Karaoke Forums

What mixers have decent EQs for the individual channels? Seems to me a 15 or 31 band EQ insert for the mic is certainly going to be less expensive than replacing a board for an EQ unless the board is going to have a 15 band EQ per channel.

OK I'm late to the game on getting back to this thread but here's some thoughts based on all I've read. First, get yourself a second single channel EQ for your monitor as Lonman suggested. 90% of your feedback issues will be a result of your monitor not your main speakers as long as the singers are behind the PA. When ringing out (either the PA or your monitor) you want to have your mics at their normal operating levels and as close as possible EQ wise. If you ring out the room using your mic and then boost the EQ at 2K suddenly you're going to find that 2K starts ringing again.

As far as channel EQ's, most boards that are going to make sense size wise for Karaoke are going to have a 3-band EQ with a sweepable mid. The high and low are usually shelving at a specific frequency and the frequency of the mids can be changed (hence the term "sweepable"). Some compact consoles do have a four channel EQ where the low mids and high mids are sweepable, the highs and lows are still a specific frequency. Larger boards or digital boards will often times have a 4 band or larger parametric EQ. The parametric EQ lets you set the Frequency, gain and Q of each channel (in simple terms Q controls how far to either side of the center frequency for that band are affected by that band. A low Q will affect a lot of frequencies, a high Q will tighten it down to a very narrow "notch"). It's pretty rare to find this type of EQ on the channels of a compact console. The larger format digital boards from Yamaha do allow you to add a 31 band EQ to each channel, however now you're talking about a desk that costs $8-10K to start. You could go nuts and buy a 31 band EQ for each mic channel, but for Karaoke and most club applications that would be overkill.

In most circumstances you EQ the feedback out of the monitor and use the channel EQ's on the mics to EQ them for tone. A 1/3 octave (31-band) EQ on the monitors will take care of that and then just use the channel EQ to pull out the offending frequencies that make a singer's voice muddy or "honk-ey". The EQ on your main out is used for addressing specific frequencies that become dominating or deficient as a result of the PA characteristics or room characteristics. As I said before, unless your singers are standing right in front of the PA or your gain structure is out of wack, it's rare that you'll see feedback from the main speakers.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Thanks for all the tips and tricks. I am adding an EQ for the monitor and will notch that at the problem frequencies.

I'll let you know how good/bad I did once I get it done

I didn't realy have a feedback problem. I only got it on the weakest of singers, who I had to turn their mic all the way up just to hear them. I just had to lower the music at that point. This rarely happened.

It was my brother's wife who did this the most. He offered to pay for half of whatever I got,

I bought the Berringer. Tested it. Didn't take long to determine it is a piece of junk. It cuts out frequencies that the music is on, and the music quickly goes bad. I returned it the next day.

I bought the DBX AFS224 the next day. Some of the best money I ever spent. Simply said, it took my sound to a new level, that was already high. Tell me how many of you could do this with your system. In testing this product, I can turn up the volume all the way on all 4 of my mics, and hold them all in the same hand while standing in front of a loud speaker. No Feedback. On occasion you may hear like a .2 second of feedback, the bad boy detects it, eliminates it, and I have it set up to hold that filter for 60 minutes.

When I see that there are many filters kicked in, I like to hit the bypass button every now and again to verify the filters are not affecting the sound of the music. It never does.

This DBX AFS224 and my DBX compressors are worth every penny spent.

Felix the KJ

Hi Felix - I for one can definitely say I can do that with my system but that's after I added a DBX Drive Rack PX in my system. See my post above. This unit has also a AFS (Auto Feedback Suppression). Great improvement in sound with their built in Subharmonic Synthesizer. No more feedback, no more complaints and no more constant adjustment of graphic EQ. It was well worth the money.

The dbx FB eliminator mentioned above is a part of the Driverack system, however if you ONLY need the FBE, the AFS system is much better than an add on to a system that doesn't need everything else.

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

I recently had 15 open mics, seven monitors on four mixes being driven by four channels of XTi 2000 into moderate clipping, and 9kw of PA to get over 300 screaming fans. My "feedback destroyer" was my ears, my EQ knobs, and my graphic equalizers.

I guess you would have to define "all the way up" to know if my 5 vocal mics were indeed "all the way up," but considering the monitor mixes were about 115dB SPL at head-height with higher peaks on the lead vocal, and at one point the lead singer stepped out onto the subwoofers and climbed onto the PA cabinets with his open microphone, and then proceeded to leap into the crowd and sing from there, and no feedback was heard, I would say my gig was pretty challenging compared to karaoke, and even my inexperienced ear is a better tool than automated bullcrap.

I am glad you like the AFS tool, but it is no substitute for practicing and teaching yourself how to do it.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

The Driverack has the dbx AFS FB eliminator built in. For a system that doesn't need all of the DR properties, the AFS is a great buy by itself. However a good system doesn't need more than a good 31 band eq on the mains/monitors to sound great.

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

Actually Felix, any deck that I work on that has wedges and sidefills, I can walk up to any one of them with everything at full concert level, hold the mic 4-5 inches from the cabinet and not a peep. My only tools are the 31-band EQ's on each monitor channel. Even on my Karaoke rig (where I only have a 4 band parametric on the monitor), I can point the mics right at the monitor the same way and not a sound. That's how it should be and it doesn't take a special feedback destroyer to do it. Quite honestly, in live sound reinforcement, the ability to do this is what makes for a good monitor engineer.

As far as in front of the PA, proper gain structure and EQ'ing again will make all the difference in the world. Try having an artist stand on the sub low cabinets in front of a full X-Array stack cranking at full concert levels. Not a squeak or squeal, just the way it should be. Again my Karaoke rig is no different. I used to have a regular who would stand with his ear in front of the 15" on one of the cabinets rather than use the monitor. Properly trimmed and EQ'ed = no feedback even in that situation.

That said, I'm glad you've found what works for you and gets you to the same end. It really doesn't matter what tools you use to do the job as long as the job gets done. Feedback is a show and equipment killer, so having a plan to identify and eliminate it is key. Good on you!!!

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Hi Brian:
Of course you can do it also. Your product is the big brother to my bad boy. It has all the features of mine, with all the extra cool stuff. That is why it cost more. Anybody with a Driverack has the AFS224 pretty much built in. I do love my DBX products.

Felix the KJ

Can anyone tell me their signal chain or is this some sort of trade secret?

Does anyone EQ the mics as an insert? Seems that would keep the music cleaner.

I use to try to help out "low talkers" like this by doing the same thing, but it just makes feedback issues worse. Some will even sing QUIETER the more you turn it up. I finally just gave up & stopped. If someone is going whisper or hold the mic at arms length, then I just let them not be heard. It's amazing how fast they improve their technique IF they truly WANT to be heard. Some it seems, really don't want to be heard for whatever reason.

I thought I covered this already. On my Karaoke rig, no. Total overkill when you have a 3 or 4 band EQ on the desk. Individual channels should be EQ'ed for tone. EQ the outputs (aux sends for monitors, main outs for PA) to deal with feedback and room characteristics.

On large concert rigs, yes we do sometimes hang a 31 Band off the insert of one or multiple vocal channels. This is only done as before though, for control of the vocalists tone, not for purposes of managing feedback. In this case, the EQ comes before anything else in the chain (usually a compressor and maybe an Antares unit for the big big shows). Remember that when you adjust the EQ, it impacts the overall signal level of that channel.

Hope that's the information you're looking for.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

A good trick I learned is to split my vocal channels into "house" and "monitor" channel strips using cheap Y cables, these are $10 each and give me separate EQ and allow me to insert my compressors on the house channel without compressing the monitors: http://www.audiopile.net/products/Mic_I ... heet.shtml

This is how I do vocals for bands when I do not have a separate monitor console, and the advantages of it are:
* more compression without affecting gain-before-feedback
* EQ cuts on console monitor strips to increase GBF without affecting house mix

This is one of the coolest tricks I learned and the advantage for karaoke is "screamers" can hear all their BS in the monitor wedges, while the compressors happily stomp on that crap in the PA mix. However, be aware that your wedges may get stupid loud.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

Yes it is Rip. Thanks!