I recently started working in a large music venue and I see they have a 3-way crossover unit feeding 3 sets of speakers. Wouldn't you get the same effect, if not better, from simply sending different instruments to different speakers? So send most of the bass and kick directly to the subwoofers, most of the guitars, keys etc coming out of the mids and have the tops mostly for vocals (obviously a little bit of vox fed into mids, insts in tops and subs etc but generally split up).
Not unless you had the master tapes, which is the only place where the instruments are going to be on separate tracks. And that means you would not have the mastering that goes into the mix on a commercial recording.
All instruments and voices contain their fundamental frequency, that is the note that is being played or sung, and numerous other frequencies which give the sound timbre, that means that for instance a voice and a guitar producing the same fundamental note sound different. So if you sent the guitar to just the midrange speakers you would be losing some of the frequencies that made it sound like a guitar. This results in distortion and would sound very poor.
There is a lot of overlap in the range of different instruments and vocals so while there are some benefits to utilizing this method in some cases, it is not widely used because it's just not necessary. Some of the ways this is done is with a dual PA setup, one PA system is used for vocals only and the other for all instruments with the goal being clearer vocals. Another way this is used is with a technique called AUX fed subs, here only those instruments that need sub support(bass guitar and kick drum for ex) are routed to the AUX bus that feeds the subs, everything else like vocals and instruments with little low frequency content are sent straight to the mains completely bypassing the subs, and the idea is that this cleans up the mix and gives better definition to everything. But of course it's not always possible to bring two PA systems and unless it will be pushed hard high a quality PA system is more than capable of delivering very good results with a mix of all instruments and vocals, so this is often just not necessary.
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I meant with live bands.
The speakers wouldn't be filtered. Mid speakers pick up the full range of frequencies, they're just designed to handle mid frequencies better.
Large venues always have more than one set of speakers, the one I'm talking about has 3. I could send different instruments to different speakers rather than splitting the frequencies up between them? Wouldn't that give more clarity and even power across the full range of the frequency spectrum just as well?
Why did you even ask? You've got a great idea and obviously understand the fundamentals, go for it, your new idea is bound to be better than what everyone has been doing for years 🙄
Well somebody told me that this was common practice in America. But I don't know if that's true. It makes sense to me, I'm looking for other people's opinions.
You could try it and see what happens. Lets look at what would happen with a kick drum for example if you were to send it to just the subs..since it's just thump, thump anyway right? Problem is all of the attack(impact) of this instrument is way up in the khz range believe it or not, that is the crack of the beater hitting the drum head, and if you filter all that out then all you get is a slow flub, flub sound with no definition. So you really need the kick drum through the whole PA system which means sending it through a crossover, so in this case your idea won't deliver better results.
Common practice?
ANy chance you are confusing separate speakers for each instrument with multi-amping (Bi-amp and tri-amp)? It is quite common to bi-amp speakers, which means separate amps for the highs and lows. In other words the woofer has an amp and the tweeter has an amp. But this is fundamentally different from what you describe.
In a two way speaker, we want opnly high frequencies going to the tweeters, and only low frequencies going to the woofers. In your usualy home speaker or in passive pro speakers, we have an amp sending full range audio to the speaker, and in the box is a crossover that separates the highs and los and sends them to the respective drivers.
In active systems, we put the crossover before the amps, and split the signal into highs and lows. Then there is a separate amap for each. The net result is the same, different audio signals for each driver.
But the point of that is not to separately present the sounds of each instrument.
ANy chance you are confusing separate speakers for each instrument with multi-amping (Bi-amp and tri-amp)? It is quite common to bi-amp speakers, which means separate amps for the highs and lows. In other words the woofer has an amp and the tweeter has an amp. But this is fundamentally different from what you describe.
In a two way speaker, we want opnly high frequencies going to the tweeters, and only low frequencies going to the woofers. In your usualy home speaker or in passive pro speakers, we have an amp sending full range audio to the speaker, and in the box is a crossover that separates the highs and los and sends them to the respective drivers.
In active systems, we put the crossover before the amps, and split the signal into highs and lows. Then there is a separate amap for each. The net result is the same, different audio signals for each driver.
But the point of that is not to separately present the sounds of each instrument.
Hearsay. My opinion on that would be it's highly likely that there are people everywhere, not just America, who don't know what they're doing.
Please don't do this.
Have you ever heard what happens if you send full-range signals to each of those drivers?
They sound terrible. All of them, without exception. A direct-radiating subwoofer might (might) make it up to 1kHz, and it's gonna be sounding ragged up there. A 6-8" midrange driver would turn itself inside out if anything resembling bass got near it (that includes, say, palm-muted chugging on a guitar), and tweeters would suffer a similar fate (assuming they don't melt first) as soon as the first plosive comes through the vocal mics.
Crossovers exist for a reason, and that reason is this: every musical instrument has harmonics and noises that are different to the fundamental note that's being played. Those harmonics often span many octaves, and no single driver can produce the entire range at PA system volumes.
At low volumes, it's possible for a single full-range driver to cover a good portion of the frequency range. It's generally accepted that a 3" driver will just about do up to 20kHz, but anything bigger will usually struggle. A 3" driver can also produce right down to 20Hz, but quietly. If you want to go louder, add a sub to do the heavy lifting below 100Hz and you'll gain some headroom. A 3" driver will still struggle to get loud at 100Hz, though. To work around that, we add a 12" midbass driver that covers 100Hz up to 1kHz or so, and then put the 3" driver on a horn to gain efficiency. Now we've got a 3" driver on a horn, a 12" midbass and a 18" sub, with crossovers so that each driver is producing the range that won't damage them, and they sound good doing. That's a PA system.
Chris
Yes, my question is whether sending different instruments to different speakers would be just as effective as multi-amping?
are you after the old Grateful Dead Wall of sound?
each instrument and vocals had application specific amps and speakers.
do to complex setup and integration logistics that didn't really work on a lot of levels that approach was abandoned long ago....
Thanks for posting that Turk182. I was thinking about the Dead's wall of sound when I read the OP.
There was a great business book titled, "Everything I Learned About Business, I Learned From the Grateful Dead." It is a great read. They discussed the wall of sound, how it came about and why it ultimately didn't continue.
There was a great business book titled, "Everything I Learned About Business, I Learned From the Grateful Dead." It is a great read. They discussed the wall of sound, how it came about and why it ultimately didn't continue.
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