Before I started performing on stage, I used to wonder why it was so loud at concerts and music venues. Once you have your first time on stage, though, especially if it’s in a club with a bad monitor mix, you realize that there’s a lot of noise that needs to be covered up to create a clear sound –both from people talking and from sound bouncing around the room.
Mains vs. Monitors
The biggest distinction between speakers is whether they are for the audience or for you, the performer. "Mains" are for the audience to hear you. "Monitors" are for you to hear yourself and your bandmates.
Bare bones setups use the same mix (i.e., a combination of different instruments) for monitors and mains, but most setups have at least a separate monitors vs. main mix. Professional systems have a different mix for each individual monitor. You need monitors because it gets noisy on stage, and this makes sure you have a dedicated way to hear your bandmates. Remember that what you hear on stage is usually not what the audience hears.
A main function of the soundcheck is to get the relative levels of these two sets of speakers right. For the key pointers on what musicians need to know about how to do a sound check, you can also read our blog post about sound checks.
Powered speakers versus separate amps
If you are running your own live sound setup, you’ll need to also know about powered vs. unpowered speakers. (If you have a sound engineer, you won’t need to worry about it.)
Remember back in the first post when we talked about signal levels? The basic concept is that the mixing board first gets everything up to line level, but then to hear the music you’ll need to convert from line level to speaker level. The difference between powered and unpowered speakers is where that conversion happens – in the speaker, or outside of it.
Powered speakers have a built-in amplifier, and they need a line level signal. You’ll know it’s powered if it has a power cable attached. Don’t send speaker levels to these or you’ll blow them out. These are better for situations where you move the speakers around a lot.
Speakers without an amplifier need speaker level signal. You’ll know it is unpowered if it only has a speaker cable input. You’ll need a separate amplifier, designed to work with that speaker and sometimes built directly into the sound board to produce sound. If you give these speakers a line level signal, you’ll hear barely anything, but at least you won’t break them. These systems can be a little bit cheaper, so are often used in permanent installations.
And that’s it! As we said in the first post, this is a big complicated topic – far beyond the scope of a couple of blog posts – but we tried to hit the high points.
Powered speakers have a built-in amplifier, and they need a line level signal. You’ll know it’s powered if it has a power cable attached. Don’t send speaker levels to these or you’ll blow them out. These are better for situations where you move the speakers around a lot.
Speakers without an amplifier need speaker level signal. You’ll know it is unpowered if it only has a speaker cable input. You’ll need a separate amplifier, designed to work with that speaker and sometimes built directly into the sound board to produce sound. If you give these speakers a line level signal, you’ll hear barely anything, but at least you won’t break them. These systems can be a little bit cheaper, so are often used in permanent installations.
And that’s it! As we said in the first post, this is a big complicated topic – far beyond the scope of a couple of blog posts – but we tried to hit the high points.
Have things you think we missed? Let us know and we’ll make it the topic of a future post.
Read our previous Live Sound posts:
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