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Mackie C300z

Taken from their web page.

A good floor monitor plays loudly without generating feedback through vocal microphones. A poor floor monitor, on the other hand, will generate feedback just about the time you turn it up to a useable level. Floor monitor feedback is often caused by uneven frequency response and dispersion; some frequencies arrive at the microphone much louder than others. These "spikes" are what trigger feedback as the floor monitor volume is increased. The C300z has incredibly smooth, spike-free response and dispersion over a wide range of treble frequencies. So you can increase its volume without boosting those nasty, feedback-inducing spikes. Without extensive tuning, no passive speaker or specialized floor wedge in this class can even come close.

Could that be the problem with my Peavey monitor ?

Personally I have no reason to believe that Mackie has some how discovered the secret to the mythical "feedback free" floor wedge.
Any device that recreates sound also has the potential to generate feedback. Feedback is a huge topic and there are already numerous articles all over the net discussing causes and remedies. The easiest explanation and where I am going to leave it is that "feedback" is caused when a signal is fed back to it's point of origin, be it from a Mackie monitor or a Peavey monitor or any other make. Of course all monitors have their own characteristics with certain frequency peaks, but that's why you have an EQ isn't it?
Room acoustics and speaker placement play a just as big of role as anything else in the phenomenon known as feedback. Some useful tools to fight feedback are quality vocal Mic's with good "off axis rejection" , thirty-one band EQs, Speaker placement, Monitor placement, Mic placement and a good understanding of how feedback occurs and what frequencies are often the culprit.
Since the beginning of sound reinforcement there has always been a battle between compromising sound quality to eliminate feedback. In my opinion some monitors tend to perform better than others but in the 300 to 500 dollar range they are all pretty much equal. I think with a little experimentation you will be able to make your Peavey monitor behave itself. (depending on which model you have).

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Quickness of mind will deceive the eye

Mackie has a funny way of taking typical concepts and turning them into marketing ploys as if it's something specific to their design. What Mackie describes as advantages of their C300z series is what you'd be looking for from any good monitor wedge. It's definitely not something specific to their design although the better the design of a speaker cabinet the better it will perform. And I do have to say that since Mackie and EAW have joined forces, the quality of the speaker and cabinet designs has definitely improved (unfortunately the made in China amplifiers on their active units have gone the other direction).

As London said, using an EQ you should be able to get any floor wedge to perform without feedback. Monitor engineers get paid a lot of money to do exactly that. They are usually the masters at hearing feedback and knowing exactly what frequency it is, it comes from experience. What you need to do with your Peavey (as should be done with any monitor) is ring it out in a non-gig setting first. A well rung out monitor should not feed back even when you point the mic directly at it from a reasonable distance (4-6 feet in many cases). Now again as London said, the dynamics of the room (and in some cases even the dress of your singer) can affect the monitor as well, but getting a general baseline for your monitor will help immensely.

Here's a pretty good description of ringing out monitors that I found on the web: http://faculty.spokanefalls.edu/InetSha ... %20FOH.doc

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DJ Tony
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