Help! Working on my PA chops!

[sammyp]

So saturday night the band was all set to try out our new pair of samson powered monitors - on the mackie 24-4 i sent aux 1 into a yamaha eq and from that into the return "B" on the snake.....then XLR from "B" on the stage/snake into the nearest monitor. This is how i hook up our normal monitors minus the power amps. - 1 mix is often all we need.

With all channel strip auxs turned off everywhere, we were getting the full FOH mix in the monitors....we ended up by passing the EQ and running doubled XLRs straight from the aux 1 to the nearest monitor then chained em up!?! Time was off the essence at that point.

Even without EQ the monitors sounded great and had all kinds for us at 300 watt each......i just can't figure out what was with the full mix at first.....i didn't think to try return C or D but i'm wondering if there is a problem with return B on the snake. Ideas?

FWIW, i use Return A for the main mono out of mackie that goes to the cross over.....FOH was problem free

[Jef]

I would check the obvious first... Put a tester on your snake return lines to make sure there's no internal 'short' that might be causing some cross-talk.

[Mathieu Benoit]

I agree Jef. Although I had this problem a while ago with a snake I installed with Al at the studio. It was a case where there was no apparent damage or short within the snake, I had checked it with a cable tester. as Jef suggests. So Al passed tone through one channel and listened to the other 5 channels, and it was clear that cross-talk was occuring from within the snake, it was just a bad snake. The cable tester never revealed any shorts.

So try also to send one isolated signal through one channel and listern to others to determine which channels are being affected, should the cable test reveal nothing out of the ordinary. It's a good idea to try all the channels just to see. My problem was across the board, all channels were affecting all the other channels... I might as well have put everything into one channel. If, as was my case, it's a manufacturers defect (very rare I assume...) then depending on how old it is and if it's still covered under warrantee, maybe you can get it replaced.

[Malcolm Boyce]

Here's some Monday morning quarterbacking for ya...

What I would've done when you first had the problem is disconnect anything else between the console and snake, except the aux send to monitors to see if it were a console problem or something else down the line. You could have disconnected the aux out of the console, but I would've started with the other option. This will tell you where your problem is, or at least where it isn't. It also helps you focus on the one thing still coming out of the desk.

When you start having crosstalk problems like what you describe, it's best to start by turning off or disconnecting possible sources of the crosstalk, to verify where the issue actually is.

If you know your patch was originally correct, and you haven't ruled out the console, that is my first guess for where the problem will be, with my second guess being if you're using a two channel EQ for both FOH and Mons, the EQ being FUBAR or set up incorrectly.

Snake thing is possible, but the use of the XLRs straight from the aux out, doesn't rule out the possibility of the EQ, or Console-EQ combination being the problem.

The reason why I mention the "original patch" thing is because being familiar with the Mackie connections, it wouldn't be the first time someone patched into a main insert by mistake and got their pre master fader mix sent somewhere they shouldn't have.

[sammyp]

yeah, we didn't have much time to troubleshoot, Warren was with us as well and he was looking things over too, but i definately had the proper aux send and the EQ had nothing to do with FOH - totally separate units...i'll try again this weekend, i bought more cabling and gender benders etc this week to prepare for whatever.....

[Malcolm Boyce]

...Warren was with us as well and he was looking things over too.....

Keep us posted as to what you find when you have the time to look it all over.

[sammyp]

well this past weekend i ran the yamaha EQ at the other end of the chain on stage with us - worked completely normal, i'm really baffled on that one but i'm happy to have the EQ on stage for obvious reasons. I tested all returns on the snake and everything was good.