Last night I ran into some challenges with my live rig and I could use some advice on how to potentially tackle addressing this for future gigs. In a nutshell, my problem was that I was unable to compete with the rest of the band from a volume perspective. Unfortunately despite the fact that there were as many as 9 musicians playing simultaneously I was not provided the opportunity to run my KPA into FOH, so I was relying on stage volume along with the bass and drums; only the vocals, horns, and violin were miked. It was also a very small stage and the performers were practically stacked up like dominoes in order to fit everyone. It was a logistical nightmare. My live rig consists of the KPA and the ubiquitous Yamaha DXR-10. As always I ran my KPA monitor out into the DXR-10 line input with the DXR volume set to -12 to -14. After the first few songs I had to bump the KPA monitor volume to about -9.5 dB and the DXR volume to -8. At this point I was at least able to hear myself on stage but from the perspective of what the crowd could hear I was still buried. Not much I could do about that though. Most of the night I was using the MBritt Dumble profiles, but once I switched to the Dirty Shirley profiles the tone became extremely woofy. These profiles sounded perfect at rehearsal the week before, but that was at a much lower volume as I wasn't competing with so many musicians (only four of us actually showed up for rehearsal which is why I was unprepared logistically for the gig). It basically sounded like I was pushing the DXR well past its limitations. To recap, here were my settings: KPA Monitor Out, -9.5 dB Monitor Out > DXR10 Line Input DXR Settings: Volume -8, D-Coutour Off, HPF 100 Hz So I'm kind of hoping to get some perspective from you DXR10 users. Some questions I'm asking myself today: Am I asking too much from the DXR10? I mean, I assumed this thing would be able to get very loud and still stay clean with a variety of profiles. Any suggestions for different settings on both the KPA and DXR10? Maybe I just need to EQ the Dirty Shirley profiles differently, or try profiles that are less pronounced in the low end? Would a second DXR10 be worthwhile or is that just overkill? There is a pretty good chance this band will be calling again with more gigs and I want to be ready. Unfortunately there will never be a rehearsal with the whole band where I can spend any length of time dialing in profiles, so I need to make my adjustments based on instinct.
