litesnsirens

Like it or not I'm going to add my 2 cents to this conversation...LOL OK first as far as L3t vs L3m, I just find it's worth it to have the mixer, I never use the mixer for live but often if I go to rehearse or jam, I just take the L3t, run my guitar into one channel and my vocal into the other and I can cut through any jam volume. You just never know when it's going to come in handy. Next, if you're going to get the L3s I would recommend going with the L2 for tops. Since the top speaker of the L3 is in the sub range anyway by the time you factor in the cross-over there isn't much to be gained by having an L3 vs L2 when using the L3s sub. You can save space and weight. Lastly if you can possibly swing the L3s subs vs a non dreamscape sub get the L3s. They sound amazing they, configure themselves into the system and as stated above, despite the specs, somehow they really are manageable as far as moving them and lifting them. As an addendum, I will share that I typically use in ears for monitors (about 90% of the time) but I have played several gigs with no monitors at all. Some rooms will lend themselves to this, you can set the speakers a little behind the band, not completely behind but kind of off to the side and about halfway back which will give you a really good stage mix and an idea of what's going on out front. When I get to the venue I will just kind of size up the room and determine if it will work. If it doesn't it's not that much work to slide the mains to the front of the stage and set up the in ears. If I was just going to buy and L2 ore L3 for guitar vocal use only as per the original question, I would opt for the L2t. Mixer included, and that extra sub frequency speaker is not so needed for guitar and vocals. If I was buying the whole system over again I would get the L2t vs L3t for tops for all the reasons already mentioned. When I first bought, I kind of bought in pieces so didn't have the subs right away.

Roland, for one, rarely updates anything. Once you buy a piece of gear from them, there may be a bug fix update, and this may include a feature or two...maybe. But after that, they are done. Firmware can outgrow hardware, there comes a point when you can't cram anything more into the box without slowing it down or causing other performance issues. My guess is this is partly Roland's philosophy, coupled with the fact that they can put faster processors and more memory in the next device thus allowing them to add more features, sell new units make more money. It's not a process I totally disagree with, something has to fund the R&D for new, ever expanding products. It's like with anything, you buy the product at a moment in time when you need it and the tech is what it is at that time. That said, this product isn't really that old but in the time since it has come out, there is still no other mixer like it. I would like it to work a little differently in some aspects but these are things Line 6 did intentionally. For instance the monitor send levels being able to be saved either within the setup or a scene. Point being, Line 6 wants it the way it is, so some of my wants will never be met. But at the end of the day I do know what I know now, and seeing the other options out there, there is still no other PA setup the heart of which is the M20d that I would prefer to use.

I have to agree with The Real Zap. I was an early adopter and I have to say regardless of how it's branded, what updates may or may not come, as long as there is support to maintain the gear I've purchased, I'll be satisfied. I'm using M20d, 2x L3t and 2x L3s and Sennheiser in-ear system for monitoring. Of course it would have been great to have a Line 6 Link in-ear option but I don't know how much it would actually add since I'm getting great in ear mixes without it. Which brings me to the lack of aux sends, over time I'm actually dialling back the number of aux mixes I'm using. I'm down to 2 for a stereo mix that everybody shares. My thought process is, if I have my own mix that is giving me more "ME" how do I properly play with the band as a whole, since I don't have an accurate representation of how my parts are mixing in. I think this philosophy if adopted by more musicians would cut down on volume wars on stage. Without getting too into it, be inspired by how the band sounds not just how you sound... enough on that. Lastly I will say that over-all the thing that keeps me enthused about this gear is sounding great night after night. It's pretty much idiot-proof. If you start from scratch, and don't add any eq on any channels or mains, just hook up all the speakers to the mixer and go, chances are your going to get great sound. I really don't do much more than that, I spend a fair bit of time gain staging, then getting the levels between instruments right and that's pretty much the extent of it. This system always sounds crisp clear and full with great bottom end that is defined and rich. I think most of that is the design of the speakers/system and how it all works together.

I have ipad and mostly use mac but I have a galaxy note 4 android phone. I can tell you that for whatever reason any of the apps that I have that run on both devices work better on the ipad. Less glitch, less lag, more options. I can't talk to the details as to why that is, but it is apparent. Simpler games seem to work as good but even then there are times when they lock up or just somehow go into slow motion. Just stating that you have a number of android devices tells us nothing, if they are all Samsung, or all nexus they are going to work similarly. The one sure constant is that ios is always going to be on a device that was made by apple (barring any hack jobs which don't count). So if I'm line 6 here is how I would be approaching this. 1) I want consistency in performance, I don't want to be hearing how this didn't work blah blah blah. There is no way to completely eliminate this problem, it's human nature to make human errors and then complain that it's someone else's fault. But you can minimize it if you go with the device that is most likely to give the best performance. As I stated above in almost all 3rd party apps / games that are available on both devices they just run smoother on the ios device. 2) This is an added feature, it could have easily been left out, and the board would still be worth the money. They offered the ipad version for the reasons listed in number one. If you have an ipad you can do this, if you don't, you can buy one or not, it's up to you. I don't think Line 6 owes us this feature, they offered it for ios because that made sense to them and they felt they could do it. Some people would like and take advantage of this "OPTION". They could have taken another approach and offered their own controller that we have to purchase from them. Personally I would buy the ipad even if it's all I used it for before I started running snakes to the stage. I realize the snake is cheaper but it's a lot messier too. And with the ipad I can walk around the room and mix from anywhere and everywhere. You run a snake, you are glued to your m20d unless you can find an interim baby-sitter for it. Just my thoughts to each his own, if you want to run a snake...do it..it's how we did it forever. It's just that to me, beyond the money issue there are other advantages with the ipad.

Thanks Don, that explanation is helpful to me. I will just point out that sound-wise, I am not looking for any improvements, my system sounds amazing and I have no need to play with crossover points. My questions was more to do with portability, if I were to scale down my L3t's to L2t's it would be a little more room in the car and a little easier setting up. If I need to just go for a jam outside of my own band situation I tend to just take an L3t. I use to take an L2t when I was still using them for floor wedges. So based on what you're saying, if I did down-size to the L2t's I would be giving up 3db in the 0-250hz range, of course some of that wouldn't be audible but it might be felt. It's hard to just imagine that impact, but essentially that's what I have to weigh against the portability issue.

OK, this brings up all of this brings up a question to me. I understood from the get go that the top speaker on the L3t was the sub-woofer so to speak but the following never occurred to me. What does that top speaker do if I use it in conjunction with an L3s? Is it still pumping out below 100hz? does the crossover get reconfigured if the L3s is plugged in so that the top L3t speaker takes over more mid responsibilities, or does it really do nothing at all since the L3s is taking over below 100hz and therefore anything above that is not getting through to the L3t? It might make me reconsider whether I really need L3t's or if L2t's would do the job. In other words is there a difference when using L3s subs whether the tops are L3t or L2t? Just curious.

As a final update to this thread, the next gig after this happened, I reverted to my previous wiring set up and there was no issue. Then my new AES/EBU 110 ohm cables arrived, still no problem even though it's a longer run of cables, I think that kind of staticky sound is for sure a cabling issue and an indication that you need to check the length of cable runs and or the type of cables you are using.

I don't use an amp at all onstage and just run direct to PA which by the way consists of L3t's and L3s's with the M20d mixer. I also use in ear monitors so for me if I can get a tone that sounds good in headphones and out front, I'm good to go. But I agree with Max, essentially it comes down to either running studio direct from the L2 and using the speaker sim from your HD500X, or using the speaker sim generated from the DT25. Either way front of house is getting a speaker sim. I personally find since I don't use an amp but am running directly to stagesource speakers, I can build my tones through the stage source at home and I'm confident that is the tone the audience is going to hear. I get the amp feel through judicious tweaking which was painstaking at first but once you find a few combinations that work, it makes any patches you come up with later pretty quick.

What colour is the feedback suppression pilot light? In my experience the feedback should have been notched it out once it sustained for a bit. I may be off on this but as far as I know the feedback suppression pilot light colour kind of corresponds to type on the M20d. So red would be the most aggressive and meant for vocals. The lighter settings, Green and Yellow, are less aggressive and you would use those if you find your filtering out things that you don't want to like a synth note that is sustaining and misinterpreted as feedback. Of course I have somewhat approached this backwards and in most cases you should start with the Green and increase if it's not filtering the feedback enough, but I explained it this was since it may be a possibility that you are already on one of the lighter settings and need something more aggressive. If it's already on red and not filtering out the feedback, I have no idea what it could be.

Hi Don, I appreciate you weighing in on this. I've tried to some of this testing at home, except that I have tried running some canned material through it. The problem is, that even at the gig it was intermittent, so it's not easily diagnosed. That said, if it's the cables I would probably have to use the same cables in the same order to make it happen. The good news is that I have ordered all new cables so maybe it will all go away. I even ordered from a company that will put coloured relief collars on the cables so these special cables will be easily identifiable.

Thank you scotterp, that news brings optimism.

That's almost exactly what I experienced. And a good description of the sound. I've ordered a bunch of mogami eas/ebu 110ohm cables of various lengths to use only for booking up line 6 link. Hopefully this will eliminate this issue from recurring.

I would tend to agree although according line 6, the number of speakers or number of cables makes no difference as each speaker in the line 6 link acts as a kind of regenerator of the digital signal before sending it to the next. So in other words if indeed my issue had to do with cabling it would have been at a single point in the chain not a culmination of the cabling. Have you had this static problem? I'm leaning towards a cabling issue, but I would like some sort of confirmation (if possible) before deciding if I may be barking up the wrong tree.

I played a gig Saturday night and after setting up my system I ran some canned music through the system just to make sure everything was on and working. I noticed that the L3t on the left side of the stage had a kind of static sound coming out. The sound was still kind of clean so it didn't sound like a fried speaker. I swapped out the cable from the L3s to the L3t and it seemed to go away. Part way through the night one of the employees came to the stage and notified us that there was a bit of a static sound in the system. Nothing I could do at that point. No audience members said anything and some friends in the audience said they never noticed it. After the gig we spoke to the employee about it in more detail and he said it was intermittent. Which may explain the cable swap fix add just coincidence. I put some canned music through again and cranked it. I didn't notice anything, so if the problem is there for sure is intermittent. This means of I take the speaker in for repair, they may not be able to diagnose or perhaps it's not the speaker. I'm wondering if this is something that is cable related. I'm not using aes/education but I'm willing to invest if anyone can verify that this may be the issue, if this is what you could expect as a symptom of less than optimal cabling. I use regular xlr for the shorter runs and dmx for anything over 20 feet. Any input would be appreciated.

egkor, I play in 3 live classic rock type bands. Never DJ, occasionally I do sound for other bands but only by request, I never go looking for that kind of work. I agree the type of room/setting you are playing dictates your PA requirements, but my overall statement was speaking more to the stagescape system itself and my personal findings with it in various situations. The L3s is a killer sub, it's well tuned, it packs a massive punch and works so well with the rest of the system. My comments are based on that alone. SiWatts69, I've read many of your posts and as such I am confident that you indeed know what you are talking about. Different tactics or approaches to the same situation are just that. How easy it would be to live in this world if there only existed absolute right and wrong answers. I play mostly in clubs most of them seat 100+ people some a little smaller some a little larger. In the bigger ones I can get the Main level on the M20d up to about -17 to -15 db before it starts getting too loud. We have done the odd larger wedding type events in banquet halls that seat 300 - 400 people ... still up to -10db is about as high as I can get the system in a room that size without the volume becoming uncomfortable. Any outdoor gigs I have done with this system (and these are always tricky) has depended on the number of people there and how close they are to the stage. But even doing an outdoor beer garden type thing with 300-400 hundred people, the two L3t and two L3s have been plenty loud enough and the bottom end hasn't suffered. Now that said, I haven't played anything larger than that with this system, you know like the type of thing where you would see a real headlining type act where you might have upwards of 2000, 5000, 15000 people. So if you're playing to these numbers of people, I'll defer to others on subs or tops first. But up to a 1000 people outside or inside, I would grow the tops first then the subs.

Are you using M20d mixer? Personally I think the L3s are so good at their job I would leave the second set of in the L6 link line. If you want to give more of the work to the 4 tops, just try lowering to crossover point. Maybe down to the 80hz or 100 hz. See what works best. Then the 4 tops would be working everything above 80hz and the subs just handling 80 and under.

So here is my take on it. I think you're fine with 1 L3S per side. I have played many gigs with 1 L3s and 2 L3t as my entire speaker array. In fact, when I bought my second L3s, I was thinking it was pretty much going to be an expensive speaker stand but since getting the second of course it sounds amazing. Personally, I would grow my PA kind of backwards to SiWatts69, I would get the two more L3m's and then if necessary add the subs later if needed.

That's cool, I think it's good to have some gigs that challenge us in new ways. Good luck with it!!!

I agree with Phil_m, use less drum mics. If I'm mic'ing a live kit now it's snare, kick and two overheads. If you place the mics strategically you can get a killer drum sound this way and it's three fewer live mics on the stage to contend with. Is there a way to have the bass go direct with an XLR to 1/4" special cable? Then keyboard could go into 13/14 and bass could go into 15. Do you often have gigs where you will have 6 vocal mics on stage?

Jaminjimlp, Is this true? I've never tested it...interesting

So I called Long and McQuade who I deal with up here in Canada. They are going to warranty my damaged wheel by replacing the bag altogether. in their view it can't really be repaired. That said I can't say if it's an L&M thing, whether it's Yorkville the distributor (which L&M owns) or if the warranty is directly related to Line 6. I'm happy either way but I realize it would be good to know for others who may encounter this. I just thought I would share as it may be worth a call to your retailer.

My advice would be to stick with what you have. If you are using the L3t's mainly to amplify vocals and guitars. If you are going to run bass and drums through it I would recommend adding an L3s at some point. I don't want to start any arguments over whether or not the Line 6 speaker match up to this speaker or that speaker, that on it's own has little merit and is likely a matter of taste and needs. To me the bigger issue is how good these speakers sound with THIS system and how effortless it is to get good sound at every gig in any room. I'm not sure how much money you can potentially save scaling down but it would have to be worth more than the security of knowing you'll have good sound at every gig. You could potentially in scenario 2 and 3 set the speakers up behind you and ring out the feedback before you perform. I've done this on a few occasions before I got any monitoring system and made it work. I think it'll depend on the venue, and placement of the speakers etc as to how loud you could get the system. I managed to get it pretty freakin' loud but your mileage may vary. I just thought I would throw that out there in case you wanted to experiment with this.

Just checking in. So far so good, a few gigs and a few rehearsals, no sign of power cycling since the new power supply.

Yes!! good question ... I had the same thing happen actually the wheel is fine the plastic housing snapped. And realistically I baby these things, I would like to figure some way to get it repaired...

I run direct all the time, don't even own a guitar amp. When I go to just jam I take my L3t and run vocal into one channel and guitar into the other. With the channels volumes at a bout 1.5 I am keeping up with the other live tube amps and acoustic drums. Guitar is easily sitting in the mix and the vocals are nicely on top and there is tons of room to spare. And to be fair, when I had my L2t I did the same thing and it also cut through easily. I prefer the 3 for overall sound just a bit bigger but definitely prefer the L2t for portability. But if you're already lugging a 50W Marshall combo you're breaking even in portability.