I’m in a band with two other guys (they play electric guitar). We’re just weekend warriors, but still I like to get things as right as we can given what we have to work with. Can you folks give me some advice please on the best way to route our voices, instruments?

We have two PA systems - a 500W Behringer B215A (active) system (250W per speaker), and a Yamaha StagePas 300 (150W per speaker). I just ordered the Behringers yesterday, mainly because I’ve had to run my keys through a guitar amp thus far. The guys have been running their voices and mic’d guitar amps through the Yamaha PA system; I have been putting my vox through that as well.

So here’s the question: Should I add my voice to the Motif running through my Behringers, and leave the other two guys to run their mic’d guitars and their voices through the Yamaha system?

Or should all the voices be coming out of the same PA system, so they sound more “cohesive”?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Re: Route my vox through same amps as Motif, or ...

I’ll bump this up and reword it in case it was too confusing with the first one -

should I put my voice through the same PA as the other voices and their guitars, or through the PA that is carrying my Motif sound to the audience?

Thanks!

Re: Route my vox through same amps as Motif, or ...

I would say keep the voices on the same system so they sound like they’re coming from the same place.  You can widen the stereo field a bit by effective use of the PAN pots on each vocalist.

Re: Route my vox through same amps as Motif, or ...

I would put everything through the Behringers and use the stage PAS as monitoring.
But it depends on how driven the guitars need to be.
A thought . . .

Cheers

Re: Route my vox through same amps as Motif, or ...

Thanks TOny and Wellie -

Here’s what we are doing, just for the moment, everything is on the table subject to change:

1) All keys, mic’d electric guitar amps, and voices into a Mackie 1642 VLZ.
2) All instruments routed to the Behringer B215As , which I call PA #1, via subgroup 1/2 on the Mackie). My stereo keys are going into two line ins, and the two mic’d guitar cabs are going into to XLR ins.
3) All vox routed to PA #2via the main outs of the Mackie. Currently it is a StagePas 300, but it looks like one of the other guys has access to another set of powered speakers to use so we’ll probably swap out there.
4) The voices all have access to an effects box via Aux 4 on the Mackie.
5) Going into a little personal mixer next to my keyboard position: Main mix (from CTRL room on the Mackie); my vox + bass (from Aux 1 on the Mackie), another vox (from a direct out on the Mackie), and keys (in stereo, from two direct outs on the Mackie).
6) Aux 2 goes to one of the other guys as his monitor, and Aux 3 goes to the other guy. These guys can have their own mix to taste.
7) We’re trying out a bass player this coming week, so I’m sending a feed to his monitor also. Unfortunately, as near as I can tell we’ve run out of Aux sends, so I have to send him a mix that is a direct out of the entire Mackie (the main insert cabled as a direct out). With only 4 aux sends, I don’t think I have enough to get him his own personalized mix...?

I just want to brag on myself a bit, I’d never used a real mixer before (i.e., one with aux, and sends, and direct outs, and subgroups, etc.), I spent hours drawing this out, and when we set it up today, it went perfectly the first time without a hitch. WOo Hoo! One guy knew what I had done (he had tried before me and was unsuccessful), the other guy was like, “Yeah, whatever”.

I know this is one of those things that nobody really cares too much about except the guy who sets it up (unless something goes wrong, and then everyone cares!), but if any of you folks see something in this that you think can be improved on, please let me know!

(If we had enough PAs, I’d try to separate things out by frequency a bit more. I think the bass player has another PA, so maybe we can split up the guitars/keys then, following the idea of splitting up instruments with similar frequencies ... ?).