CQ 18 T – First Use Questions.

[Frenchy750Participant]

I used a CQ18T coupled with two EV ZLX8P G2 speakers. The show was simple, a cocktail hour with a keyboard and two roving MC on RF mics, and an auction with a multi media show and two auctioneers.

Having never used this system live before, I read up and watched what I could find before the auction. I te it up at my house and got familiar with mixing from my iPad.

Here were my findings and issues.

The keyboard had no high end. I plugged the 1/4 inch cable from the keys into Ch 9, and the RTA on the eq screen showed nothing above 5K. Might have been the keyboard, not really sure. Couldn’t figure it out.

I engaged the Feedback assistant in Fixed mode on the mains, and was surprised to see it start notching out freqs, some rather severely, while only the keyboard was playing. There was definitely no feedback present, but the FBA was doing some serious work for some reason. Guess I don’t understand the FBA the way I thought I did.

There was a ‘hiss’ coming from the speakers from the get-go, even with no faders open. Didn’t have time to work this out.

Couldn’t get enough gain from the RF mics before they started to feedback. Some of this was the speaker position in the room, some was the fact that what I thought was a properly rung out system actually wasn’t, and the rest was due to my (obvious) lack of familiarity with the CQ and mixing live sound in general. (I mix live sports for television)

From everything I’d read about the CQ, it’s an amazing piece of gear for the price. While the auction raised plenty of money for the school, and the entire thing wasn’t a flop, I hoped this gig would have been better.

Everyone has a first time.

Clearly I have a lot of learning to do, and would appreciate any help and direction on where to learn and improve.

[Mike CParticipant]

As for the hiss that sound like the EV speakers were set up for mic level input, they need set for line level.

Automatic feedback finders just look for a sustained tone / frequency the notes from a keyboard can look like feedback to it and then it start reducing that frequency.
Us the main output EQ to to notch out frequencies that want to ring/feedback.
If you want to use the feedback assistant bring up the system level with the mics turned on till it start to feedback, let the feedback assistant grab those frequencies and then lock the feedback so it does not keep grabbing other frequencies as the music is playing.

What type of EQ was applied to the keyboard channel or was the entire system over EQ’d in trying to get rid of the feedback?

[ChienmortParticipant]

The CQ itself is very quiet. I do most of my testin and setting job with headphones and the noise/hiss is barely audible.

I think the FBA is really only designed for mics, so as Mike C says use fixed frequencies when you ring out and don’t enable live mode on the FBA.

[Author]

Posts