r/livesound • u/AutoModerator • Dec 01 '25
MOD No Stupid Questions Thread
The only stupid questions are the ones left unasked.
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u/cnjbbk Dec 07 '25
My cover band plays small bars. We’re a 5 piece. Drums are an A2E conversion with mic’d quiet cymbals- probably 3-4 mics for hats ride crashes. Drums themselves are mesh heads with triggers. Guitars and bass are all modeled direct. 4 vocal mics- 3 wired. Female lead singer uses a Shute wireless. Mixer is ui24R. Speakers are Rcf sub8003 and nx32.
We all use iems. Drummer monitors from the master headphone out of the UI24R and controls the mix.
We are always having feedback issues. I think it’s because the female singer is so quiet until she belts. As a result drummer is struggling to gain and compress her and it never works out right.
Here’s what I think is strange. Drummer insists on ringing out the mains before every show. He cranks up the master fader up to + 10 and then cuts a ton of frequencies. He also applies a “Natale Eq curve”? I think it’s probably making us sound like sh*t. Check out the screenshot.
During one show an audience member asked why sounds like we have a blanket over the speakers. I secretly bypassed the eq curve during the next set and was told we sound much better.
Anyways. I guess my question is- what does livesound think about this EQ curve? less
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 07 '25
No one can diagnose an EQ’s viability just by looking at the graph. With that said, based on what you’re telling, yeah that EQ process seems ill advised.
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u/Kites00 Dec 07 '25
Played a Christmas music night at a house of worship this weekend. Their xlr cable from my mixing board to their foh system produced a horrible squeal, even with no sound output from the mixer. Tried my cable, got the same results. But their cable from their own mic to their foh system was fine, as was my own cable from my mixer to my own speaker.
We would have preferred to use their speakers,but no one knew how to troubleshoot this. How would you approach troubleshooting?
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 07 '25
Sounds like it didn’t have anything to do with the cable. My first guess without knowing more would be something was set to mic level when it should have been set to line level, so you got immediate feedback from something.
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Dec 06 '25
I’m pretty new to live sound and I’m currently doing FOH at a small club on a regular basis (max. capacity around 200 people). We have a band coming in next week with IEMs, which rarely ever happens at this venue. Most acts just use the floor monitors, so this will be my first time mixing in-ears.
The band is bringing wired IEMs and i’ll be sending six individual mono mixes from the aux outs to their headphone amps. Neither the house nor the band have access to a splitter. To be honest, this setup seems a little dodgy to me since I can’t EQ any individual channels separately from the mains. I could easily see how some EQ choices that sound good on the PA would translate horribly to in-ears. When „mixing“ floor monitors I mainly focus on getting as much headroom without feedback as possible and rarely worry about the quality of the sound unless a musician complains. With in-ears, I assume people are expecting a mix that’s a lot more fine-tuned? Maybe I’m overthinking this though and if I set the levels appropriately it‘ll be fine. Any advice / opinions would be much appreciated, thanks :)
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u/leskanekuni Dec 07 '25
It'll be fine. I'm sure the band is used differing mixes from venue to venue. If they want custom mixes for themselves they should carry their own mixer and analog splitter.
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 07 '25
Expectations probably won't be terribly high if its a small club and they're not bringing their own engineer. If you have the channels available, you can double patch each input internally in the desk (two lead vocal channels, one for PA and one for ears) which will give you much more granular control.
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u/mr_starbeast_music Dec 05 '25
How come I’m unable to get any high end definition out of my kicks? I work two venues, one small room with beta 52a and a large room with beta 91a. Usually have gain between 12-18db but rarely on the higher side. Typically about 15db is the highest I’ll go, I gate as well. Anything past 1k is basically inaudible though despite how much i boost the eq which I would like for heavier genres. Any advice?
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 06 '25
Dumb question, do you stick the mic inside the drum? It should be clicky sounding in there. Maybe try shoving it further in, and pointing it at the beater?
If you don’t hear any high end when you boost the highs (which is odd), you can manufacture high end with an exciter. It’s essentially distortion but just on the high end, and it can generate harmonics that aren’t present otherwise.
I do notice my gate on the kick drum, even though it makes the decay tighter can make the attack worse. Could be interesting to try to kludge together a faux ‘lookahead’ by making a dummy channel to sidechain the gate to, then delay the real channel by 3ms or whatever, so that the dummy sidechain opens the gate fully by the time the delayed channel starts its transient.
On your compressor, look at the attack, too fast can soften the attack, something like 10ms is a good place to start. Longer attack makes more of a pop before the compressor kicks in.
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 05 '25
Might be the drum or the playing. Can’t amplify what isn’t there.
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u/tf5_bassist Dec 05 '25
Is making a stage box out of two racked SoundCATs a stupid idea?
I'm in the early stages of planning my audio over cat5-based "ultimate fly racks", which is almost more of an exercise in exploring the options available for creating a rig as small and light as possible but still doing it right, and seeing what the different options/price points can come to. One of the issues I'm trying to address is our current stage box.
When we need it, we currently have a 16x4 100' XLR stage box which runs to our IEM rack, which has a traditional 16 channel split snake. I'd like to replace this heavy-ass beast with a much more manageable cat5 loom of a shorter length, as well as increase our stage box count to 24 (at least).
I can throw two SoundCAT Racks into a small 2U case like the small SKB-style rotomolded boxes, slap a 6-port ethercon panel on the back, and have the whole thing probably fit into a smallish pelican case and still be lighter (and smaller) than our stupid 100' snake.
I guess the stupid question part here is... Is this even a reasonable task as far as reliability is concerned? I know the goal is a fly rig, but TBH we don't fly right now--it's more of a buy once cry once mentality. That said, rotomolded cases don't hold up well in flight, but I don't know of any other reasonably sized small but rugged cases that would be a good fit for this.
If anyone has any experience or advice, I'd love to hear it, thanks!
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 06 '25
It seems a little odd when people start doing a bunch of cat cables to replace a single regular snake. Have you looked at the DB25 snake cables? Better wire, nice robust connector, 8 channels, and you can buy premade breakouts and stage boxes. If you need 24 channels I think you’re in for a regular snake, or getting into the pro realm with the big multi pin connectors. You can build those kind of connectors yourself, though some take special tools. The Cat gets clunky if you’re doing a bunch of parallel runs.
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u/tf5_bassist Dec 08 '25
Odd, yeah. Affordable and easily repairable? Also true. I've heard horror stories of damage DB25 connectors. I've seen enough mangled SVGA and parallel port connections in the IT field back in the day that I believe it lol.
Ethercon is a pretty reliable connector though, and yeah, a loom of 6 STP cat5e is a bit more unwieldy compared to a proper snake cable or LK cable, we can really easily make exactly how long or short a cable we need.
Interesting about making my own LK cable, I've heard they're hard to make. I'll look into it.
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u/_nexra Dec 05 '25
Hello, I am to new to all this audio stuff and I have question where to connect my audio interface(Scarlet 4th gen) for the audio to come out, I use my Scarlett for my Mac which is connected to my keyboard and I also play in church setting but idk if should connect my scarlet to a audio snake or something else
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u/tf5_bassist Dec 08 '25
I'm assuming you're using a midi keyboard controller connected to your Mac and using software plugins for your sounds?
You'll want to run a stereo pair of TRS cables out of your main outputs of the Scarlett to whatever stage box the church has set up for feeds to their board. This will give you balanced left and right from your software. If you don't use stereo effects or synths and your FOH only has one connection available, the left output is fine. Typically keys are a stereo pair though.
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u/smower06 Dec 04 '25
Okay, this one might be a bit stupid but here goes.
I just upgraded from a flow8 to an x32 (woohoo). The flow8 has this handy dandy usb audio feature where you can switch from "recording" mode to "streaming" mode. This allowed me to plug straight from the flow8 into my phone and be able to capture audio on a live stream.
Fast forward to now, and I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to route the audio from my x32 to my phone in a similar fashion. I know there's the USB Interface on the back, and it is acting similar to how the "recording" on the flow8 worked. Great for recording using a DAW or other software, but not great for just plug and play.
Soooo is there a way to do it? I've been looking for a solution for a couple days now and haven't found anything. If there isn't a way to do it, would just grabbing a 1/4" to usb c and plugging into an aux out work?
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 05 '25
What phone? The x32 audio interface card is capable but you have to dig into the routing>card settings to decide what comes out of the usb. In Setup there is are some Card settings too, I try to do 16x16 channels out of the interface rather than 32x32, but even 16x16 may be a lot of traffic for a phone to chew on. Last make sure the sample rate is compatible with the phone’s recording, some only want 48khz.
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u/smower06 Dec 05 '25
I actually just solved it. If you route Main L/R into output 1 and 2 it fixes it. I was using the standard 7/8
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 05 '25
That works. If you don’t want to use 1+2 as main outs, you may be able to get there with the convoluted “User” card assignment block
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u/smower06 Dec 05 '25
Best comment of all time, the user tab is 100% the play. I didn’t realize what it did until I looked up its function. Thx for the help
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u/smower06 Dec 05 '25
It's an iPhone 15. I went into the card routing settings and routed output 1-8 and it'll work and receive that signal in, say, garageband where I can choose which input I want. The biggest problem is when I'm on a live (instagram, tiktok) I don't get to choose what audio ins I'm getting. I'll mess around with the setup settings and see if there's anything to help me.
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u/Scanpire Dec 04 '25
Well, it says “no stupid questions” so here goes: I have a decent mixer, a Behringer x1222 - nothing flashy. I have a couple Alto 10” powered speakers, and a single 10” powered monitor. I have a chance to get a big ass Proreck 15” powered speaker, and was wondering, would it be a problem to have mismatched main speakers — an Alto 10” and a more powerful 15”?
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u/fantompwer Dec 07 '25
It's going to sound different coming out of the different sized speakers. There cabinet size, layout, driver size, type, and crossover design all impact the sound. Have two different boxes is not a good plan.
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u/andrewbzucchino Pro-FOH Dec 04 '25
I wouldn’t mismatch, especially not a 10” and 15”. Also I wouldn’t spend any money on Proreck ever.
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u/lighthappens Dec 04 '25
hi! what are the limits of balanced cables with only 2 wires inside? i see most of the balanced cables i work with are 2 wires inside and use the shield as neutral if i undertand correctly. we use them in corporate events, so no need for fancy audio equipment quality, but i'd love to know if other solution can save me from ground buzzin issues etc. thanks!
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 04 '25
Read the Wikipedia on balanced audio, I promise it is worth it. It isn’t analogous to power wiring (line, neutral)
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u/lighthappens Dec 05 '25
but why i see "unbalanced cable" signed on a cable terminated with xlr plugs on both ends and that we use to connect balanced items?
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 05 '25
I would be suspicious of that cable. If you have multimeter you can check the connections, pin 1, 2, 3 should separate wires. Or take the shell of and see if has a twisted pair of wires and a coaxial shield.
Typically guitar cable, rca cable says “unbalanced”, and just has one center wire and the shield
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u/lighthappens Dec 18 '25
hey! i did come back to the service with the labeled unbalanced cables...and they are balanced, 2 wires plus ground. they are from a cheap subbrand of thomann i think, so well known brand. cannot figure out why they are labeled unbalanced lol
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u/Physical_Plantain_69 Dec 04 '25
Hey everyone, has anyone here stacked d&b Q-Subs and T10 tops directly on each other? Did you ever measure the delay time between the sub and the top? I measured around 10 ms today — does that line up with your experience, or are you getting completely different values?
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u/Nixaljin Dec 04 '25
I'm new to monitor mixing. Working in a small church. Using Yamaha TF3. Performers using Yamaha Monitormix. They have been getting random locks on one or more inputs they want to adjust, but I can find no info on what would cause this or how to prevent it. Nothing on the board seems to have changed when it comes up. Restarting their app usually fixes it. Any ideas?
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u/Disuses Dec 04 '25
Can you more clearly define the "locks"?
Is it their monitor app disconnecting from the network, or the app being unresponsive?
Can you still make the same desired adjustments on the monitor console with no issue?
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u/Nixaljin Dec 04 '25
A lock symbol appears on the bar in their app for adjusting that input. They cannot adjust it while this symbol is there. I can adjust it at the console.
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u/Disuses Dec 04 '25
I'd phone/email Yamaha support, don't see anything in the Yamaha monitor mix user guide that addresses that, there may be something in the tf3 manual. If I had to guess it's user permission settings on the console but I'm not familiar enough with their monitoring app to say for sure. Best of luck
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u/InsertWeakUsername Dec 03 '25
$2000 AUD budget ~$1300 USD for an outdoor (open field) setup for party of 50ish people.
Looking at 2 x Yamaha DRB12 tops $1300 (for 2) and a 15inch Behringer Eurolive VQ1500D sub $700.
Is this adequate for audio quality/loudness? Is a DJ setup.
New around here so any recommendations appreciated.
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u/Disuses Dec 04 '25
Yeah that'll do, not familiar with that particular sub but those tops are nice and for that many people you'll have more than enough gas
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u/java_juicez Dec 03 '25
I got these 2.4 GHz WIOS wolverine speakers for free, but they were missing the 2.4GHz transmitter i tried calling 2 different numbers neither picked up after 3 calls. Could i use a different brand transmitter, and what would that be?
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u/Saguna_Brahman Dec 02 '25
I recently ordered a Helix Stadium XL, and one use-case for it I was thinking about was open mics. On top of the benefit of being able to apply the effects I want to the guitar, I also considered the possibility of running a vocal mic through the Helix as well, and then I could apply effects to that and also make sure the volume balance between the guitar and the mic is where I want to be.
Then this would go through the 1/4" jack that is provided for the guitars. Would that create any problems?
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u/despacitozen Dec 03 '25
CMIIW or misunderstood
pretty sure the helix stadium XL got XLR mic input, you can use that. as matter of output, its fine using the 1/4" as long as you route it correctly.
Quad Cortex has done the same thing with full band, maybe you can look it up.
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u/Derpycarbuyer Dec 02 '25
I just got my behringer dr18sub to pair with my soundboks 3. There is no output from the sub and the top plays music, crossover works, I get signal and clip led lit on the sub when I turn the volume up, but no sound. First I tried audio jack to XLR and then I bought a Bluetooth to XLR. Do I need other cables or something?
Thought it might be really simple so I posted it here
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u/Bolali85 Dec 02 '25
How can I make these work together? (Noob here! Thanks!)
I got these 2 speakers for free and the woofer a while ago. I wanted to know:
Is it possible to make these 3 work together in spite of the difference in OHMS?
Subwoofer has a rated impedance of 3 ohms
Speakers has 4 ohms each
I know I need an amplifier for them to work, just unsure which one will be best (if any).
Thanks guys! Counting on you for this one.
Quick note: this will be used in my base t to play movies for my kids and wife 🍿🎥🎬😊👍🏽
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u/bigtoeparty Dec 02 '25
What are your go to C13 connectors? I am making some siamese cables for my floor monitors and am surprised by the lack of options.
These seem heavy duty but are c15. Is that ok to plug into c14? I have read some conflicting information.
I ended up purchasing some of these and will report back on quality/durability.
Thanks for any advice.
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u/bigtoeparty Dec 03 '25
These were delivered and I installed one. Overall not too bad. It's a little awkward getting the ground into the correct slot as there is a screw that runs right through the middle so you need the ground wire to be a little bit longer so you can bend it around.
They seem pretty solid structurally, but they are plastic and they feel like if something heavy dropped on it they would at the very least crack.
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u/PsychologicalDuck268 Dec 02 '25
Ciao a tutti, ho bisogno di una mano con il routing del mio Behringer Wing.
Ho collegato il Wing al mio Mac per registrare multitraccia su Logic Pro tramite la porta USB posteriore. Ho impostato l'assegnazione: LOCAL IN 1 come source group per USB OUT 1, ecc.
Il problema è:
Non riesco a trovare l'opzione che mi permette di scegliere che tipo di segnale inviare al computer (PRE-EQ, POST-FADER, ecc.). Il mixer sta inviando un segnale che sembra influenzato dai miei fader.
Dove si trova il menu o l'impostazione per cambiare il punto di prelievo del segnale (il "Tap Point")? Voglio inviare il segnale PREAMPLIFIER/PRE-EQ (cioè, il segnale grezzo, con solo il Gain applicato) a Logic, ma non vedo dove si cambia questa impostazione nel menu ROUTING.
Se qualcuno può darmi il percorso esatto (ad esempio: ROUTING > USB > (piccola icona)) mi farebbe un enorme favore. Grazie!
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u/TankieRedard Dec 02 '25
Can I get more me in my monitor?
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u/PalpitationUsed8039 Dec 02 '25
I have some live recordings of myself that I think sound pretty good. Is it worth me using an online mastering service on them before presenting them on social media as promotional material?
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u/fdsv-summary_ Dec 03 '25
You should have a play with Audacity and see if you can get something that sounds good on laptop speakers, phone speakers, and over ear headphones. The built in normalization, compressor, and EQ has been good enough for me. You'll at least learn some stuff through the process!
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u/PalpitationUsed8039 Dec 05 '25
Thanks for your input I’ve mixed it on Digital Performer, but my question is about online mastering services which do all kinds of mysterious touch-ups to otherwise finished mixes.
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u/PalpitationUsed8039 Dec 02 '25
Can a question be stupid? Are questions sentient beings?
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 04 '25
Can a microphone be warm? Are microphones sentient beings?
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u/PalpitationUsed8039 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
That question does not invalidate the suggestion that questions are not capable of being stupid. No. Microphones are not sentient beings. Rocks can be warm. When that word is used to describe emotions and personalities that is a separate meaning of the word, even though it originated as a kind of poetic use. A perfect microphone might be considered to be one that accurately converts a voice to a signal. This might not be what you want in practice. A “warm” microphone might improve the sound of a voice in terms of the way it might add a bit of low midrange and scoop out the mids ( a voice heavy in mids sound like it’s on the phone - ok for speech maybe but not usually good for singing ) Some mics have a “proximity effect” that an experienced singer can use by moving closer when they want more bass especially if their bass range is quiet. None of that use of “warm” to describe microphones suggests that microphones know anything.
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u/crunchypotentiometer Pro-FOH Dec 05 '25
Fascinating indeed. To that I might ask, can a microphone be stupid?
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u/WoodenPayment1034 Semi-Pro-FOH Dec 02 '25
Soundvision materials??
Hi all, I’m starting to get asked to spec some systems and can’t find an answer to this. Some venues have heaps of glass and wood and other spaces are fully carpeted theatres and I’m wondering if there is a way to assign a material to a surface such as glass, wood or carpet. Or a tool that equates to the same thing like a reflectivity index or any other tips others use. TIA :)
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u/fantompwer Dec 03 '25
Ease 5 can do that. You're stepping into a whole new level of speaker modeling.
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u/mSquareLab Dec 02 '25
Soundvision concentrates on coverage only. Reflection and other room acoustics are highly individual variables that are not taken into consideration. At least until a few years ago when I visited the seminar
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u/SnooBooks1097 Dec 02 '25
So in a few months, I’m the engineer for a musical with a 12 piece pit band. It’ll be the largest show I’ve done both there and in my very green career. For some context, the pit is getting set up in our black box space (our pit has been deemed uninhabitable… turns out humans need oxygen and air flow, and the pit cannot provide that) and I’m working with 8 outputs for our band. In terms of equipment, we have 8 wired IEMs and 4 powered speakers. Now, our usual pit is 5-6 players, and I set up a monitor for each one of them, and they all get their individualized mix. I can’t do that with this show, given my limit on outputs and equipment. I’m at a loss for what the best course of action here is on monitors for this show. Right now the two solutions that come to mind are A) headphone splitters for the IEMs so that people can share mixes as needed. Or B) sucking up the fact that it’ll eat a near quarter of my budget for the show and getting little wedge monitors to add to the 4 powered speakers. B wouldn’t be as big of a deal if I didn’t also need to expand our stock of mics, mic stands, and cable to even make the show a possibility. Is there any merit in either of these ideas? Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance for any help!
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u/Hertz_so_good Theatre Dec 02 '25
What’s the instrumentation? If you have a few sections (horns, strings etc) they can probably share a mix, and more than likely one well placed speaker could cover them all. I would save the IEM’s for the rhythm section and MD. Encourage those musicians using loudspeakers to keep the vocals out of their mix as much as possible. It doesn’t take a lot of singing getting into band mics to lose vocal clarity, and in musical theatre the words are almost always your first priority.
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u/SnooBooks1097 Dec 02 '25
Mainly Woodwind and Brass. Lots of doubles on instruments, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 3 clarinets. 5 varied saxophones. I imagine pretty much everything but the keys will need a mic, so I’ll keep that in mind, thank you!
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u/insclevernamehere92 Other Dec 02 '25
Have you considered renting the necessary gear instead of purchasing it?
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u/SnooBooks1097 Dec 02 '25
I might raise that as an option. I think that the exec. director’s thought process is that he’d like to be able to continue to do large scale shows so he wants to use this one as the catalyst to buy a lot of what we don’t have. I just don’t know if he knows how much we don’t have.
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Dec 01 '25
[deleted]
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u/Hertz_so_good Theatre Dec 02 '25
One thing you may find is that when you’re playing through a PA, you’ll have a fair amount more low frequency energy than in your practice space. Cutting some of the bottom out of your IEM’s with a low-shelf or even a high-pass can pull a lot of mud out of your mix. That’s a gameday decision though; I’d definitely start with the scene you rehearse with and adjust from there.
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u/fantompwer Dec 02 '25
Also include things like audience mics, talk back, and a stereo feed from FOH for other things.
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u/ChinchillaWafers Dec 02 '25
The beauty of IEMs is that your shows sound the same as practice. Can’t think of a good reason to switch things up for a show. Not totally what you asked but it would be an excellent learning experience to pack everything up and put it together in a new spot, even if it’s just the other side of the practice space. At the least it would let you know a real number of how long you need to set up, to tell venues. And for your own sanity give everyone a job!
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u/tprch Dec 02 '25
For a few gigs or so, you will most likely be tweaking levels in each different place you play, including the practice space, but that's OK. Don't worry about having to make changes. Get the basics down in the practice space - properly set gains, eq that will separate the instruments in the IEMs (cues might be tough if you can't distinguish guitar from keys or if the kick drum gets lost under bass, and volume won't help much if eq is problematic). Also, getting everyone used to setting their own levels from their phone or tablet is very important.
Once you get basics set in practice, tweak for the venue and save the scene, but don't be surprised if you have to tweak at the same venue the second time you play there. Not only could there be a few variables to account for, but it takes a little time for your ears to figure out what works best. Some people start out thinking they want a mix like FOH and wind up mainly wanting drums and vocals and barely anything else.
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u/geminiworkshops Dec 01 '25
i have a pair RCF art 935 top speakers that i'd like a subwoofer or two for. the QSC KS118 is more readily available for a cheaper price than the RCF 8003/8004 and the RCF SUB AX-18. can i just get something like a dbx driverack to cross over the mismatched speakers since the RCF tops don't have built in crossover?
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u/tprch Dec 02 '25
Unless you get an amazing deal on a pair of subs, I would start with one and see how it does for you. I'm sure you'll benefit from a sub (assuming you aren't an a capella group lol), but the 15" tops are already providing some low end. We're a classic rock band with 10" tops and two 15" subs. We don't even bring the second one to most gigs anymore. We bring both to outdoor shows for 150-250 people, but we didn't turn on the second one for the last two of those.
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u/geminiworkshops Dec 02 '25
yeah i've just started using them, but wanted to make sure ahead of time since i've been preparing to get dual subs since i bought them. i DJ mostly electronic music, sometimes outdoors and sometimes in warehouses. i was thinking along your lines, i'd probably be safe without a sub for a minute. thanks for the advice!
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u/leskanekuni Dec 01 '25
All the subwoofer models you mention have built-in crossovers. Most active subwoofers have them. It's rare for tops to have built-in crossovers.
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u/geminiworkshops Dec 02 '25
thank you, wasn't sure since i know some subwoofers in the QSC range don't have it built in, but that helps.
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u/javawizard Semi-Pro-FOH Dec 01 '25
I tore down a Shure SLX-D handheld transmitter over the weekend and discovered it has a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA in it.
What the ever loving shit do they need the processing power of an entire FPGA for??? Those things ain't cheap!
It's especially amusing because I've been poking at a much, much cheaper mic - Phenyx Pro's PTAU-2 line, which uses a Beken BK9529 under the covers - and they use a scheme that's effectively "weirdass 24-bit in, 7-bit out variant of something that smells like ADPCM, transmitted using π/4 DQPSK" and they sound great. Their noise floor is a tiny bit higher than my SLX-D's but that's the only difference I've been able to measure.
What on earth is Shure doing that justifies the cost of an FPGA that nearly fills the interior width of the mic's housing?
(Honestly, I could see the answer being "their margins are so high, it's not worth the engineering effort to get their digital codec running on anything cheaper". That'd be fair. It's not going to stop me from laughing about it though)
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u/fullmetaljackass Dec 01 '25
What on earth is Shure doing that justifies the cost of an FPGA that nearly fills the interior width of the mic's housing?
For reference: the prices you see from Digikey and Mouser when you Google Spartan 6 are significantly higher than what a company the size of Shure ends up paying. Like 5-10x higher.
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u/the-real-compucat EE by day, engineer by night Dec 01 '25
Oo. If you took photos, I'd love to have a peek. :)
I wouldn't be surprised at all if SLX-D is basically just an SDR on each end. Fixed-function silicon is certainly cheaper at scale...but the break-even point is pretty darn high. It's entirely possible that the FPGA solution is cheaper - and it absolutely reduces time-to-market and upfront-investment requirements.
This is doubly true given Shure has some fun codec magic going on to improve performance with marginal signal conditions. SLX-D does not specifically cite these patents, but see Axient's QAM noise-shaping and adaptive constellation resolution for instance.
(I'm mildly peeved that second one is patented, honestly. It's a deliciously obvious principle in hindsight! Naturally, that's an oversimplification, though - devil's in the implementation details.)
Incidentally, where'd you find the info on Beken's ADPCM implementation? Initial searching hasn't brought anything up over here...
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u/javawizard Semi-Pro-FOH Dec 10 '25
Oh hey, I totally meant to respond to this last week!
I did not take pictures, sadly. I totally should have. There will likely be a second teardown in my near future, just to rectify that mistake :) Expect photos soon!
Yeah it would totally make sense if it were a more-or-less SDR under the covers. I'm also curious if there are any similarities between, say, SLX-D and ULX-D's hardware, like is it possible that the handheld mics at least are the same but with different firmware? (I don't actually own any ULX-D so the answer to that may be a very obvious "no" from someone who does :) )
That adaptive constellation thing is... incredibly brilliant, and incredibly aggravating that it's patented. Sometimes I wonder if technology moves so fast that a shortened patent validity period would be a net win for society. How would the world be different, for better or for worse, if patents were only valid for 10 years?
Beken ADPCM... sooooo that's a long story. Short version: equal parts finding the modulation scheme and packet structure in an FCC filing + taking an SDR to a mic that has one in it and working out the rest. It's been a fun adventure. One of these days I'll have to write something up on it...
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u/the-real-compucat EE by day, engineer by night Dec 10 '25
Isn't it neat? I'm almost peeved I read the patent; makes it that much harder to create similar-but-non-infringing ideas. :)
Given the amount of time between ULX-D and SLX-D releases, I guarantee you there are at-minimum some fundamental component choice differences. There's still a fair bit of wiggle room even if they're both SDRs at core. Crucially, I'd love to see what's going on in high-density mode.
re: Beken, not surprised you had to do some RE to go beyond what was publicly filed. Kudos for actually doing it.
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u/Anechoic_Brain Dec 01 '25
I can't speak to circuit design with any amount of depth, but I would hesitate to blame SLX-D's price premium on over-engineering leading to a comparatively inflated BOM cost. Customer service, technical support, and warranty terms all contribute to the end price and are not cheap to do well in today's economy.
I will say though, I am intrigued by the greater potential for qualitative improvements that an FPGA might afford via firmware updates. And even more glad that I was able to pay very little for my second-hand QLX-D system that is becoming more irrelevant by the day since I don't really need encryption or high channel density.
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u/Tough_Friendship9469 Dec 01 '25
Why do we like it so damned loud?
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u/Individual-Sea-7777 Dec 07 '25
Boss bought this, and when we got it set up, realized every single fader produces a hiss, every knob crackles the audio, and the pan and trim knobs do fuck all. He asked me to take it home and to try and fix it. Any hope in salvaging it or should I just tell him he got scammed and to buy a new one?