- Hi, I'm Jordan from KettnerCcreative. In this video, I'm gonna show you how
to set up a sound system. In this video we're gonna show
you how to set up your mixer, how to connect your mixer to a speaker, how to plug in a dynamic microphone like the Shure SM58, how to use a condenser microphone, like the Shure MX412. How to use a line level input source like a phone for music playback
or something like that, and how to use an input source like that with a DI Box or plugging
into the mixer directly. We're also gonna cover
some topics like power and things to look for when
you first arrive at a venue. For anything that you see in this video, if you want more information, if you want pricing, specs, or information on where you can buy it, please check out the links
in the description below. We've done our best to put
all that type of information in the content section below this video. So check that out for more information. Now, the first thing that I think about when I arrive at a venue and set up a sound system like this, sometimes I'll set up five
to 10 of these in a day depending on the conference. If there's a lot of breakout rooms, this is an extremely common setup. So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna go find the client, make sure I'm in the right venue and then I go hunting for power. I'll usually walk around with
a three outlet extension cord, something like this that
has the led light on it. And if I haven't been to the venue before, I'll just plug into the outlets and make sure that this
led light turns on. That's extremely helpful
in troubleshooting and making sure that
you have power onsite. Especially if you're at an outdoor venue, power like that can sometimes be an issue. Now, once you know that you have power, then you can get into
room layout and set up. Typically you want the speakers ahead of where the microphone is gonna be. So you don't get any feedback
or anything like that. So determine where your stage is gonna be and put your speakers left
or right of the stage, and make sure that they're
in a good position. Next, you want to think about where you're gonna put your mixer. If it's a corporate event, the name of the game is
out of sight, out of mind. You need to hide all the
technical looking equipment, either in a corner of the
room or something like that. But generally they don't want
you anywhere near the stage. That being said, if you're
doing a music event, then you'll be up near the stage. They typically want you mixing side stage because they don't want
you out in the audience if it's a corporate event. If it's a full music event, like a small concert or festival, then you can pretty much
do whatever you want. Wherever you think you're
gonna be able to hear the best that's where you'll be. So now that we've determined where we're gonna set
up all our equipment, we're gonna put our speaker
on a stand like this. We're gonna put our mixer on a table like I have in front of me here. The next thing that we're gonna want to do is we're gonna want to
power up the equipment. Now for a small mixer like this, you can definitely plug into a power bar. If you have a bunch of wireless
mics or something like that, that you need a whole bunch
of power where the console is, you can definitely do that. If you're plugging in power for a speaker, we definitely do not recommend
that you plug the speaker into a power bar. What'll happen is sometimes
you'll get various dynamic loads on the speaker. And if you have like a lot of sound or music or something that, that hits on the speaker, you can trip the surge
protector on a power bar which will then kick in the limiter. And then when the limiter
releases on the speaker, it'll hit the surge
protector on the power bar and it'll keep going around and playing these funny games like that. So we always recommend that you
plug in your powered speaker to a direct flow current like this, like these three outlet extension cords where there's nothing's slowing it down. The electricity is just free flowing. There's no surge protectors
or anything like that. So we are plugging our mixer first. I always liked to work according to the way the
signal is going to flow. So I always want to start with the mixer and run it out to the speakers. So once our mixer here in
front of me is plugged in, we're gonna turn that on using
the power switch on the back. And you can see that the power
light on the mixer is on. The next thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna plug an IEC cable into the back of our speaker for power. Now, when you buy a speaker like this, you're going to get this short
little six foot IEC cable. These things are pretty useless. You're gonna be much happier going out and buying a 25 foot version
of that same IEC cable that will give you a lot more flexibility when you're on site, in terms of being able
to run to various outlets and get power where you need it to be. So you'll plug that in. And before we connect
this to our power source we just want to make sure that
the speaker is turned off. I will plug it in. Then we'll turn the speaker on. Now, a lot of people, a lot of sound professionals
won't even turn the speaker on until you have signal coming
from the board to the speaker. I say, you want to do this first because you want to find out and you wanna make sure that
you can actually have power to this speaker. Sometimes outlets in hotels can be tricky and a power is a huge problem. So just quickly flick it on, make sure the power light comes on, make sure the fan's running, and then you can turn it off. The next thing that you're gonna wanna do is you're going to want
to get your mixer ready, and then we're gonna want to connect it to the speaker here beside me. So to get your mixer ready, you want to turn all the knobs down. Sometimes whoever used the board last didn't turn the knobs down. On an MG10 like this, all the white knobs go down to zero. The yellow knobs go down to zero. But the Christmas colors
like the green and the red they'll be up in the 12 o'clock position. And the blue will go all
the way down to zero. Something like that should
be your starting point. So now we're gonna connect an XLR cable from the stereo output of the mixer to our first speaker here. Plug that into there. And on the back of the speaker here, this speaker does accept
microphone input as well. So what we want to do
is we want to make sure this is on the line level input. We don't want this on
the mic level position. We want to turn that down
so it says line level, and then we can turn
the high pass filter off or any D contour DSP or
anything like that can be off. Just leave the speaker
as a plain old speaker. Don't do any crazy settings
unless you really know what you're trying to do with it. And we're gonna plug that in. So now that we have signal on the speaker, we can turn it on. Now, going back to the mixer here, we're going to get the mixer ready so we can plug in an input source in. The first thing that I like to plug in is always a phone or something like that, something to give it music. So I can play a song that I know so I can make sure the
speakers sound the way I think they should sound in a room that I'm setting up. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn this stereo output, the main master volume on this mixer. We're going to turn it all the way up to that triangle position. If you're using a mixer with faders, there'll be a zero or a unity
sign or something like that. That's a really great starting point for the main output of your mixer. Obviously you can adjust
the output up and down as you see fit, but that will give you a
good volume to noise ratio. And it's a really good
starting point for you, especially on a small mixer like this. So now that our main
stereo output is turned up, we're gonna connect our phone so we can listen to some music. To do that we're gonna
use a cable like this. This cable will take the
headphone jack from your phone and it'll convert it to
two quarter inch jacks, one for the left and one for the right. Now, if your phone doesn't
have a headphone jack, then you'll need a converter
like I do with my phone. So this will go from headphone
jack to a lightning port. I can plug that into
the bottom of my phone. Next I'll plug these quarter inch jacks in the inputs three and four. Now keep in mind here, we just plugged a line level input source into a mic level input on the mixer. If you plug it into one
of these XLR combi jacks that can take XLR or quarter-inch, generally it's expecting
a mic level input. So there's a little pad button here with the 26 decibel pad. We're gonna click that down and that will bring this signal down to a mic level input. Now I'm gonna turn the iPhone on here. Let's go find a song, hit play. I'm playing music. Now I can turn up the volume. We can hear that we're making sound. Now, if you're doing something like this and you want to maintain the stereo sound and you have a second speaker plugged into the second output, then you'd pan each of those. You pan the left one to the left side and the right one to the right side, using these little red pan knobs here. That will make sure that
the sound is spread out from left to right. Now the problem with doing
this here, as you can see, is that we've used up to mic inputs. There's much better ways to do this, but first I'm gonna show
you how to plug it in to the stereo line level
inputs that are on the mixer. So we're gonna unplug these from there. We're gonna plug them into here, and here it's expecting a line level input like we're feeding it. So there's no pad.
There's nothing like that. There's no gain on this. We just turn it up. We can make sure that it's making sound. So we walk around the room at this point, you wanna make sure that all your speakers are making music and that it sounds right. If it doesn't sound right, then you might have an
issue with your speaker or you might have a setting on your mixer that's wrong or needs to be reset. And now it'd be a really
good time to do that. So you turn that down. Next I'm gonna show you how to
plug in a dynamic microphone like this Shure SM58. So the Shure SM58 is a
super popular microphone, quite possibly the most popular
microphone in the world. First time you're ever doing sound, you'll probably be using
it or something like it. So we're gonna plug into this
first microphone input here at the top of the mixer. And then we're gonna plug the XLR cable into the bottom of the microphone. Now, just like we did with the
stereo output on the mixer, we're going to turn the level up all the way to that
triangle position there. We can already hear
that we're making sound. So at the top of this, if we do need more volume out of this, then we would use, we'd turn up the preamp a little bit using this gain knob here. What the preamp does is it
takes the little vibrations that are coming from the microphone and it pre amplifies it, it brings it up. So then you can add Compression, EQ, you can pan it and do whatever
you're trying to do with it before you set your main level. That being said, the main level you use, you want at this triangle
or zero or unity, depending on your mixer. That's a really good starting point. And that's where you're gonna get the most volume to noise ratio. If you increase your gain, you are at some level depending on the quality of your preamp. You're introducing more gain or more noise in order to amplify the sound
coming from the microphone. Sometimes that's necessary, but you want to do it as
sparingly as possible. If you already have your
volume up to zero or unity, or this little triangle
on a mixer like this, then you don't need to
increase the gain any further. If you do, if you are already in that position and you need more volume, then you can go ahead
and increase the gain until you're satisfied with the
output from that microphone. Next on this mixer, we have two yellow knobs here. So with this microphone input, everything is working in a vertical line. So once we've done one, then the next microphone
will follow the same process. They're all the same all
the way down the mixer. So on this, we have a compressor here. What a compressor does is
it will increase the volume on something that's quiet
and it'll decrease the volume on something that's loud. It basically narrows the dynamic range of whatever is coming
through this microphone. So what that means is if you have a singer that would be really
quiet and then really loud and you're of just mixing
the volume up and down, up and down, up and down
throughout the show, you can increase how the
compressor's working, how much it's compressing, and that will make your job easier, but we'll reduce the dynamic
range of that singer. So again, you want to use it sparingly. You don't want to go crazy. Never would just want to
fully compress something. You still want it to have dynamic range, but sometimes you want that window to be a little bit smaller. So if you're not sure how it works or you can't hear a
difference that it makes, just leave it off. Next I want to talk about the EQ. These three green knobs here change how the input source will sound. The first knob will change the highs. So typically if you're getting feedback from a microphone like this, now a feedback is when a
microphone can hear a speaker. So what'll happen is if
your speaker's behind your microphone, which is really bad, your microphone will hear the speaker, which will make it louder, which the microphone will hear. And it creates a feedback loop. And that's that loud squealing sound that we always hear at events. It's super unfortunate but
usually it can be prevented. And the way you do that would be by reducing those frequencies
that are going around and around and creating
that feedback loop. So one way to do that is to
reduce the highs a little bit. Sometimes the problem
frequencies are in the mid range. So that means that you reduce
the mid range frequencies. Now it's important to note that if you're making the same move on all three bands of your EQ, that it basically reduces the volume. So if you can hear me talking here, we're gonna turn down the highs, we're gonna turn down the mids, we're gonna turn down the lows. We basically just turn the microphone off. Now we're gonna turn them all back up and we'll start to hear
the microphone again. Now the same thing goes
if we turn them all up. This microphone will just get louder. That's all you're doing. So you never wanna do the same move on all three of the EQ. When it comes to EQ
generally less is more. You're just gonna be doing
small tweaks like this. If you have vocal that
needs to be rolled off a little bit on the low end, just do something like that. Very subtle moves with the EQ. And again, if you can't
hear the difference, then just put it back the way it was. Up at the top here I also forgot to mention that
there's this high pass filter. What that does is it'll
roll off the low end of the microphone up to 80 Hertz. This is extremely popular for pretty much anytime you have a live
vocal mic on a stage. You're gonna click that on and
it's just gonna take the mud out of the bottom end of
that microphone for you and it will sound better
and cleaner for your guests. The next knob that we
have at the bottom here is an aux output. So if you're feeding something
like a stage monitor, that's how you'd increase
the volume of that. Next we have the pan, just like the stereo
input that we had before. So you can send this microphone to the left or the right. For this video we only have one speaker so we're just gonna leave
it straight up the middle. And we have the final output level of this microphone channel there. So that's everything that you need to know about plugging in a dynamic microphone, like the Shure SM58
into your sound system. So what is a dynamic microphone? The easiest way to sum
up a dynamic microphone is that it uses a magnet
for its energy source. So as the diaphragm moves up and down, it interacts with the magnet to generate a small amount of current or electricity that goes down the XLR
cable into your mixer. Now with a condenser microphone like the Shure MX412 here, it doesn't have a magnet inside. Instead it's electrically
charged through a power source that is delivered over the
cable to the microphone. So I'm gonna plug this microphone in and I'll show you a little bit
about what I'm talking about. So we're gonna plug this into the second microphone input here. I'll bring this microphone closer to me. So these are super popular
microphones for podiums or something like that. They're just a sleek design and flexibility makes them super popular and really a great fit
for any corporate event. So now we're gonna turn
up the volume here, just like we did with
the other microphone. And we're gonna turn up the gain. We're gonna notice that no
matter how much gain we add this microphone makes no noise, no sound rather. And the reason that it
makes no sound is because, like I said, this
microphone needs electricity to charge the capsule so
it can generate a signal back down the XLR cable for this mixer. Now how we would do that is by clicking on Phantom power here. So if the volume is turned down and everything's plugged in and once Phantom powers on, then we can turn this level knob up. And now we can tell that this
microphone is working again. Now here's a little bit about what I was talking about before. You can hear that high
ringing just a little bit, and we can also hear a low hum as well. Cause the microphone can hear the speaker, which goes back to the microphone. So then we turn the
highs down a little bit. We turn the lows down a little bit, but like I said, we don't wanna do the
same move on all three EQ. And we can hear that
the amount of feedback or ringing has been reduced a little bit. Another way to do that would be to add the high pass filter here. And again, that will just
roll off all the lows. And now we have a much cleaner sound coming from this microphone. I'm gonna turn the volume on that down. Now what happens if you
have an input source from the stage and you need to run, say a phone from the stage all the way back to your mixing board? That's when you'd use
something like a DI Box. This line level input
that we used previously is not good to be run for a
distance of more than 10 feet. I don't want you to go
out and buy a 25 foot or a 50 foot version of this cable. A 50 foot length of this cable will have a very degraded sound quality by the time it makes it to the mixer because this cable is unbalanced. Now the way to balance that cable is by using a transformer
inside of a DI Box. I'm gonna show you how to do that now. We're gonna unplug this from the mixer. And this DI Box has a left and right input and a left and right output. So we're gonna plug it
into the input here. We're gonna grab another XLR cable. We're gonna plug it into
the output of the DI Box and plug it into the mixer. Now this DI Box will reduce
the input from the phone, from a line level input, all the way down to a mic level input. So when we connect this to the mixer, we wanna make sure that
those pads are turned off. And then we're gonna unclick the pads so those are turned off, and then make sure your
phone is still playing. And then we're gonna turn up the volume. And then just like we
did before, we'll pan it. Now, as you can see here again, we've used up all our
mic inputs on this mixer. So I'm gonna turn that down. And one way to get around this is if you don't need a stereo sound from your phone or input
source or something like that, then you can use a DI Box like this. That will mono some, both sides of the stereo input all the way down to a single XLR. Let me show you how to do that now. So we're gonna unplug
from the previous DI Box, we're gonna plug it back
into this new DI Box. Then we're gonna take the blue output out of the previous DI Box
and plug it into there. So this green cable here to that DI Box isn't doing anything anymore. Get that out of the way. But now we can turn up that input. And we're just using a single channel. So that's something that you can use depending on the situation that you're in. If you don't need stereo sound, or if you're out of XLR inputs and you have to make the
call to make that mono, you have that option
available to you as well. So I hope this video has
been helpful for you. I hope you've learned something about dynamic and condenser microphones, how to use a phone with a DI Box, without a DI Box, plugging directly into the combi jacks, or using a line level input here and how to set up some basic EQ and basic Compression on
a small mixer like this. Again, if you want any
information on anything that you've seen in this video, we do have some links in
the description below. If you have any questions about anything that you've seen here, please leave a comment in
the comment section below. And if you wanna see more
videos like this in the future, please like and subscribe. Thanks for watching.
