I provided lighting, photobooth and video from a mitzvah this past weekend at a restaurant. They had a 2.5k sq ft room with a built-in sound system. 5 tops with 2 18" radiators downward-firing from the ceiling (15 feet). The owner was pretty uptight and made the comment, "You'll probably overdrive my system and blowing my speakers." This was my Jewish-DJ friend's gig and I wasn't responsible for sound. Of course, because my friend doesn't cover his bases so well I ended up setting up a yammy mixer and fed the house via XLR output. The signal at our mixer was ultra-clean and never tapped past the 2nd green light (nowhere near yellow or red the whole night). When we did sound check, we handed the guy 50% and he went ballistic, shouting "too much signal". Since he was up high in a DJ booth (had to use a ladder to get to it) I couldn't see what he was doing. We cooled the signal off and he seemed okay. We used the guy's wireless hand-held, going directly into his system.
During the night, there were several times where distortion got really bad. Mostly on the guy's mic but to some extent the music as well. For amps, he had 2 on his tops (don't remember the make) and a single Crown ce1000 to drive the subs. It appeared he had sufficient watts (not what I'd call proper) to push his cabs but it kept sticking in my head about us over-driving his mixer with such a low output. I climbed up there once and it looked to be a standard behry, band-style mixer. Part of me is wondering if the whole issue couldn't have been as simple as engaging the pad button on his mixer. I did ask him if he'd tried using a limiter. He said "Yea, but it doesn't help." Anyone care to speculate? FWIW, I'll likely bring out own sound next time. A single ls801 and pair of K10s would have absolutely crushed his sound.
During the night, there were several times where distortion got really bad. Mostly on the guy's mic but to some extent the music as well. For amps, he had 2 on his tops (don't remember the make) and a single Crown ce1000 to drive the subs. It appeared he had sufficient watts (not what I'd call proper) to push his cabs but it kept sticking in my head about us over-driving his mixer with such a low output. I climbed up there once and it looked to be a standard behry, band-style mixer. Part of me is wondering if the whole issue couldn't have been as simple as engaging the pad button on his mixer. I did ask him if he'd tried using a limiter. He said "Yea, but it doesn't help." Anyone care to speculate? FWIW, I'll likely bring out own sound next time. A single ls801 and pair of K10s would have absolutely crushed his sound.