Karaoke Forums

Hello again,

I registered to your site a little over a month ago explaining the problems I was having with my husbands system and trying to run it after his passing. Since then my sound is worse than ever! One of my husbands friends had covered for me one night and that's all she wrote! I may not know alot about adjusting sounds for each component, but I have been working with his system long enough to notice that someone was trying to play "pro kj and audio technician" while I was gone. I noticed certain chords were plug into different places and some weren't even there at all! I've had some of my husbands fellow kj friends stop by to check it out for me, one after the other. It seems my husband had his rigged in way that no one else can figure out either and that's why everyone loved the way he made them sound. The last ones to check it out was the sound guy from a local band, which another thing I found out is setting up a system for a band is different than setting up for karaoke. So here is what I think I need to do. If you have any ideas on how I can set it up in a non-complicated way and sound good that would be great! I have a list of all of his equipment : Carvin PA1200, Audio Centron 1600 Amp, 2) Audio Centron CE-34 speakers, Audio Centron CM-15H monitor, VoCo Pro MK II mics and runs all of his music out of his computer. Not sure if you can help me but I sure hope so. I'm tired of all of these other people screwing it up more than before. I want more than anything to learn and do this in memory of my husband but it's stressing me out. So please, if you can, I would truly appreciate and help or advice you can give. Thank you so much!
P.S. If it would help I can take a pic of his system and send it[/b]

Looking at your listed gear, it should have been straight forward. Were you having problem with how the music play or the vocal or both?

check if your speakers are all in phase...

OK, well I'll do the best I can to describe this in a way that should be easily understood. The mixer has 3 amplifiers on-board but I'm guessing he was using the AC RMA-1600 amplifier to drive the CE-34's. So here's how you'll do it. Connect the two XLR (3-pin connections) on the front of the Carvin mixer labeled "Left" and "Right" to the Left and Right inputs on the amplifier. Connect your monitor to one of the two 1/4" (headphone style) jacks on the rear of the Carvin marked Amp 3/Monitor. Connect your microphones to the Mic input channels on the front of the Carvin mixer (labeled 1-12). For these channels make sure the GAIN button is pushed in. Connect the computer to the Line inputs on two of the channels (one for Left and one for Right). For these channels, make sure the GAIN button is sticking out. For the channel that will have the left signal for the computer, turn it's PAN knob all the way to the left. For the Right channel turn the PAN knob all the way to the right. For all other channels set the PAN knob to the vertical position.

Now go through all your channels and set the HI, MID, LOW and EFF knobs to the vertical position. Turn the MON and LEVEL knobs all the way to the left ("0"). Turn the MAIN 1/2, MONITOR 3, RETURN and TAPE IN Knobs on the right side of the Carvin unit all the way to the left. Make sure the EQUALIZER button is sticking out for LEFT-RIGHT operation. Also turn the EFF TO MONITOR, EFFECT 1, and EFFECT 2 knobs all the way to the left ("0"). Make sure all the channels on both EQ 1 and EQ2 (upper right corner of the mixer's front panel) are set in the middle (0) position. Now you've got everything connected and baselined ready to roll.

From here you'll set your levels which I'll cover in a subsequent post.

EDIT: Oops, realized I forgot one very important connection. That would be connecting the two CE-34's to the Left and Right outputs on the Amplifier. Be sure to do that before you turn on the amplifier.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

OK now that you're ready to set the levels, things get a little more tricky here because you're mixer has no real control or metering for the input level. The easiest way to start is to turn on your mixer, then turn on the power amp and if it has input sensitivity knobs, turn them up all the way. Now on the mixer, turn the MAIN1/2 and MONITOR 3 controls to the vertical position ("5"). Now go to each channel that you have a mic or the computer plugged into and one by one turn up first the MONITOR knob and then the LEVEL knob until the volume of that input reaches the level you're happy with. Once you've done this, try playing some music and singing along and you can tweak the level of each mic to mix with the music properly.

That should get you started. Now you can go through and EQ each channel (Using the HI, MID, LOW controls), EQ the house (Using the two graphic EQ's in the upper right corner) and add effects. I won't go into that discussion now as you're issue indicates some very basic problems which hopefully this pair of postings will help you get settled first.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Thank you so much for the detailed instructions! Hopefully I can follow them right. I am getting ready to go to the club now and set it up. Wish me luck and I'll keep you posted. Thanks again.

Good luck, stay in touch and let us know how it goes. If you can get the basic connections going on your rig then we can talk about getting you going with EQ and Effects settings. BTW, just out of curiosity, where are you located?

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

That would be awesome! Funny how all of my husbands fellow kj friends have no clue as to how to help with my system, and here I get the best information from someone who hasn't even looked at it! Hmmmmm.....you think maybe they're doing it on purpose to get rid of the competition or worse yet hoping I will fail so they can snake their way in? I would hate to think that especially with what I've been going through already, but it is a "dog eat dog world" as they say. I live in a very small town Ceres Ca. We are the only club out of 6 that has karaoke, but just a couple of miles down the road is the city of Modesto and that is where my competition comes from. There are at least 6 or 7 clubs there that have karaoke. The club where I work opens at 2pm so I'm going to go there in a few and set this thing up I'll let you know what happens.

letitrip beat me to first reply, but you can also connect the computer to the TAPE IN connections and use the TAPE IN volume knob to control the music level. That way the balance between the left and right channels taken care of automatically.

I use the same unit without the extra power amp and it's a very nice mobile system with plenty 'o swat.

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Dave's not here.

oops! sorry, didn't mean to re-post

I was hoping you posted about getting the system sound right Hope you did