Did my first karaoke with the rcf's on saturday and the feedback was terrible for a while. The room was rectangular with few soft furnishings, hot night so curtains were left open leaving a wall of windows.

my area was a 10ft square addition to the main room which they used to store tables etc so it was a bit cramped.

i put the speakers at either side of the opening on the storage area with the tv just behind the speaker line, forcing the singers to be a good 4ft behind the speaker line.

however feedback was a big issue,even with my announcing etc until i fiddled with a few knobs. what i found was the bass on the rcf's was just too much for the venue. with no soft furnishings the bass was booming around the room and as my area was a box, was rattling around me too.

I have a 5 band eq on my mackie dfx6 and pulled the 60hz right off with the 250hz rolled back a bit. I still had a reasably punchy bottom end for the disco which i boosted on my dj mixer (2 channels for disco music and 2 cd channels - one doing the karaoke). i had the wireless mics on the go and one or two singers ventured out without a problem.

had a simular problem on friday night doing a school fair. was backed against a wall and the bass was making announcements a problem. did not have my mackie so couldnt do the above.


IMO modern speakers are too good on some occasions.

Dave, how do you connect your mackie mixer to the dj mixer? I've got a Behringer 1204FX which I could connect to my DJM 5000 for karaoke. Do you use the tape out connections?

Dave, were the karaoke mics going through the dfx6? Was the high pass filter enabled on the mic channels? this would have helped prevent the bottom end feedback a bit (and less knocking off of the 60hz frequency on the graphic) ?


Cheers,

David

T'other way round
when doing karaoke i output from my main dj mixer to the mackie. Like i said my dual cd kit has cd+g support. I use the phono main outs on my dj mixer which feeds the tape input on the mackie. Keeps things simple that way and i only need to add a simple stereo phono cable to the usual setup. I run all mics through the mackie as i like to have that better level of control and the mic pre amps are a darn site better as thats what it was designed to do. you could use booth/tape/record outputs but im not sure of your mixer configuration. need to make sure these outputs are post eq etc. as im using tape inputs with no gain control on the mackie i can set the incoming level from the dj mixer....if you know what i mean

other benefits are i can place the live mixer away from the dj rig, still to hand, but out of the way. I do however have a homemade laptop stand which straddles the mackie to save space if i need to put it on my giraffe stand.




I had 4 mics out front (2 wireless, 2 wired) through the mackie and only 2 channels on the mackie have a low cut switch (75hz cut). the dfx 12 has 4 low cut switches. Even with the mic channel eq's backed off there was too much bottom end hence the global cut. The bass was really booming around me and i did get out front a couple of times to make sure i wasn't over compensating.

On friday i had borrowed a pioneer djm 707 to try and had to dial the bottom out on that too.

I remember reading a post somewhere saying the rcf 7 series were lacking bottom end. The ants in the nest directly under my feet on friday an the fact that my chest thuds when i get any where near normal performance level, certainly disagree.

Dave

Might be worth looking at the mics, what were you using?
Some venues are simply a haven for feedback and there's not a huge amount you can do especially when you see how some amateur singers use the mics.

A pair of genuine sm58's, not ebay specials

The lack of soft furnishings didnt help. 1 wall was completely glass and all the other walls were flat with no curtains etc. The little area i was in certainly didnt help and as the rcf's kick out that much bass which just fills a room it was bouncing all over. Bass boom is possibly the best way to describe it.

After i rolled the bass off one woman went out to do a bit of show singing and there was no feedback at all from within 3ft of the left cab. I had my finger on the mute button as she was singing and dancing just in case.

Im convinced it was too much bottom end for that room

one thing worth a try is speaker height .. on stands try them higher than normal this can in my experience really help.

obviously they have to be quality stands that can go higher and still be safe