-12s when I use them alone. I then saved another copy and modified it to work when I rent subs to pair with my K-12s.
I took it to an outdoor gig where I used just the K-12s, for vocals, guitar, and kick drum. I had to modify some of the EQ presets, especially the LPF. Very simple to make adjustments and save. hardest part was setting up the input gain properly. Mainly because I needed to get used to the interface.
I had the feedback suppression loaded on the mains and the auxes. Worked flawlessly.
Everything sounded amazing. Way better than my analog Yamaha board.
The only issue, I had was that the built-in wifi only works on the 2.4 Ghz band. That means that the Line G30 wireless used by me and our guitarist interfere. I overcame this by plugging my laptop directly in to the Ethernet port on the device. In the long term, I'm going to add a dual-band router and disable the onboard wifi. The external router will be configured to use the 5 GHZ band only.
Overall, I'm thrilled on how easy it was to set this thing up and use it. Can't wait for a show when I rent subs!
Soundcraft UI16 board:
I took some time to dive in to the interface and try to learn as much as I could about settings and saving shows and scenes. It was actually a cinch to set up each channel using the factory presets for effects, EQ, and compression. For the most part they all worked with just a bit of tweaking. I did make a few changes to some of them to match the frequency response of my QSC K-12s when I use them alone. I then saved another copy and modified it to work when I rent subs to pair with my K-12s.
I took it to an outdoor gig where I used just the K-12s, for vocals, guitar, and kick drum. I had to modify some of the EQ presets, especially the LPF. Very simple to make adjustments and save. hardest part was setting up the input gain properly. Mainly because I needed to get used to the interface.
I had the feedback suppression loaded on the mains and the auxes. Worked flawlessly.
Everything sounded amazing. Way better than my analog Yamaha board.
The only issue, I had was that the built-in wifi only works on the 2.4 Ghz band. That means that the Line G30 wireless used by me and our guitarist interfere. I overcame this by plugging my laptop directly in to the Ethernet port on the device. In the long term, I'm going to add a dual-band router and disable the onboard wifi. The external router will be configured to use the 5 GHZ band only.
Overall, I'm thrilled on how easy it was to set this thing up and use it. Can't wait for a show when I rent subs!
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,317
- 4,966
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
We used our UI24 in a really huge barn the other night. The FOH could have been really difficult, but being able to notch out trouble frequencies made things sound REALLY nice. We also did similarly, 3 vocals, kick & a lil' hat, and 2 keyboards out front the rest was our standard backline. We ran a laptop on top of our rack as insurance, but only needed phones for the mix.
Used my New Shure PSM 300 with the SE215 earbuds last Saturday at a show. All i can say is WOW! I should have done this years ago.
The upside is - I could hear everything! Our soundman plugged the transmitter into a spare aux and I had him put my vocals and bass in first and then we added the other vocals, a bit of guitar of guitar and drums. I was so happy. I didn't have to push my vocals or dig in so hard on my bass.
The downside is - I could hear everything! I heard a lot of things that we need to work on, me included. Not sure if my bandmates are gonna like these!
The upside is - I could hear everything! Our soundman plugged the transmitter into a spare aux and I had him put my vocals and bass in first and then we added the other vocals, a bit of guitar of guitar and drums. I was so happy. I didn't have to push my vocals or dig in so hard on my bass.
The downside is - I could hear everything! I heard a lot of things that we need to work on, me included. Not sure if my bandmates are gonna like these!
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,317
- 4,966
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
Yeah, we just bought everyone SE215's although I'm using a pair of cheap multi-driver KZ's right now instead. We didn't use them for our gig because we wanted everyone to be comfortable with the setup before using it live, and to make sure we knew the Soundcraft would behave as planned. In rehearsal last night with the IEM setup it became pretty apparent that while we're already pretty tight, it's only going to get more so. One of the reasons we chose the 24 was that it has 8 aux sends so we can cover the full band and have one for our dub-station.
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,317
- 4,966
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
Sure...for the signal chain it's XLR into the splitter, one jumper to the Ui16R, one to house. The 8 aux sends get XLR's to our personal amp packs which for right now are Behringer Powerplay 1 units: Behringer Powerplay P1 Personal In-ear Monitor Amplifier
We've bought 25 foot XLRs for the runs that are mic/di to splitter and I have a 16 channel 25' snake to run to the stage snake. Each player also has a 15' XLR cable.
We bought 7 sets of Shure SE215's for our members as 'get off the ground' IEMs. Although I've been using a pair of 18$ KZ ZST dual drivers instead with really good success. I'm about to try the KZ ZS6's to see how they work.
BurningSkies
CRAZY BALDHEAD
- Feb 20, 2005
- 27,956
- 20,317
- 4,966
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist: Dingwall Guitars
I don't know if Charlie quoted stuff out for you or not, but we ended up paying for 'basics' for all our band members then let them decide if they wanted to personally upgrade. The discount we ended up with gave us enough extra cash for additional mics, DI's and a few other things. Also, it turns out my $20 cheap knock offs have been as good or better than the basic Shure iems.
I’ll be reaching out to Charlie shortly, been working on getting my shopping list together and deciding on speakers/subs. Guess that’s my biggest dilemma at this point.