In this video, I'll walk you through the
steps of setting up a sound system for a live event. By following these steps, you're
going to avoid the most common mistakes and by the end you'll have a great sounding
system. But if this is our first time meeting, my name is Kyle. Welcome to Audio University. The first step is to determine the room layout.
It's really important to put things in place before you start making connections. Otherwise,
you'll just end up making a mess, which will make your job more difficult. There are three
things I want you to consider: speaker placement, mixer location, and cable pathways. Let's start
with speaker placement. The goal is to place the speakers in a location where everyone in the
audience can hear while preventing microphone feedback. To get maximum coverage of the audience,
I recommend placing the speakers on either side of the stage. If you have speaker stands like
these, it'll help you get the speakers higher so that the sound will reach everyone in the
audience, not just the people in the front row. If you don't have speaker stands yet, check out
the video I made on these stands. I really can't recommend them enough. To prevent mic feedback,
it's helpful to place the microphone behind the speakers rather than in front of the speakers.
If you place the mics in front of the speakers, you won't be able to turn them up very loud
before you'll start to get microphone feedback. And trust me, nothing ruins a performance
like the squealing sound of mic feedback. The next thing you want to consider is the mixer
location. Now ideally you'd place the mixer right in the middle of the audience so that you can hear
what the audience is hearing while you're at the mixer. However, that's not always practical.
In many cases, the best place for the mixer is to one side of the stage. This keeps everything
together so you won't need to run any long cables. In some settings, however, you'll need to
hide the mixer so that it's out of sight. In those situations, you'll really just need
to find a place to tuck the mixer away based on your unique situation. Once you've decided
on the location of the stage, the speakers, and the mixer, you'll need to determine the safest
cable pathways to avoid creating tripping hazards. Try to run the cables along the wall wherever
possible and if you need to cross a doorway or another walkway, you've really got two options.
The first option is to go up and over the doorway and the second one is to keep the cables on
the floor by using gaff tape or cable ramp. Now that you've got everything in place it's
time to run power. This is a good opportunity to verify that you have working power while
there's still time before the event begins. You can either test power with a tool like this
or you can simply turn on the speakers in the mixer. Just make sure that you turn everything off
once you've verified that you have power, because we're going to turn everything on once we've
already made the connections between devices. The next step is to normal the mixer. That
means that you set all of the settings to their default. That'll help to make sure that
you don't encounter any surprises left for you by the person who used it last and it'll make
sure that you're starting with a blank slate. Finally we can start connecting things
together. Let's start with our outputs. I usually recommend connecting the main outputs
of the mixer to the main speakers. In this case, I'll use an XLR cable from the left output on the
mixer to the input of the left speaker and another XLR cable from the right output of the mixer to
the right speaker. If your mixer has 1/4-inch outputs instead, you can use a 1/4-inch TRS to XLR
adapter that will convert those outputs to XLR. By the way, you can find links to
everything I talk about in this video down in the description. You might also need to
run speakers to the stage so that the performers can hear themselves play. If you are running
monitor speakers, I'd recommend connecting them with the auxiliary outputs on your console. I'll
use aux 1 for one monitor and aux 2 for another. At this point you can go ahead and turn on the
mixer and then the speakers. Turning them on in this order will help to prevent any pops
or clicks that could damage your speakers. Now let's connect some inputs to the mixer.
Let's start with a line level device. That could be a smartphone, a laptop, or something like
that. To do this, I'll be using a 3.5mm to dual 1/4-inch adapter. You could connect your device
to any of these 1/4-inch line inputs, but I recommend using one of the stereo inputs instead.
These stereo inputs will help you to save space and control both the left and right channel with
one channel strip on the mixer. This adapter can really only be used for short distances.
For longer distances, you'll use a DI box. A direct box or DI box can be used in a
few different ways. Let's say you've got a presenter on stage who wants to play a video
for the audience. The distance from the laptop on stage to the mixer is just too far for the adapter
that I just showed you. Instead, you should use a two-channel DI box like the Radial ProAV2 or
a simple tool like the Rapco Horizon LTIBLOX. DI boxes are also useful for instruments
like electric guitar or bass. Just plug the instrument into the DI
box and plug the DI box into the mixer. If you're using an active DI box,
you'll need to turn on phantom power. Most microphones you'll encounter in
live production are dynamic microphones. You can connect a dynamic mic
directly into any of the XLR inputs. Condenser microphones are microphones
that do require an external power source and in most cases they'll get power from the mixer
through phantom power. Some mixers have a phantom power switch for each input and other mixers have
a single phantom power switch for all channels. At this point, you should have everything
connected. So let's start to set up the gain structure and route some inputs to the speakers.
Now pay special attention here, because this is where a lot of people make mistakes. By following
the process I'm about to lay out for you, you'll optimize the performance of your system and
make your job a lot easier. I like to start with the volume level on the speakers or amplifiers
turned all the way down. To start, set the master fader to unity or 0 dB. Next play some music on
the phone or laptop that's connected to the mixer. Unmute the music channel and begin to
bring the music channel fader to unity. You should start to see signal on the master level
meter. Adjust the volume level of the music player or the preamp knob at the top of the channel
strip until the meter averages at about -6 dB. If you don't see any signal on the meters yet, you
might need to select the "L-R" or "Main" button at the bottom of the channel strip to route the
signal to the main output. With the music playing, start to turn up the volume knob on the speakers
until the music is at an appropriate loudness level for the audience. I'd recommend erring on
the side of too loud rather than too quiet here. Once you've completed these steps, your system
will be optimized to provide enough sound to the audience. For each microphone or other input,
start with the fader at unity. Setting the fader to unity means that it won't be boosting
or reducing the signal. It'll just let the signal pass through and that'll help to make sure
that you don't use unnecessary gain, which could make your job more difficult down the line. With
the channel fader set to unity on each channel, boost each signal to the appropriate level in the
speakers by adjusting the preamp gain at the top of each channel. Don't pay too much attention to
the meters here. Just boost each signal until it sounds loud enough in the room. Through the course
of boosting the level of each signal, you might start to experience some microphone feedback. Now
remember that the further the speaker is from the microphone, the louder you'll be able to boost
that signal. But if feedback is still a problem, you can try using some high pass filters or EQ
to reduce that feedback. I created a post on the Audio University website all about eliminating
microphone feedback that might be helpful for you. If you want some help using your mixer,
check out the free guide that I created at audiouniversityonline.com/mixing-console-tutorial/. If you got value out of this video, hit the
"Like" button and I'll see you in the next one.
