- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative. In this video, we've partnered with Mackie to show you how to set up a sound system. In this video, we're using the Mackie ProFX 10 V3
audio mixing console and the Mackie SRM 210 powered speakers. Both of these are great for live events. My personal favorite size of everything that we have for audio mixers in our inventory is
the Mackie ProFX 10 V3. We've used this size of mixer
in our old rental company. And for 95 to 98% of events, this is the perfect audio
mixer for live events. They do have a whole line
of audio mixers like this where you can get bigger ones if you're doing a lot of music, for the majority of events where you have one or two wireless mics, some music inputs, you're
connecting your phone, that type of thing, this mixer is absolutely perfect. And those are the types of things that we're
gonna cover in this video. Now, before we get started, if you're looking for pricing or specs for anything that we use in this video, as we show you how to set everything up, please check out the links
down in the description below where you can find
current up-to-date pricing at a variety of online retailers to make sure that you're
finding the best price possible if you're looking at buying the gear that we show you in this video. Now, before we show you
how to connect everything, we need to talk about
the two biggest problems that you need to solve right away when you enter the
ballroom or meeting room or whatever event space
you're using for your event. Now the first biggest problem
that you need to solve almost before you open any cases or anything at your live event is you need to solve power. You need to double-check and triple-check that you have power in the room. It doesn't matter how many
times you've done a site visit or been there before. I typically walk around
with a cable like this. This is a three outlet extension cord. It has a little led light there, and I'll quickly plug it into all the outlets around the ballroom. You'd be surprised, it's not uncommon to find
that 10 to 15% of the outlets in any given ballroom don't work or aren't working correctly, or they're just so loose that you wouldn't wanna use them. And the reason that we need to
solve this problem right away is it's because it's the
one thing in the room that's not in your control. Typically to solve power related issues, you need to get on the phone,
call an event space manager, meeting planner, something like that and get that problem getting solved while you do everything else. That's the biggest thing
that you need to solve. The second biggest problem
that you need to work on is finding out the
location of all the gear. What are the needs of the event? Typically you'll have
this kind of ironed out in your head before time but you do need to walk into
the room and refigure that out. Now, some tips for positioning, typically I'll put the speakers left and right on the front
corners of the stage as my location for the first two speakers. We're gonna talk about some strategies for adding more speakers
to your setup as well. But typically you'll go left and right. The one exception of
that is if you're a DJ, typically you'll be set up
more over by the dance floor. And just for simplicity sake, you're gonna keep the speakers
left and right of your table. So if it was me right now, they'd be here and here
out in front of me. Now, one thing to keep in mind when you're setting them up as well, is the reason that we
recommend putting them on the front corner of the stage is because you never want to end up with a situation like this where microphone is out
in front of a speaker. There's a lot of different strategies that you can use to prevent feedback, or that squealing sound
that you hear at events. But this is the single biggest one. You need to put your speakers out in front of where any microphone will be. That's not always possible. If you have a Q and A mic for questions and answers
out in the audience, obviously there's not a
lot that you can do there but the majority of your microphones that are on the stage need
to be behind the speakers. If they're out in front, you can see the problem here. The microphone is gonna pick up sound, that's gonna get amplified. It's gonna come out of the speaker. The microphone is gonna
hear that same sound. It's gonna go around really, really fast. That's where you get those
high pitched squealing noises. So that's the biggest
thing that you can do right off the bat before you plug anything in to help improve the sound at your event. Now that we got that covered, let's talk about the order of operations and how I'd set everything up. You know, where your gear is gonna go. Your mixer will typically
either be side stage. Sometimes at corporate events, they'll hide you behind
a screen or something and it's pretty tough 'cause you can't see or
hear anything really well. You're just doing the best you can, but in an ideal situation, the mixer will be out somewhere in front where you can hear the sound coming from all your sound sources and you have line of sight to the stage. That's the best outcome there. So now we know where everything is. The speakers are up on stands. Now we can worry about
connecting everything. For me, I always like to
work from the mixer out. There's a lot of good reasons for that. But the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna connect the mixer to power. Then we're gonna turn the mixer on. The next thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna connect
the speaker to power. Now, with the speaker like
this, a powered speaker, you'll typically come with a six foot it's called an IEC cable that describes this funny looking triangle cable there. I would upgrade this. I would go out and buy a 25
foot version of this cable that gives you a lot of flexibility, saves you on extension cords. And if you ever need to move your speakers or something like that, that's an easy way to do it. Another tip for speakers, it's not so important for audio mixers, but for powered speakers, never plug them into
a six outlet power bar or anything like that that has a built-in surge protector. That surge protector will often play games with the limiter that's
built into the speaker and they'll feed off each other probably won't hurt anything but the end result is that your limiter is always gonna be in and
you're going get reduced volume. So I always recommend plugging into a straight extension cord like this or directly into the wall, but you don't want anything with a surge protector
before your speakers. You plug that in. Now, typically people will
recommend leaving your speakers turned off until you connect everything. Again, since I've been burned by bad power at so many different venues, I always will flick it on, make sure that the software boots up and then I'll turn it off again. Just so at peace of mind, I'm checking things as I'm going because the last thing that you want to do is get everything
connected and then discover that you have power problems. So now that we've done that, we wanna think about connecting the speakers to our sound system. For that we're gonna use the XLR cable. Now the Mackie ProFX has XLR
and quarter inch outputs. The quarter-inch outputs are balanced, but sort of the XLR outputs. So I prefer to run XLR. It's easier to get longer cable. It's the standard way to run
anything to a powered speaker. Now this is a very very common setup that most manufacturers use. And we're gonna connect this. Now for the sake of doing
things in the right order, we're also gonna connect
our second speaker and do that quickly here. Plug it into power. And since we already know power
is working from this outlet, we don't have to check it. You can just plug it in and then we can connect our XLR cable. So were you using colored XLR cables. I always recommend
using colored XLR cables for anything less than six feet, it really makes it easy. Typically with a speaker like this, we will always ship a 50
foot and a 25 foot XLR cable to make sure that you can always get it where you need to plug it in. So now that both speakers are connected, we can turn them both on. The next thing that
I'll do on both speakers is I'm gonna factory reset them. With speakers like this
that have built in software, there's all types of things
that'll be buried in there. Maybe there's established
Bluetooth connections. Maybe some of them are set
to mic level, line level, you don't know what's going on. There might be a 20
millisecond delay turned on. So the first thing I
always recommend doing so we're gonna go into the menu here. We're gonna go to the Settings, go all the way to Config. We go all the way down to Abort and Reset and select
Factory Reset and Reset. Once the speakers reset, you wanna make sure that
channel one is set to the U or in the 12 o'clock position here. That's the best volume
setting for the speaker. We wanna control everything
else from the mixer itself. I'm gonna do that on this speaker as well. As we factory reset the
second speaker here. Again, we will go through the menus, reset everything, Factory Reset. Yes, and then we'll make sure again that the volume is set
up in that 12 position to U or unity. That's the best volumes position
for this speaker as well. Now that's super important. Nine times out of 10, if you have problems straight away, it's because you didn't
properly reset everything. So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna take a look at this mixer and make sure that the mixers also reset. It's analog which means that
we have to do it manually. There's no software reset but all the clicky buttons
should be in the up position. We want the effects muted. We want the EQ to be in the 12
o'clock straight up position. We want the effects then turned down. We want the pan to be straight. We want everything muted. The level knob turned down. We're gonna leave the master level up but that U zero or unity position there. That's a good starting point for that. But everything else here we can
see has been reset properly. So what we have here is
we have our left speaker and our right speaker plugged in. Everything's connected. Now we're ready for an input source. In this video, we're gonna connect a dynamic microphone,
a condenser microphone, and a line level source like your phone. We're gonna show you all
the best ways to do that. And we're gonna walk through the settings that are available for each. So to connect a dynamic
microphone in this video, we have the Shure SM 58. You can just use a
standard XLR cable here. Dynamic microphones are great
for their low handling noise, their inherent noise rejection. They're generally tougher microphones so they can take a beating, which is why they're so
popular for live sound. Shure SM 58 like this, you can leave it rolling
around in your van for a month, pull it out and it'll
work perfectly every time. We're gonna connect that
to the first XLR input on this audio mixer. You can see here that
this is a combi jack. So the mic level input is four XLR. And the line level
input is if you're using a quarter inch source from something like an electric keyboard or
your phone or computer or something like that. For this, we're plugging
a mic level source in. So you'll plug that in there. Next we're gonna connect
a condenser microphone. Now a condenser microphone, typically they're more sensitive
than a dynamic microphone but they're more, you can say modern. You can tell that the capsule
size is a lot smaller. They're a lot more elegant. If you've ever been to an
event at a golf course, you've probably seen one
of these up at the podium. They're really popular because
there are a lot more options but again, they are quite
a bit more sensitive. So you have to worry about
them a little bit more when it comes to things
like feedback prevention, that squealing sound that we
were talking about earlier. So we'll connect that
to the mixer as well. Now, the difference with
the condenser microphone, like this Shure MX412, compared to a dynamic
microphone like the Shure SM58, is that a condenser microphone needs an external power supply. On the Mackie ProFX, we have this option down
here to turn on 48 volts to send power to microphones that need it so I'm gonna turn that on. Now, there are a lot of, like there's a lot of bad information when it comes to Phantom
power and dynamic microphones. Generally speaking,
it's best not to use it if you're running all dynamic microphones because they don't need it. But the 48 volts area is
known as Phantom power which accurately describes it. It's seen but it doesn't actually do anything like a Phantom. It'll never hurt a Shure SM 58. It's never hurt any dynamic microphone that I've ever worked with. Typically they can
damage ribbon microphones which you'd never see at a live event through a high-end
specialty studio microphone. And most dynamic microphones, even if they're unbalanced
dynamic microphones, the worst that I've ever heard of is that there's been some sort of buzzing but it's never actually
damaged the microphone. So you really don't have
to worry about that. You can definitely mix condenser
and dynamic microphones. I've done this at thousands of events. You've never heard the microphone so we can leave that on even though we have two different types of microphones plugged
into this audio mixer. Now to set up, the first microphone here
with the proper gain. We're gonna unmute the microphone. I'm just gonna get rid of this power cable now that we're done with it. I'm gonna unmute the microphone. We're gonna turn the level up to that U zero or unity position there which is straight up in
that 12 o'clock position. And then we're gonna turn up the gain here until we get the volume that we want. We can hear that this is working great. And one way to quickly test that everything is configured correctly is we can pan this to the left. And I can hear that it
went to that speaker and we can pan it to the right and I heard that it went to that speaker. So we know that our
speaker or sound system is working right away. Even if you're walking
up to a sound system that is already set up. That's typically the first thing I'll do. I'll grab a microphone
and pan it left and right, making sure that everything
is set up correctly. So that one's good. I can mute that now. Next, we're gonna do that same thing for this condenser
microphone, the Shure MX412. Unmute it, turn the level up to U and you can see here, we don't need any gain right
now in this size of room. If we were in a much bigger room, obviously you'd be adding gain. So now we've connected a dynamic
and a condenser microphone. So let's plug in a phone
or a line level source. This would be the same if
you're doing a drum machine, a keyboard, anything like that, but we have our phone here. Now, before we can plug this in, we do need this lightning
to headphone jack adapter. And then you need a cable like this one. What this cable here does is it will convert your headphone
jack output from the phone into two different quarter inch jacks. Typically the gray is always the left side and red is always representing the right side of that output. So we connect that to the phone and then to connect
this to the audio mixer, we have a whole pile of different options. Like I said before, we could have plugged
into the line level input from the combi jack here but we use both of those up for XLR. So next is plug these into three and four, the line level inputs here
for channels three and four. So gray goes into the first one and red goes into the second one. Next, I'm gonna turn on the
sound coming from my phone. Once that's done, we can unmute this. We can turn them both up. So we can hear that the
music is coming out. Now, like I said, this is a stereo source, so you're gonna want to take
both of those inputs there and pan them accordingly. So the gray is panned
all the way to the left and the red is panned
all the way to the right. That's exactly how I'd plug this in. I'm gonna turn that down
for a second and mute them. So what's the problem with this? The problem here is that we've used up two of the most valuable
channels on our audio mixer, because we only have so many XLR inputs. So a good way to beat this is to plug into something like five, six. On five six here, we have a stereo input where we can plug the gray to the left, red into the right. We can unmute that channel. Now we have one volume knob, works perfectly and it's
automatically panned for us. We can leave this main knob up straight but the red will come
out the right speaker and the gray will come out the left. That's totally perfect. So this is what I'll do
if I'm running the phone or if I'm running music
from the mixer for an event. But what happens if you're
plugging in something like a keyboard or a
laptop that's up on stage? Maybe it's playing the slideshow playback video for a wedding or a corporate video that they're releasing at this conference. Something like that, you're gonna need to get this
cable a really long distance. Typically 50 to 75 feet. This cable here that we just used... I'm just gonna mute the
channel and unplug it. I'm not gonna go too far into it but this is what's known
as an unbalanced cable. Unbalanced cables can
only run 15 to 20 feet before you get a lot of hum
and hiss in your signal. And it can be very distracting. So you need to use
something like a DI box here to balance that signal. So one way you can do this is you can grab the DI box, plug the gray into the left input, the red into the right input. Then you can connect two XLR cables, so we're gonna plug this red XLR cable into the left input and the yellow XLR cable
into the right input. This is great. Our DI box is all connected. So we said red was in left. So we can plug that back into three. Now the downside is this
still connected to XLR. So we are using up these
valuable channels again. We can see here, we can
unmute those channels, turn them up, we have music again. We can pan them again. We have good stereo sound. Now, like I said, the downside of doing this, I'm just gonna undo what I just did is that we just burnt
two of our XLR channels. So one thing that I like doing, is we're gonna undo what we just did here, is using a VDI box. What this will do... We can plug into here, left and right. And for this, you only need one XLR input. So you'll plug the yellow in. And you can see here there's
only one XLR output there. So now it's all being summed. So the left and right channels are both coming in the channel three. We don't need this red XLR cable anymore, put that there. You can hear the music works good and it's coming out of both speakers now which is exactly what we want. So that's probably the best way to do it at a corporate event where
you don't need stereo sound. If you're connecting a keyboard
or something like that, that's up on the stage, you would need a stereo DI box because having stereo sound
from that keyboard source is really important typically
when it comes to live music. Now, before we talk about
what all the knobs do in each channel, let's quickly talk about
one more option here, and that's connecting a monitor. If you want, you can use an FXN here and this is how I connect
it to a floor monitor. This will convert it
from quarter-inch to XLR. Again, we do have the
link for this cable down in the description below. But if you're doing live sound for a musician or a singer
or something like that, typically they'll need a
speaker down on the floor. So you can connect that to that speaker and then use these yellow
knobs here to control how loud each input source
is on their floor monitor. That's the best way to do that. Okay, so now we've got
everything set up here and plugged in. We've tested both microphones. We've tested the sound from the phone. Now, let's walk through the
rest of the settings on this. Unmute the SM 58, mute everything else. So starting up at the
top, we have this Insert. What the Insert does is it allows you to plug in a piece of outboard gear. So if you wanna plug in a external reverb unit or a compressor, you can plug a cable into that, run it through a piece of
outboard gear and bring it back. A lot of people get
confused with the Insert and they think that it's another input. It's not another input. It's a way of taking the
sound from this channel strip, processing it and bringing it back. Next, we have this low cut. I'll click on the low cut
for any vocal mic by default. Unless there's a specific reason not to, what this does is it basically rolls off this microphone below 100 Hertz and it basically takes
it out of any subwoofer if you have a subwoofer at your event. There's no real clarity or no real reason to keep a vocal mic, you know, keep the presence
below 100 Hertz up. This is typically the first thing that I'll do to any microphone that I know is being
used on somebody's voice. Next, we have a one knob compressor that's available on the first two channels on the Mackie ProFX here. What this, as you turn this up, it lowers a threshold with a fixed compression
ratio of six to one 6:1. This means that if I speak loud enough into this microphone to
exceed that threshold you have to play with it, listen to it and try to figure out how much you're exceeding
that threshold by but it will compress that by 6:1. This is really good for inexperienced people using microphones that are maybe bringing the
microphone back and forth, back and forth, compressing it. An easy way to think of it is it's kind of auto mixing
the volume knob for you. It's taking everything
above a certain level, compressing it into a
smaller dynamic range, making it easier to mix. The downside of over compressing, you don't want to over compress
a comedian, for example. Somebody that knows how to
use the microphone properly and is using it to good effect
to help tell the punchline or the story that they're telling. You can Rob a comedian of all the humor if you over compress them. Likewise with a really good singer, you can actually take all the
dynamics out of their voice and make them sound really flat. So that's not what you want to do either. So do keep that in mind. Next, we have the EQ. I'm gonna turn the compressor off. The Mackie ProFX has a three
band EQ on all of its channels, which is really good. Even the line level inputs, it has a three band EQ
for it is super helpful. The high here, if you turn that up, it'll just make the microphone
a little bit more crispy a little brighter. This will be typically where you'll start to get
feedback at a live event. You don't typically want
to turn that up too much but if you are getting a
little bit of feedback, maybe consider trying, turning
that down a little bit. When it comes to EQ, less is generally more so you don't want to be
going super aggressive or anything like that. Just small little moves. If you are looking for more
clarity in the vocal range, you wanna hear annunciation a little bit better
through your microphone, you could try turning
the Mids up a little bit. That'll add a little bit more clarity. And again, if it's just too muddy, you can turn the Lows down. Now, one thing I wanna
touch on with the EEQ here, a common mistake is you'll
see something like this and they'll wonder why it sounds
bad and suddenly so quiet. If you make the same move
on all three bands of EQ. If you turn them all down like this, you basically just turn
the microphone down. Likewise, if you turn them all up, you'll hear me get louder now as I speak into this microphone. If you do all three, you're just changing the volume. Something like this is
actually pretty typical. You take the sharpness off the voice. You add some bid clarity and you roll off a little bit of the Lows. That's pretty common,
that's a good way to go. But don't do something like this, you basically just turn the microphone up. That's all you've done. So keep that in mind as well. Next we have the FXN. Like I mentioned before, you can use the FXN two different ways. You can turn it up here. If you turn it up, just normally, with leaving the effects muted, it basically treats it as an aux channel and you can use this for floor monitors or something like that. That's a really good way to go. If you unmute the effects here and then you turn up their level, you can hear the reverb or the delay effect that's on right now. The Mackie ProFX here
has 24 different effects to choose from. So if you're doing karaoke, somebody's singing at a
wedding, corporate event, any type of live music, it's usually nice to add
some reverb into the mix. Again, don't get too carried away. It's easy to think that
you're improving the sound or helping the singer
or something like that. But generally with reverb, you wanna feel it a little
bit more than you hear it. You just want to use it to
soften out some of the edges, make it sound like a live event but you don't want to
be swimming in reverb. That's typically not
what I would like to do if I'm adding effects to a vocal. Next we have the pan which
we talked about earlier, panning it between left and right. This can be really good
for adding separation. If you have three background singers at an event or something like that, then you can pan them left and right. If anybody's just speaking
into the microphone, then I do recommend just
leaving them dead center most of the time. Then we have the mute and the level where you ultimately set your final level and you can mix there
throughout your event. So I think that's everything
that we need to cover for how to set up a sound
system using the Mackie ProFX and the Mackie SRT 210 speakers. If you do have any questions that we didn't cover in this video, please leave a question down
in the comments section. Again, if you are looking
for pricing or specs for anything that you've
seen in this video, we have links down in
the description below. And if you wanna see more
videos like this in the future, please like, and subscribe. Thank you for watching. (upbeat music)
