Using two ELX112P speakers

[damasp]

I recently sold a powered speaker and bought another Electro-Voice ELX112P. I had the speakers propped up and roughly three feet apart. I've never played with two of these speakers together and I was amazed how good and rich the Nord sounded - the piano patches were sounded great.

When playing with our acoustic trio, I don't need to go into the small pa. I'll just use my two cabinets behind me. Seems simple.
The tricky part seems to be playing with the full band where everything is fed into the FOH. After playing with two cabinets in stereo, I'd like to continue using that setup for myself when playing with the full band.

The club we play at has their PA speaker about 20 feet apart and the room isn't much wider that. I'm thinking it would work out sending the FOH a right and left output, panned to right and the other panned to left for FOH in this place. So I think this is one option. Using my mixer I can give the FOH two channels R & L channels from the "Control Room" outputs (into two of their di boxes) and give myself two outputs from "Main Output" section into my speakers.

I think some keyboard players use stereo monitors on stage and one output line that sums the FOH to mono.
I'm not sure what the best way to handle this if I needed to do it that way.

• Would the summing to mono cause phasing problems with my sound for the audience to hear?

• If I did send the FOH only one output, how would I do that using my mixer?

• Would I just use the left channel of "Control Room" on the mixer or both channels out and some type of a two into one cable connector into their di box?

Thanks,
Steve

[damasp]

No help? Is anyone using a pair of speakers as monitors on stage?

[Mr_-G-]

Does your speaker have a "Link Output"? I think that is not an amplified signal, so you could send that to the FOH. So you could send the signal from each speaker and get amplified in stereo through the PA.

[cphollis]

I use a pair of QSCs routinely (similar to your EVs), in a couple of different ways.

Small room/stage: one unit on a pole in each back corner (stage left and stage right) through a small mixer. Keyboards don't go through FOH, I handle levels, and have spare inputs for other musicians who need amplification (horns, violin, etc.) Very often these units are better than what the house is using. This is what I'd use for your 20 foot wide room. If we're feeling ambitious, we'll run the monitor signal through these as well (at a low level to prevent feedback) and it makes a nice complement to the floor monitors.

Larger room/stage: a pair behind me, on poles, spread about 6-10 feet, back a bit. I usually feed mono to FOH as not too many sound guys care for a stereo keyboard feed. The mono comes from the back of one of the QSCs as a link via XLR -- not summed. I could do an aux out as weIl, but I'd still go mono. I have enough stage volume that I'm not relying on the FOH too much, and the stereo effect projects pretty well.

Very large venue with pro sound: a pair on the floor in front of me as monitors. I mix in whatever monitor feed I get from the sound guy - unless they're using IEMs (in-ear monitors). Stereo out for each keyboard (AUX 1 and AUX 2) to sound guy from my mixer.

While the QSCs are nice and have served me well, I'm saving my pennies for a pair of FA28ac units.

[damasp]

Thanks Guys! cphollis, you mentioned that you could do an aux out as well and still go in mono. Does that mean you would still send the right and left channel of the aux out? Would the FOH mixing board/engineer use both lines in and balance the pan in the center to get a mono mix? I'm just a bit confused with using my mixer to theirs. Or do I just give FOH the left channel of from my aux out? I do know that if I give the FOH a line or lines into their Di box, I control my stage volume and they control what comes to them.

Mr-G, I know that my speakers can be linked together and I believe sending out lines for each speaker would work for stereo. I think what you are saying cphollis, is that you output both L & R into both each speaker and then a XLR from one of them to the FOH and that would be a mono line. Would that line be the left channel for mono?

[cphollis]

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

For small gigs where sound guy doesn't want to deal with a stereo keyboard feed, he takes either the left or right channel from one of my QSCs using the XLR out on the back. I mix the keyboards, and have enough stereo stage volume that I'm not really dependent on what the sound guy is doing.

For slightly larger gigs where the sound guy is willing to take a stereo keyboard feed, I can either (a) use both the left and right XLR out from the QSCs, or (b) feed him a stereo output from my mixer's AUX channels. On my small Behringer mixer, these are RCA-style, so there's an adaptor to 1/4" and from there to a stereo DI box.

Hope that helps ...

[mtier0067]

I use two EV zlx12P's out of my mixer. I take my vocals into a di, give that to the house as a seperate xlr and steal the signal before it gets to my mixer. I then put my C2 organ and NStage (both in stereo) and a mix of the band combined with my vocals into the mixer. I take the line outs (L/R) from my mixer into the zlx's and that gives me a stage monitor/amp combo for my voice, the band, and my keys. I then just give the FOH a mono aux mix (the band mix and vocals are not included in that mix its just keys). I think that the stereo image is more of a personal experience thing. Once it gets to the crowd and is part of a band mix, it is largely lost and I therefore usually just give the FOH a mono mix unless there is a nice system in stereo, then I'll steal my keys signals with a JDI duplex before they get to the mixer, give the stereo xlr outputs to FOH. Take the outs from the duplex into my mixer and run everything else the same.

It just depends on the room and the system the house is working with...

[damasp]

Just coming back to this post with some new experiences. I was still unsure about how my E3 piano sounds would work out using two speakers for stereo monitors. One problem I've encountered was when running a mono line to FOH. Stereo monitors sound great, but when I ran a line out of my mixer to another amp (a test to imitate a mono FOH) I noticed the mono sound from the amp was kind of weird, a bit phasey and dull, especially with the AP's. I think I want the audience to hear that sound.

I found that I prefer the sound clarity and sharpness from using the left channel out and hitting the mono button. While this mono sound doesn't compare with the stereo sound, it is much better than the summed to mono of FOH and stereo monitoring. Unless the FOH is in stereo, I doubt I would use the stereo monitor and mono FOH setup. I'm also uncertain about the PAN left and PAN right idea. So I think I'm going to bag the stereo monitor idea for now. However for a situation when we aren't using a house PA, it might be nice to have that stereo sound behind me for my own enjoyment.

My thoughts for now.