MY PRO AUDIO RIG EP. 1 | HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GET INTO LIVE SOUND?

what's up guys today's episode is going to be all about pro audio or pro or audio then the typical standard DJ rig a lot of you guys every time I put up a production gig blog you always want to know what does it take to get into the live sound industry I'm gonna be honest with you it takes a lot of time and a lot of money I've been doing this almost 10 years now and I'm still even in a small state such as Arkansas I'm still at the very bottom of the totem pole and I've got a pretty decent rig it's nothing that is I would say arena grade but it has fulfilled a couple of riders it is rider friendly I guess you would say but it's still nothing to write home about now if an a-list artist came to town and they were looking for a production company to fulfill their rider that would not be me what I'm doing is I'm doing small fairs festivals college events really B or C list talent that may have been popular once before or is slowly on the come-up now with this rig we've done people such as three 6 mafia yin yang twins Judah and the lion Joel Anderson just to name a few and the list keeps getting bigger every year as we kind of grow into our industry or in our certain market before you love the comments section up with this is a whole bunch of entry-level crap I don't disagree with you especially the the pro pro guys that are probably gonna watch this video I don't disagree I am saying that this is a starting point if you are looking to get started I would say what I have is the bare minimum of what you need to try to get your foot in the door in the live sound industry because it takes a lot [Music] now I'm gonna try to break this down into different series just because when you start to wrap your mind around what it really takes to put on a concert and production it doesn't just start with audio you've got to worry about how your power is going to get there and your power distribution your cabling your stage presence whether it be your stage networking with audio cables and sometimes video sometimes lighting it all it's it's a lot more than what you would think this is going to be simply a tour of my audio rig we're gonna start with speakers we're gonna go into subwoofers and then we're going to cover the amps the next episode I'll show you kind of what it takes to get the audio source to the actual speakers itself so we'll cover things like mixers stage snakes you know and the networking behind it then we'll go into lighting and so on and so forth so for today we're just going to cover what I have in my shop which is a JBL audio rig with some Evie pal behind it now what I am gonna be doing is I'm gonna be keeping a running tally of what it kind of the the overall basic cost of what it has cost me to purchase all this gear first off we have our JBL mains which are JBL VXR 932 la constant curvature arrays now the term LAN array is used in conjunction with these boxes but that's simply not it a true line array you have the ability to aim and point each cabinet exactly where you want to go with something like a constant curvature box it's already set set it and forget it you can't really adjust the geometry of how the speaker throws now there are some options out there that you can that you can kind of manipulate these speakers and get them where you want them but that kind of would void the warranty and if something catastrophic happened you would be in a lot of trouble because it's not how JBL recommends that you flatter boxes anytime you take that into account you always got to worry about your insurance and the worst that could possibly go wrong once you start putting items and things over people's heads you run into a lot bigger stakes if something goes wrong so make sure your insurance is up to snuff now in each of these cases I have two of the JBL speakers all in all I have a total of 12 what that allows me to do is do a hang of five per side with two front fills after you get over five or six with these speakers in in particular because they are a constant curvature box and you can't change the angle or the throw of the box you get one that's throwing up you know at the ceiling almost and one that's pretty much pointing directly down on the floor that's something that we don't want so we keep it at five for our outdoor shows for inside shows you know we can kind of get away before and then we use two of them as front fills at the front of the deck of the stage now there is a plus side to using a box like the JBL VXR as opposed to a traditional you know point source box is that you can pull mountain things you can throw you know these arrays or constant curvature boxes on to a speaker stand and use them two at a time so let's say that you've got a weird room with a narrow angle or a short distance to the floor a short trim height these work out pretty well in most situations because you can toss them on a pole put them on a sub woofer and and there's your PA you don't necessarily have to fly these all the time now these are quite simple to put together as you can see they have handles on each side those handles double as the pins and couplers spin this one up this is the coupler that's going to allow another speaker to sit on top of it and then we pick the whole thing up from the bottom or from the top these pins are super important you don't want to lose them they are made out of titanium so they're pretty strong this is what is going to be the building blocks of our main hang PA so let's throw a couple on here and we'll see what two or three of them together look like now once we have our box is coupled we're going to use the array frame to tie the boxes to the trust structure itself and then we can add on a couple more boxes as we actually have this on the trucks now once we have our boxes twice because that really really hurt alright once we have our speakers in place we're gonna use what's called a span set or still flex to attach the speakers to the actual truss now depending on where you're hanging you may use steel shackles or whatever I'm not going to tell you how to rig because rigging is something that I'm still in the process of learning and becoming a certified rigger so I don't want to give you any false information because ultimately if you take advice for me I assume the liability and I don't want that to happen so I'm just gonna throw this out there do all this at your own risk but I attach my speakers to the truss using a span set they can hold a lot of weight especially when you configure them in different ways these boxes only weigh 53 pounds of piece so always know the weight of your rig especially when you're using truss or motors or genies you always need to know what the loaded weight of your rig is that includes the array frames that includes any cabling that you might have these are very important numbers because if the side inspector comes up which very rarely happens but it can if you don't know your the numbers of what your stuff is capable of holding you can be shut down pretty damn fast looking at the back of the VXR box you have you're in and you're through NL four connectors you also have your buy amp and your passes switch if you want to run it passive means the box is running full range by up means you're taking two separate signals and sending it where it wants to go one for the high frequency drivers the other for the woofer located inside the box but one thing that's cool about these boxes in particular is you have these selector switches up here at the top it sends different voltage to certain components that allows the speaker to do different things for instance if we've got all of these selector switches all the way to the right that turns this box in particular into a long throw box move them both to the middle it's a mid throw box move both of these to the lip it turns it to a short throw box [Music] [Music] now for the low-end we've got six of these JBL STX 828 dual 18 subwoofers they look pretty small in comparison to me but they're huge they're due late teens they slam really really hard we've got six of them which we pushed for hip-hop music and things of that nature they sound great especially indoors is where they shine when coupled together we've got six we're looking to add two more on by the end of the year so that will bring our grand total to eight they're on the same dolly carts that I built for my normal ekx single eight-teen woofers they work out great you know it's really easy to will these around now there are some holes on the back of them where you can put a wheel kit directly onto the subwoofer I find that it makes it rattle a lot more and if I can leave these dudes stacked and not have to worry about unstacking them or stacking them when I get to the show it works out a lot better subs are subs or subs these are great there are better options out there but there are a lot worse options out there as well I've been relatively happy with them never had any problems with blowing cones or driving them a little too hard I've had good luck with them they come highly highly recommended now located in my aunt brag I have four electro boys CP 4000s amplifiers now you might be saying John your entire system is JBL what's up with don't electro-voice amplifiers and put things really simply and honestly I have these from my old evq rx rig what I sold to buy this and power is extremely expensive especially when you get into what it would take to power this rig if I had to start all over having matching amps to your subs isn't something that's necessary but I would say having all matching amps to power your ear speaker rig especially if you have the same speakers is a good idea the one thing that sets this apart is the drive rack 360 by DB X what it allows me to do when tuning my PA is input my subs my mains and what amplifiers I have to really give me the best bang for buck combo so just because I don't have JBL processing going to my speakers the drive rack automatically picks that up and it gives me the best signal to go to whatever output source I want now I would say that like a crown xti 6000 is something that would be comparable to these amps but again I haven't had any complaints on it these amps have never let me down and they're super lightweight in comparison to an XD I if I wouldn't much rather just stick with what I got until it's time to replace someone one or two or all of them died now I've got the same amp rack duplicated so just as you see here with the four amps and the drive rack I've got the same thing on the other side what this allows me to do is put one on the left side of the stage one on the right side of the stage so I don't have as many long cable runs now with my patch bait that I have here in front it allows me to have 4 NL 4 outputs and my 4 inputs typically this is how it'll go on the far side will go left right and sub so the fourths input is empty it's free I can do with it whatever I may I may stick another amp on here if I've got some out fills or delay stacks something like that and then for the N F for breakouts we've got a main one a main 2 a sub 1 + a sub 2 now I'm using two amplifiers to drive my 5 speakers to my PA one amplifier to drive a pair or three of my subwoofers and then the bottom amp I kind of use it as an auxilary it can either fire another pair of subwoofers it can fire the front fills it doesn't really matter depending on what room my man is when that fourth amp comes into play so all in all maximum power wise we're looking at 2100 watts of power per channel per amp so if we added up to 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 about sixteen point five thousand watts of maximum power output now that's not what I'll run it out but that's what you can get out of a Professional Series amplifier like this now what I will say with professional series amplifiers what you get what you pay for once again the Sam Saint cheap and they don't sound cheap they sound really really good if you were to go with a lesser brand let's say a a PV or you know something in that class I'm not gonna say that you're going to get the best results one thing that I will tell you is that once you get into the amplifiers a lot of them have a lot of power claims that they cannot make you know some barons your amps claim to have 6,000 watts of power in one amp at a price of 250 bucks I'm just here to tell you that that is a lie don't believe the hype of what you get into amplifiers such as crown Eevee QSC people that are proven with their power you're going to have a lot more reliable source on how much power you're actually putting out so that wraps up the amp rack once again we've got four cps 4000 amps we've got a drive rack and I'm even going to include the cost of what it took to make the patch Bay the patch Bay is really necessary on making sure you get in and out efficiently also you don't want to be back there during the middle of the show trying to dig around if something goes wrong if you've got everything right here labeled you know where everything is going you know your signal path it's going to make for a lot cleaner execution of your show and it's going to make a lot easier for troubleshooting if something goes wrong so that's gonna wrap up today's episode on the bare minimum of what it takes to get your foot in the door for live sound now once again like I said this isn't the best and this isn't the end-all be-all but I feel like it's kind of the lowest you can kind of go to get your foot in the door especially when doing crowds let's save a couple thousand people now once I grow this I will get another rig I won't sell this rig because I feel like it still serves a purpose but I'll just get something meant for larger scale until I get to that point I simply just pass it on to people that I know can handle the job hoping that they'll either have me on to work it or be give me a little kickback for sending them the business to wrap things up today we covered the JBL VXR 9:32 constant curvature arrays below them the STX 8:28 subwoofers and then powering and processing the whole thing we have electro-voice CP 4000 s amplifiers and the drive rack 360p a processor so this right here right there it's kind of the cost of retail cost of all this stuff I'm sure you can find it used on another market but this is what it's going to cost you if you want it to duplicate what I have like I said in the beginning it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of money and getting into this is one of my good friends told me it's just like the Mafia it's easy to get in and it's hard to get out once you try to sell this stuff on the used market you're going to be lucky to get 60% of what you paid for it in the first place so just keep that in mind if you don't really see this as a liable business option or business venue it might be better just go work for somebody else instead of seeking your time and your money into building your own before you get out of here I would appreciate you hitting that subscriber button also the notification both to the right of it that way you can know when new content is posted on the channel if you have any comments questions or concerns leave them down in the comment section below if you've got something that you want to ask me one on one you can shoot me an email DJ Whoo Pig at gmail.com is where you can reach me you can also find me on social media at DJ woo pig across all sources so for today guys thanks again for watching we'll see you tomorrow [Music] way off in the distance

Channel: John Simmons

Views: 380,609

Keywords: jbl, jbl vrx932, jbl vrx line array, jbl subwoofers, subwoofers, pro sound, pro audio, electro voice, ev, ev amps, driverack 360, audio rigging, loudspeaker, dj woo pig, dj barr, dj rick web, slm entertainment, mini thon, loud bass, jbl sound system, how to, live sound, audio engineering, jbl speakers, live audio, pa system, sound reinforcement, sound system, live sound mixing

Id: fQ9ZOHL33nU

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018