Karaoke Forums

In case anyone is curious, here is what the Behringer FBQ2496 "feedback destroyer" looks like after about an hour of playing music into it. There are no mics or speakers, just canned music from iTunes, so there isn't any feedback

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I never cared for the results. It started pulling frequencies that would affect other frequencies, thus pulling out those frequencies & by an hour in, the sound was pretty lacking.
I just used it as a parametric EQ & that actually made a difference.

For FB eliminators I prefer the Sabine (top choice) or dbx.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I agree. I bought it for the B-rig so it can be used by people who don't really know how to fight feedback with EQ. I was surprised at how fast it accumulated a lot of totally pointless 1/60th cuts, and yet when I clip its A/D converter it does not do do anything crazy, just produces digital clip noise.

I didn't realize this before I bought it, but the FBQ2496 also has a setting for erasing filters after so many minutes. That might possibly keep it from trashing the signal too badly? (EDIT: this seems to help when playing music. No clue about live yet. Will find out soon enough. And I think I have a live recording of a The Who concert with a few loud feedback squeals in it that I might play through it just for giggles. I guess they left it in the recording to give it that concert sound!)

Also maybe worth mentioning, I got two of those Monster Power Pro 3500s, you can see one in the picture. The other one was dead-on-arrival. Not encouraging!

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

If the ffedback is compressed for album or cd, chances are the Behringer won't pick it up - but then again......

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

The recording is about 40 years old, back when music still had dynamic range. So I am interested to see what it does. I didn't think the FBQ would perceive anything as feedback from modern recordings played from my laptop, but as you can see in the picture, it had created like 9 notch filters after an hour of music playback into it. This is why people say "stay away from feedback destroyers."

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Yep. It will take out 'real' frequencies if they get over a certain threshold - doesn't even have to be feedback - as you have already proven.
A good 31 band eq will do much more good over a 'feedback destroyer' in 99% of situations.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I think it depends on the operator and situation.

I was filling in for the house tech at a club with about 6 "urban DJs" wandering around with wireless mics, playing loud enough to be heard down the block, and constantly asking for more volume. I was glad there was a Feedback Destroyer in the signal chain when they started dancing in front of the FoH with their mics flailing about.

It did keep inserting unnecessary cuts in the 40 - 60Hz space, presumably due to huge bass peaks in their music. If left alone, the Feedback Destroyer would have made those cuts progressively wider and deeper, and eventually the DJs and audience would have been able to hear the difference. But since I kept resetting it every time the filters got full, this did not happen. I just pushed reset about every 5 minutes.

I have let this FBQ2496 run for about 10 hours now on the setting that clears notch filters as they become older than 5 minutes. So far I have not seen more than 3 appear at any one time, and whenever I have checked what they actually were, they have been 1/60th octave cuts. So this doesn't seem too bad. I wonder what it will do with real vocalists and real feedback though. I'll find out soon!

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I thought I would post an update since I've been using the FBQ2496 on monitors for a month or so now. I am very happy with it. Its computerized guessing is actually pretty decent so far, and I am typically under-driving it with peaks around -24dBFS as I have a lot of head-room on the wedges.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ