Dj's United > Too much power or too paranoid?

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Dj's United > Sound & Lighting Discussion > Techie Talk

Splosh

Nov 14 2005, 10:36 AM

Morning peeps,

This is one for all you buffs out there.....

On my Peavey Amps, I have 3 LED lights for each channel on the front of the unit.
The first one (little green bugger) tells me that the unit is on and that the channel is funtcional. (that is fine, and me and my little brain are fine with that)

However, from here on I am getting lost.

Peavey tell me that the next little led (orange) lites up when I have reached 1VRMS!!!!! What the bleeding nora is that???? It's alright saying in the manual what it is, but I could do with a little instruction as to what it means....

Each time the orange LEDs come on now, I am worried that I am putting tooo much power to the speakers and that they will pop..... To add insult to injury, I am sure that the speakers can take more!!!!!! but don't want to try for fear of blowing the things..... (especially as it is all brand new gear)

Am I being paranoid? Or should I stay away from that little light?????

Could really do with some advice.

As for the final led, that is red and Peavey's DDT System warning light, ie, your amp is about to give up!!! That I can understand too.

Cheers Chaps and Chapesses.

Oh, and by the way, how do you know how many watts of power you are pumping out?????????

Splosh

2J's Roadshow

RobbieD

Nov 14 2005, 11:41 AM

From the sound of it, the orange LED is just a "signal present" indicator. During normal use, it would be on nearly all the time.

I use Peavey amps, and mine have a dual colour LED marked "signal". It lights green whenever there is any signal present - even at low volumes - but flashes a brighter red if I touch clipping/DDT (which I rarely do).

My amp rack is 2,800W RMS total, which does me well for up to 500 people at wedding reception volumes, and 200 people at 18th birthday party volumes.

Gary

Nov 14 2005, 11:49 AM

QUOTE (Splosh @ Nov 14 2005, 11:36 AM)

Peavey tell me that the next little led (orange) lites up when I have reached 1VRMS!!!!! What the bleeding nora is that????

I can help a bit with that...the 1VRMS means "1 volt RMS" but its easier to take one step back up the line...to...your mixer.

Its a little more involved than this example, but heres a starting point for you. If you took every audio rule and reg into account at every gig, you'd be ready to play just in time to wish everyone a safe journey home.

As you may well be aware a normal set of phono sockets eg: The ones on the back of a CD-deck, or the Record Out sockets on the back of a mixer, output at 775 millivolts of signal (with 1000millivolts being; 1 Volt). The manual will normally tell you that the mixer outputs this 1 volt of signal at a particular db level...so in brief..."When your mixer output LEDs are mainly all green, but very occasionally bouncing briefly into the red, your mixer is sending 1 volt out to the amp.

For this reason, most amps are expecting to see 1volt of signal being presented to them - so... if your mixer output leds are only occasionally red, and your amps orange LED is pretty much orange most of the time - everything "fine".

As you've already expressed - avoid doing things on the mixer which would take your amp into its red LED.

If your speakers are capable of giving out more considerably more power, then you'll need to consider an amp with bigger numbers, rather than turning the amp up, or taking the mixer output (and the amp) into the red.

superstardeejay

Nov 14 2005, 11:11 PM

The DDT light does not indicate you're about to blow up your amplifier. It is Peavey's own dynamic clip limiter system which cuts in automatically to reduce the amplifier output if you push it too hard. It does this so you don't easily blow your speakers or overheat your amp. You can usually turn it off on later Peaveys, (eg PV2000 / CS1000S etc) but earlier ones are fixed 'on' all the time.

It just means that if it flashes, you're pushing the system literally to its limit.

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