Using the power head with a 4X12

    Hi everyone!
    Yesterday at the rehearsal, i plugged my powerhead into a Marshall 4X12 and the sound i had was far away from being satisfying. After a couple of songs, i turned the cabinet off and boom! It all came back. As far as i remember, you dont have to turn the cam sim off to get a good sound from a speaker. Doesnt it send a signal to the cab that's without the cab sim and to the other outputs with the sim? what if i use a 4X12 on stage and give the FOH guy two xlr's? He's gonna get that thin sound coz i've turned the cab sim off. Is there something wrong? Am i missing something?


    Thanx for the answers in advance.

    If you are using the Power head or power rack, you should be running your cab from the Speak out, no? The cab off setting should be checked.


    I run my FOH to the board from my left main out and run that as a master mono. Sounds great!

    Quote from Stratosurfer

    what if i use a 4X12 on stage and give the FOH guy two xlr's?


    I would mic the cab because imho the crowd should hear what you hear an stage. Through XLR to FOH you have to choose a cabsim and this will sound different compared to your 4x12 on stage.

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

    Quote from Kempermaniac

    I would mic the cab because imho the crowd should hear what you hear an stage. Through XLR to FOH you have to choose a cabsim and this will sound different compared to your 4x12 on stage.

    I do not think so, it depends on the profiles that you use. eg I use Marshall/Diezel profiles and go Main-Left-Mono to FOH and to different cabs (mostly provided from venue: different speaker) from Powerhead – and it works very well. Eventually I tweak a monitor out eq at the sound/line check to make my stage sound more alike. This way the audience has always the best and consistent sound, and I have very good, similar sound on stage.

    Quote from Stratosurfer

    Thanx for the quick replies guys. Ingolf so it means if i connect the monitor out to one of my active reference speakers, both the kemper and the speaker will blow right? Didn't know dat. Phew...


    Ingolf was referring to where most people use to keep their cabs on or off.
    As for your active cab, you can just switch the power amp off when you want to use it from your Monitor out.


    Anyway... yes. don't do what you wrote in your last post :D

    Quote from MacOSatch

    I do not think so, it depends on the profiles that you use. eg I use Marshall/Diezel profiles and go Main-Left-Mono to FOH and to different cabs (mostly provided from venue: different speaker) from Powerhead – and it works very well. Eventually I tweak a monitor out eq at the sound/line check to make my stage sound more alike. This way the audience has always the best and consistent sound, and I have very good, similar sound on stage.


    Of course your solution can work very well! If it sounds good it is good. But I wonder how you can speak of a consistent sound, when you always have to use different speakers on stage. I can't imagine that you can always compensate this only with the Monitor Out EQ.

    I could have farted and it would have sounded good! (Brian Johnson)

    Constistent is to audience – pretty the same as our recordings.
    In my experience and my circumstances is the sound on stage always different from that what hear the audience.


    Because:
    - different techs use different mics in different positions
    - different techs make different EQ settings, here I have no possibility to correct this – with the Kemper I saw that they use my sound with flat EQ
    - what I hear on stage is off axis sound and that is NOT the sound that goes through the mic to the audience
    - In the venues where I play (usually small stages with place for 200-500 people) I can choose for my stage sound: monitor on the floor and/or guitar cab. So the sound through different floor monitors (usually not the best quality) is very different from the sound that I send through Main Out. Guitar cab sounds more similar, not completely the same, but as I said before, off axis sounds different as on axis

    In theory, it should be possible to get a sound from your cabs that similar to the sound from your main out. For example, a situation where you use the same cabinet that was profiled. Using cab sim off on the speaker out and cab sim on for the master outputs/monitor output.


    I don't think the sound on stage should be the same as the sound in the crowd though. My ideal mix on stage would be one where I can hear my instrument above all others. Usually, this would be a "mono" sound, i.e. levels mixed on a single monitor, though it will appear stereo because we have two ears. But for the FOH mix, I'd be looking for something that balances levels across instruments to create the best spatial mix for the audience, depending on the number of speakers being used.