RTA broke or user error?

[volounteerParticipant]

Anytime in the past when I went to user/RTA screen I would see things happening. Vertical bars moving around with one of them red.

Last night I thought I was going to try to use RTA to identify a feedback frequency that I caused at set up so as to check the current limit on GFB and perhaps notch it out with PEQ so as to prepare for when the pastor moved to the side of the building on the floor in the evening on Wednesday, but there was nothing displayed except some brownish bars marking the frequency bands.

He always asks for more gain and I wanted to check the limit before I started raising the faders last night when he asked again.

So user error wrt RTA or a problem with the Qu?
Is there something else needed to make RTA actually display what is happening?

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

@volounteer ,

The RTA ‘follows’ PAFL, which you can also think about as simply following whatever you’re hearing in your headphones.
By default when nothing is PAFL’d, the LR mix is fed to PAFL, meaning you will see the LR mix on the RTA.

When trying to notch out feedback frequencies, you would therefore PAFL either the input or output channel where you want to apply the EQ and can both hear and see the prominent frequency.

As an added bonus when ‘ringing out’ speakers, when GEQ Fader Flip is activated on a mix channel you will see the RTA on the channel strip signal LED’s, with the most prominent frequency indicated by one of the red Pk! LED’s. There’s a (very) quick video showing this here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcOuG_tkGc4

Note that if your gain structure is set up incorrectly (e.g. your amps could be turned up to max and the desk might be running at low levels), then you may not even see that LR signal due to it being so low – but this would have to be quite extreme to be an explanation for what you describe.

Cheers,
Keith.

[volounteerParticipant]

@KeithJ A&H

Thanks.
Do not recall that from the manual, but my memory is not good if I don’t keep remembering the same things over again.
I forgot they had changed the PAFL settings on the pastor mike and elsewhere.
I heard the frequency! I just could not see it. And my ears are not calibrated enough to tell without a visual indicator.

I was going to PEQ the pastor mike after seeing where the problem was after raising the gain until it did FB.
Ended up just putting the red PEQ on the far right as much as possible and increased it as much as possible and then tweaked the width to be close to where it had been before.

That certainly fixed the feedback problems and the audience commented that the sound was the best they have had without any FB whining or sound like it was in a tin can. Go figure. Dumb luck?
I think for voice you dont really need 20-20K flat.

For myself it sounded good and was loud enough instead of being on the edge of almost intelligible.

If anything our amp is way too low and the desk is turned up way too high.

When I PAFLd to see the actual mike signals it was ‘perfect’.
It was bouncing up near 0dBFS at times and only rarely going to +3dBFS which is still 15dB below clipping with the proper headroom AH used on the Qu.

[Mike CParticipant]

Ended up just putting the red PEQ on the far right as much as possible and increased it as much as possible and then tweaked the width to be close to where it had been before.

Exactly what did you do!!!???

How are the PAFL options set on your mixer?

If the RTA did not show anything it sounds like something else was PAFL’d that did not
have any audio signal present.

At one time were you using the headphone jack to feed audio to a computer and needed to keep a mix in PAFL mode to send the needed audio to the headphone jack?

[volounteerParticipant]

@mikec

I tried to fake a low pass filter to remove everything over 15kcps which is FM quality.

I suspect they PAFLd and also unPAFLd a number of random things when they tweaked the video mix so they could listen to it on phones.
I do not recall seeing any lights on related to that. Maybe there were , but don’t recall any.

There was no computer involved. I listened to the LR speakers like the audience to see what they had complained about last week when the pastor had said to raise his gain and I did. Then he said to raise it more and I did. He seemed happy. Sounded good in the balcony, but later some folks in audience complained about it. So I wanted to make sure that did not happen when he asked me to increase the gain last night.

[Mike CParticipant]

The PAFL could have been applied to mix and depending layer you were in
you could not see it then, PAFL clear normally comes assigned to a soft key
and would be lit if something was PAFL’d

At one time I thought you said that the headphone jack was feeding the input to a
computer for recording or live stream.

[volounteerParticipant]

@mikec

At my age I won’t guarantee what I said unless I go back and look at the transcript:)

I was not using any mixes Weds nite.
Whatever mix78 was set to is what video got when they showed up and they never said anything.
The other mixes go to the stage, and Weds are on the floor at the side because of smaller attendance.

As of now they do not have any PAFL stuff on a soft key.
So far they only use two of them. One , I hope, actually mutes everything else when the pastor talks. Not sure about the other.

[Author]

Posts