QU16 Ducker Setup

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This topic contains 13 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of Mike C Mike C 7 years ago.

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  • #48043
    Profile photo of Chris
    Chris
    Participant

    Hi all and thanks for any help or suggestions.

    I have a QU16 in a Audio Install in a Church, There are 4 Mics that are gated for General Speech (Altar Gooseneck, Lectern Gooseneck, Podium Gooseneck, Handheld Wireless) Which are all Fine themselves but when the Organist (DI into Console) and Vox For the Vocalist Sing Feedback can Occur.

    Is there any way that i can use the ducking in the QU16 to Duck all those Mics or Some if the Organ has Level Going Through the Channel (The Gang Feature Seems to Confuse Me)

    My Apologies if this is a stupid question.

    #48044
    Profile photo of Andreas
    Andreas
    Moderator

    I guess same feedback occurs if you switch off all gates, right?
    Assuming all mic gates open once they “hear” organ sound, you either need to set a higher gate threshold or reduce gain on those mics (any compressor engaged?).
    Using the ducker would only focus on a symptom but does not target the main problem (gain, mic pattern etc.).
    There’s also a now somewhat lengthy thread focusing on feedback and many other things.

    #48046
    Profile photo of Chris
    Chris
    Participant

    If you Switch Off all the Gates there is a Slight Ring to the Room but no Feedback Takes Off, The Gates are being used to Stop the Mics which are always live having room ambience in them all the time. Its only having the higher SPL of the Organ which opens all the gates and then the room seems to take off.

    Hope this describes the situation a bit better. I can stop the feedback by muting one mic that is open, ultimately i would like to try and setup the mics to act similar to a auto mixer.

    Thanks Again

    #48048
    Profile photo of [XAP]Bob
    [XAP]Bob
    Participant

    The ducker could be used, although you then can’t insert FX.
    That shouldn’t be an issue on speech Mics though.

    You have a QU16, so you can’t use a matrix to combine all the ‘music’ into one “source” for the duck. So you need to choose the source carefully.

    Do you ever have the organ playing under speech? That will make life very hard.
    I’m guessing that you don’t have an operator (no offence, but I’m going to use that word instead of engineer) at the desk at all times…

    Is there an inline mute switch you could put at each location?

    To make it happen you want to select the channel, insert and enable the ducker then select the organ as the ‘Trigger Input’ then fiddle with the levels so that the Mics are all but muted when the organ is actually playing.
    I’ve not played with the ganging options, but you can just set them all up I think.

    Slight concern that those Mics make the room feel live when not in use. Gating them can lead to feedback arriving late and instantly becoming uncontrollable – this kind of ducking is a reasonable approach, but I’d be concerned about the mic level, placement and eq. If they only do speech then shelve the eq over 8kHz, maybe lower even…. Certainly shelve under 200Hz, maybe higher (test in your building, but speech is fairly narrow bandwidth)

    #48078
    Profile photo of Chris
    Chris
    Participant

    Thanks for that, I have applied the duck and will see how it goes. As you suspected No there is no operator. I was thinking about Sending all the Music Sources (CD and Organ and Airplay) into a Mix then Back in as a Input therefore i could duck from that source.

    Only One of the Podium Mics may sometimes have someone speaking when the organ is playing, so i left no ducking on that mic. It appears after some investigation that someone had turned the organ up louder than normal which was the source of feedback (I was not there so i am only going from word of mouth). I also tried playing some tracks loudly to try and get the Mics to feed with No Luck. No FX are being used so i don’t mind loosing the FX for being able to Duck.

    When i say the room feels live with the Mics Open the Church is a Concrete Building with about a natural reverb of 2 / 2.5 seconds and you hear the air and general room noise when the mics do not have a gate. They would prefer not to put mute switches in place.

    #48079
    Profile photo of dpdan
    dpdan
    Participant

    I suggest getting an Optogate PB05M for each of the gooseneck mics.
    The mic will be muted unless someone is close in proximity of the mic,
    the Optogate senses the existance of a body with Infrared.

    These would work awesome in this situation.
    They are expensive though at $250.00 USD each.

    #48094
    Profile photo of [XAP]Bob
    [XAP]Bob
    Participant

    You could build the same cheaper, but frankly it pays to buy stuff in at times.

    2.5 seconds in a concrete building – I’d be asking if the decor team to make some big thick banners to try and deaden the room slightly – it should make speech much more intelligible as well as helping with the ringing. (Concrete less likely to be a listed building than stone)

    Compressors on the mics are also a good idea – they can be fairly strict in this case, with no operator, since you need something to be controlling the volume between the shy teenager reading and the shouty man…

    Other sticky plaster tech solutions include an external feedback destroyer…

    #48178
    Profile photo of Chris
    Chris
    Participant

    Thanks for all these suggestions. Is there any way to route the Mics on the qu16 to get them to duck each other to assist and would you suggest a harshish compression ?

    #48181
    Profile photo of [XAP]Bob
    [XAP]Bob
    Participant

    You could route them all to a mix, then push that back to a spare channel and duck off that?

    No that doesn’t work…

    You’d need three mixes and three spare channels, one to duck each mic (since you don’t want the mic’s own signal to act on the duck) (three or four)

    I’d look at local mute (automated or otherwise) and banners to try and control the room…

    #48192
    Profile photo of Chris
    Chris
    Participant

    I am looking at getting 2 optogates to help control this system,

    Ducker Setup Idea

    Inputs:
    1. Altar
    Duck Input Source Mix 2 (Media)
    2. Reader
    Duck Input Source 4 (Handheld)
    3. Lectern
    Duck Input Source Mix 2 (Media)
    4. Handheld
    Duck Input Source Mix 2 (Media)

    5. Organ
    6. Vox

    Organ
    Airplay
    CD > MIX 2
    Aux
    Projector

    Altar & Lectern > MIX 3 >Input15
    Duck Input Source 14

    Reader & Handheld > MIX 4 > Input 14 Duck Input Source 15

    #61658
    Profile photo of FAYYAZ
    FAYYAZ
    Participant

    does it work on multiple channels?
    Say
    background music is running and i have two people on stage introducing, this and that.
    Can the ducker get input from two or more sources?

    #61664
    Profile photo of Giga
    Giga
    Participant

    I second DPDan’s Optogate suggestion. They are awesome ! I think I paid like € 150,- for mine ?

    Giga

    #61672
    Profile photo of [XAP]Bob
    [XAP]Bob
    Participant

    I’ve just realised no one has suggested the auto mixer yet…

    I’ve not used it though – anyone else?

    #61685
    Profile photo of Mike C
    Mike C
    Participant

    I started to think “auto mixer” in conjunction with some creative ducking about half way through of reading these post.

    As far mic gating, if the organ is so loud in that is triggers the mic gates to open adjusting the gate threshold higher not going to be the answer because when some goes to a mic to speak there’s a good chance there voice level will not open the gate, or at least keep it open, you could set a really long gate release time, that would help smooth out the choppy on and off gating if that is a problem.

    The Optogates are not a bad idea.

    The system sounds like it could use a little touch up on main EQ as well.

    I have use the auto mix function a few times on multi mic question and answer forums and it worked well.

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