Other than a blown lamp, or a PC needing rebuilding, has anyone ever had equipment failure when sound limiter trips out?

Personally, I really find them irritating, and will avoid working with them. But I hear a lot of people who say that they will damage equipment if they trip. In my experience, this has never happened in 24 years, and I have worked with plenty, so I wonder if this suggestion is based on experience...

The reason I avoid working with them is quite simply that they are athmosphere killers, and put me on edge as I find myself constantly watching the levels instead of the punters.

I have not had something blow because of the limiter its self but i have for a sudden power loss which is sort of the same thing. My dynamo stopped working found out that it bust the bulb.

A friend of mine has though he amp would not come back on after the limiter threw the power out.

I do not like working with limiters but i suppose power surges could be worse than the power going out.

I would say that it hightens the risk of something going wrong so not happened yet but you know the saying put you hand in the fire and you will get burnt.

.

Never worked with one and hope I never will.

Yes, stuff can blow if one trips.

I hate sound limiters!

One of my res bars has a sound limiter that lowers the sound if you hit the red
The problem is that its not that loud when you work with in the green area
All night punters come up to you and say "Turn it up mate....cant hear it!"
Which is true as you can hear people talking as the music ticks by...

The worst venue i worked (thank god it got knocked down) had a limiter that would kill the power if you hit the red
Even if people where singing (or shouting at the DJ) and the music level was droped right off it would still cut off....

I guess that the biggest risk is a loud pop or bang from the mixer getting to the speakers as the power amps have not been shut down before the power is disconnected.

Who here would choose to power down at the end of the night by just pulling the 13A socket out of the wall whilst everything is still switched on?

I killed a Rane crossover and had a RCF amp not want to come out of protection on one channel because of a sound limiter, all in one night.

Maybe it was just bad luck or maybe it was the power triping....

I now refuse to play with a sound limiter.

One of my active speakers wouldn't come back on after the dreaded limiter cut the power.
It was during the wedding speeches; the brides father was using my radio mic; I was controlling the volume levels and he had been talking extremely quietly for around 5 minutes so I had the volume pretty high then totally out of character the guy suddenly screams into the mic the poxy limiter then kicked in and one speaker wouldn't come back on
No permanent damage done though, it just knocked out the fuse; I was able to complete the gig with one speaker quite easily and changed the fuse the next day.

Once I played at a Village Hall in Milton Keynes that had a sound limiter. Within one night it had blown its way though 8 lightbulbs. Everytime it cut the power the bulbs had blown. And after the first time of powering down and back on quickly it had ruined my Dual CD Player. The display was lit up but there was no numbers, then loads of scrambled numbers kept flashing. After powering down and back on properly it still didnt work. Ended up replacing CD player to a better one ;)

I think the poll shows that there is a risk and its a risk not worth taking....

This is interesting, Marky is right in my opinion.

May I make a suggestion? If you have a cut out, turn off you amp first, then everything else. When power is restored and stable, turn everything back on as you normally do. Then set the main gain a little lower!

I think I will go down the UPS route for any more of these gigs.

I've not had the misfortune to work with one of these devices, and don't know of anyone who has experienced equipment problems due to one.

I have it written into my contract that I will not work with sound detectors.
This is mainly because of what I imagine it would do to the success of the evening, but also because of the possible risk of damage to equipment, in particular speakers.

Technically, the most damaging situation would be if you were using amps without de-thump relays. This would allow a large, possibly full power low frequency 'thump' to be passed to the speakers at both power off and power on, and if the amp is rated way above the speakers you could bottom the voice coils with disastrous results.

Much as someone said earlier, the best you can do is to manually switch off the amps or unplug the speakers until the power comes back, whereupon you power them back up after the mixer/crossover/EQ or whatever else you may have in line.

There shouldn't really be any issues with the amps themselves, or any other equipment, but it is possible the mains might blow a fuse on power-on due to all of those torroidal transformers. This type of transformer is known for it's surge demands at switch-on anyhow, but as in my case, if you have 4 amps each with one, and another 4 projectors also with one each, that is one heck of a power-on surge for the poor old 13 amp fuses in your extension leads to withstand.

Anything on the mains with a big relay or contactor will cause huge spikes on the mains as they break.
This can upset some cheaper amps with poor input filtering.

Sounds like a storm in a teacup to me. I cant see any electronic reason why killing the mains at full tilt should affect the equipment. Most noise limiters only work on the amps (which can be killed at any time barring a truly poor design) and are usually also linked to the fire alarms so a fire call will be heard. They are often mandatory (it varies from local authority to authority) for either licensing or HSE reasons.

Good-mannered mixers and CD players won't go bump or click on power-down either and if they do...well they're probably a bit on the cheap side and best left in the bedroom!

And did you charge cost of replacment equipment to the venue, I would have certainly tried to claim it back as its thier fault, not sure how succesfull you would be trying to claim off a venue for equipment damage.

I do try and avoid soundlimiters if I can, most are set at a stupidly low level....
I did onece work with on in a venue, it had the traffic light system at the oposite end of the room......had it into the red loads of times and nothing cut-out.
Do they need to be in the red for a certain amount of time before they actually cut out?
Maybe this one was faulty

Yes usually about 3 to 5 seconds....

If you use a projector cutting the power can ruin it.
The lamp (@£200+) needs to be cooled with the fan, pulling the power can pop the lamp and also melt some of the other components near the lamp.
I wont use the projector with a sound limiter.

I wont knowiningly take a booking for a venue with one either.

Jim

It's best not plugged into a sound limiter socket!

haha
there has only being once ive had a problem with a sound limiter and it was with kids screaming after i got them to... luckily i had a spare amp as it just blew the fuse on it. Not sure weather ive mentioned it before but where i work part time as a bar supervisor our limiter cuts off when people moan after someone shouts house on bingo!

I refuse to work with sound limiters. I always determine if a venue has one before the day of the booking and refuse to plug in to the associated power sockets. Always run power from somewhere else.

I just explain to the manager that I am not running a mobile night club and it will not be that loud and if it is please come and tell me and I will gladly turn it down.

There was one hotel which will remain nameless that had one that cut the power for at least 10 seconds every time. It was set so low that I remember struggling to play anything.

How do you determine that the venue has one or not?

I would expect that most would reply that if "it will not be that loud", then you would have no problems with the limiter.

Jim

I know if the venue has a limiter or not because if it is a venue I haven't played before I always contact them a week before just to introduce myself and to arrange set up times etc etc.

You all know that the horrible ones are the ones that knock the power off completely and take at least a few seconds to come back on again.

My worst experience was introducing the first dance, bride and groom on the floor, asking everyone to put their hands together and the limiter kicks in and you are there like an idiot trying to get everything cued up again. This happened a dozen times in the first hour! In the end I used another socket out of the next function room which wasn't connected to the limiter.

Most of the time I don't mind the ones that are just to indicate you are too loud, you know the type, there is one that looks like an ear with green amber and red LED's that light up.

But what if you have taken the gig (Been paid etc months in advance), or its a venue you have done in the past and it has had a mangement change and installed one as per my other thread. I just dont see how people can say I never use them or work where there installed. I agree we can take precautions and sus out the venues that inforce the policy but you can not guarentee 100% that you will never do a venue with one unless your willing to let your client down. I am not saying this is right or wrong. Just posing the question.

Nik

[quote name='Andy Westcott' date='Feb 3 2006, 10:12 PM' post='115480']
I've not had the misfortune to work with one of these devices, and don't know of anyone who has experienced equipment problems due to one.

I have it written into my contract that I will not work with sound detectors.
This is mainly because of what I imagine it would do to the success of the evening, but also because of the possible risk of damage to equipment, in particular speakers.

Technically, the most damaging situation would be if you were using amps without de-thump relays. This would allow a large, possibly full power low frequency 'thump' to be passed to the speakers at both power off and power on, and if the amp is rated way above the speakers you could bottom the voice coils with disastrous results.

Much as someone said earlier, the best you can do is to manually switch off the amps or unplug the speakers until the power comes back, whereupon you power them back up after the mixer/crossover/EQ or whatever else you may have in line.


All music noise problems eminating from marquees can now be solved completely. No, not with noise limiter. No, not by soundproofing it either. The venue should invest in a SoundCeiling. We sell or hire them anywhere in the UK. You can have 100dB on the dance floor and a few metres away you can hold a normal conversation and nearby residents won't even know there's a disco at all! And as a bonus, the venue and the DJ can now play all night if required! See it at www.soundceilingsuk.co.uk.

I have not done this but i was at a gig when the dj found the fuse box then found the fuse and the party whent on no more problem power cuts. I didn't do a thing guv

Hi Brian
I had a QSC amp go down due to power tripping out and the immediately coming back on. Really annoying as it not only ruined the evening because of the time to plug in spare amp but it cost me a lot to replace all the output transistors

Keith

(cut and pasted from a similar thread that i replied to before reading this one!)

I only have a problem with sound limiters when someone in the crowd whistles, shouts or screams.

Then it switches off and shuts down everything.

I did a residency over christmas a few years back and after it shut off a fourth time on the same night due to the crowd I informed the hotel that I will plug into a different source as they could see quite clearly my volume was way under the limiter unless they were happy to pay for a new amp or anything else that might not like being switched off and on again repeatedly.

If you can access it, a sock over the sensing microphone before anybody arrives works wonders . Bypassing using extension leads can be troublesome, dangerous (trip hazard / voltage drop / overload etc) and if visited by the caretaker, council noise abatement etc, its obvious you have deliberately bypassed the system, immediately causing embarassment whilst you are made to shut down the disco whilst you plug back in to it.

Of course, the 'Sock' method may also be discovered (albeit less obvious not easily spotted in a dark room), however if questioned, it must have already have been there when you arrived , for them to suggest you carried odd socks around with you to gigs, would be ludicrous wouldn't it !

The last gig I did with a limiter was classic.

The limiter box was directly next the DJ setup area, and as the night went on it was obviously an incredibly poorly installed (probably faulty) system. The usual traffic light system would be flickering nicely in the green then for no reason at all, no shouts, no whistles, it would shoot into the top red and immediately trip.
Every other limiter i've worked with gives you a couple of seconds in the red before tripping but not this one. Green, bypass amber, trip.
After the 2nd trip I was getting annoyed and started scrutinising the limiter when I noticed what I thought was a white electrical blanking plate in the wall, then I noticed a 5 mm hole in the plate. It was the microphone. Found a roll of white insulating tape in my wire box. Put 2 and 2 together
The venue manager came over a bit later and commented how I was getting a much nicer, bassier sound than their regular DJ and complemented me on my PA system lol.
I did remove the incriminating evidence when I was finished!

I do think there should be a recognised standard for the fitting of these limiters, i've had no end of trouble with DIY 'lash up's in venues where some committee member has been deemed an Electrician purely because they may be good at fitting car alarms, so somebody set him about the task of wiring in their local village hall sound limiter. The settings of some of these are all over the place, sometimes you can be lucky and the entire local brass band could march through and it wouldn't trip once, but on the majority you can drop a pin or sneeze and the red status warning panel lights up like Joan of Arc.

Of course the E.A are happy for the settings to be as low as possible, and if they enforce a 90db limit, and its set at 78db on the panel, they won't quibble or get the DIY'er to up the level to the 90db threshold. Provided its at or below the local enforced figure, off they go!.

As it stands currently anybody can legally wire these in, provided its not in a Kitchen, Bathroom or Outside, and if you encounter one, you'll probably end up blacklisting the venue in future!

I did a gig recently at cisswood house, limiter above the fire exit, a kid pressed the bar on the exit by accident and it tripped out all the power. Kid ran away screaming in shock, manager told me to reset it using a plastic coat hanger on the window sill, and we were back in business. Still, a bit unpleasant but at least it wasn't me.