Assignment #1 Basic Gain Staging

In Live Sound we have been learning all about gain staging and setting up a PA system and it’s various lines.

We were given the opportunity in class to, as a team, assemble a PA system in our group and work with single line gain staging.

We had the pleasure of working with a Beta 58A mic, which thanks to this class, I know is particularly great for live vocal sound.

The mic line was plugged directly into our Allen & Heath mixer which can on it’s own bring it up to level.

for this exercise we messed with all the settings to give ourselves a feel at what they all did the picture above does not capture the settings we were happiest with but it does show us with some boosted gain and using some FX.

As you can see we have a line going out to our QSC monitor which we had positioned on the floor pulling power from the wall directly behind it.

this image is also not indicative of the settings we were happiest with this is just the picture I grabbed after we were done. I did pay mind, when setting up the monitor, to face it in a direction that would best allow us to avoid feedback from the mic. While these are all things I do at work already it was really nice to get a deeper understanding of all the parts with this exercise.