Vastly different sound between monitors and FOH

Spawn2031

Spawn2031

Inspired
Hey guys, My band finally left the basement 2 weeks ago and started playing out on a Carvin PA system. Until now, we've been playing thru my soundboard and out thru monitors in our practice area (Output 1 both XLR to the board and routed to monitors / Output 2 both 1/4in running direct into 2 FRFR speakers for stage volume). I've played thru a couple different sets of FRFR cabs and have always had great tone. Makes my other guitar player jealous actually, lol. So now jump to these gigs we played out and my tone is still awesome coming out of monitors and my stage volume speakers but the tone coming out of the PA was absolutely awful. Thank god we had a good sound guy and he was able to use a couple parametric EQs at the board to make it sound good again but even he was scratching his head as to why the difference between the 2 was so vast. Does anyone have any idea of places I could look for something that could be wrong with my outputs on the Axe or is it simply just that this particular PA setup didnt like what was being sent to it w/o further tweaking at the board?

Personally I'm inclined to chalk it up to just the characteristics of this particular PA but no one else had any major tone differences. I wish I had recorded an example of the difference, it was shocking.
 
Spawn2031 said:
Hey guys, My band finally left the basement 2 weeks ago and started playing out on a Carvin PA system. Until now, we've been playing thru my soundboard and out thru monitors in our practice area (Output 1 both XLR to the board and routed to monitors / Output 2 both 1/4in running direct into 2 FRFR speakers for stage volume). I've played thru a couple different sets of FRFR cabs and have always had great tone. Makes my other guitar player jealous actually, lol. So now jump to these gigs we played out and my tone is still awesome coming out of monitors and my stage volume speakers but the tone coming out of the PA was absolutely awful. Thank god we had a good sound guy and he was able to use a couple parametric EQs at the board to make it sound good again but even he was scratching his head as to why the difference between the 2 was so vast. Does anyone have any idea of places I could look for something that could be wrong with my outputs on the Axe or is it simply just that this particular PA setup didnt like what was being sent to it w/o further tweaking at the board?

Personally I'm inclined to chalk it up to just the characteristics of this particular PA but no one else had any major tone differences. I wish I had recorded an example of the difference, it was shocking.
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Did you use the same output on the axe fx to feed the mixing desk or did you use out2? Any chance you had different global eq settings on that output or you were clipping the board?
 
DLC86 said:
Did you use the same output on the axe fx to feed the mixing desk or did you use out2? Any chance you had different global eq settings on that output or you were clipping the board?
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Nope, nothing was different. XLRs to the same board I always use, inputs on the board wernt clipping. Nothing changed within the Axe or patch itself. Just the PA was the difference. So I'm assuming that I'm going to need to tweak my patches now so that they sound good for the PA without any tweaking needed at the board. Of course that's gonna vastly change the sound coming out of the monitors and cabs for the worse so I dunno what to do there. Maybe branch off and run the cabs out via the FX loop so that I can tweak the EQ there and get that sounding good again. So I'll be technically generating 2 different tones. The only issue I can see with that is what I am sending to the board probably wont sound good coming back thru the stage monitors.
 
Has the PA system been EQ'd for a flat response? My guess is not, and a boost of some frequencies are making you sound like that.
 
In this case the only explanation is that the PA is far from having a flat response, I think.
Probably your best bet is to use the global eq on out2 to fine tune your sound for the PA and send out1 to your monitor (if possible).
 
Colorado Axeman said:
Has the PA system been EQ'd for a flat response? My guess is not, and a boost of some frequencies are making you sound like that.
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No I dont believe it ever has. It's your standard old school PA with 3 way tops, subs and separate amps for all of it. Definitely not anything remotely close to the kind of rigs we try to setup to function on FRFR cabs. Maybe I should just toss an SM57 infront of my cabs and say screw it! lol
 
I'm a huge fan of Carvin guitars and amps, but truth be told, their PAs are not flat at ALL.

Additionally you're likely playing louder, and due to the Fletcher Munson effect you'll be hearing it very differently at volume.

Additionally, the house system may not be the best either. I've played a few gigs in the past where the house system was not at the quality of my monitors.....can't do a whole lot about that....

Also, ensure that the same output is being sent to output 1 and 2.....swap them and make sure.....sometimes power amp modeling may be turned off, it happens
 
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