Speaker for Helix LT?

[SamuelGresham]

Hey guys!

 

I'm trying to figure out my final setup for my new Helix LT. For the last month(ish) I have been monitoring through headphones for practice, and it isn't really doing it for me.

 

I play guitar at a church, so obviously the sound gear/sonic landscape of the room is different to headphones.

 

I was just wondering what you all thought was a good motoring/tone making solution.

 

a) stick with headphones and make tones at the venue beforehand 

b) buy a PA speaker and go direct to that

c) buy studio monitors and go through an audio interface

d) anything else you think is a good idea!

 

I'll probably keep some headphone specific patches so that I can practice when I need to be quiet, but I think I'll need a more permanent solution.

 

Thanks!!!

[cruisinon2]

There are a thousand "best speaker" threads laying around... all containing basically the same info. Poke around a bit and you'll find what you're looking for. 

[rvroberts]

Unfortunately the answer isn't simple. 

First are you using high and low cuts?

You almost certainly need them to feed a PA or FRFR speaker. 

Secondly, tone is highly volume dependant. 

So unfortunately you can't finalise a sound unless you are auditioning it at around the volume you expect to be using it. You will almost certainly have too much bottom and top if you set it up at low volume and then play a fair bit louder. 

So you need something similar to the environment you are playing in. If you go out to PA, FRFR should give you a decent guide, but only at stage levels. 

So settings up sounds at low level will need significant EQ and balancing of effects at gig level to get what sounded good quiet to work loud.

[njglover]

I exclusively use headphones at home and just run direct to the PA at shows wherever possible. However, I have made a few tweaks to my sound based on what I hear at practice. As mentioned above, it may sound great with no high or low cuts when you are playing by yourself in headphones, but with a band I find that I cut lows at around 120-130 Hz and highs at about 7.3 kHz. There's not a lot of useful frequency information for guitar outside of those. I do lose a bit of lows, but that's what the bass is for. A good sound engineer would probably cut these frequencies anyway, but I'd rather not have to rely on them so I do it myself.

 

If for some reason you don't practice together in a setting with PA speakers, then it might help you to get a PA speaker to mess with at home to make sure your sounds work. But you will need to turn up to a decent volume to check.

[DunedinDragon]

I've done something recently that could be interesting/useful to you.

 

Personally I run all my presets at home through the same FRFR I use when I perform which is a Yamaha DXR12.  The advantage being that it's full blown front of house style powered speaker which will give me a great indicator of what's going out to the audience.  I recently began doing some open mic/jam nights with fellow musicians in the area and got tired of hauling around a 50 lbs beast, so I ended up taking a chance on a one of the new QSC speakers, a CP8.  I have a ton of respect for the quality of Yamaha and QSC when it comes to live sound, so I wanted to see if I could get comparable performance from the 20 lbs CP8 versus the 50 lbs DXR12.  I've been pleasantly surprised that the CP8 could give me comparable sound quality at roughly half the price and 1/3 the weight.  But there's a slight catch.

 

The CP8 is rated at a max SPL of 124 db while the DXR12 is rated at 132 db.  Although I don't play at super loud volumes it does have an effect on how much I need to turn up my Helix master volume to get a comparable output in the signal and resulting volume level.  However leaving the CP8 volume control at unity (or 12 o'clock) and turning up my Helix volume level does give me a comparable sound quality to the DXR12.  Turning up the volume level on the CP8 does have more of a negative effect on the sound than it does doing so on the DXR12. 

 

What this might mean in your case is that a CP8 would be able to give you a very good indicator of what your FOH sound will be as you dial in your presets.  You would likely need to turn up your Helix master volume to get a good representation of what will come out of the FOH than you would when you play live, but if you setup your globals so that your Helix master volume doesn't affect the XLR outputs and send to the mixer with the XLR out, you should be good...given of course that the sound personnel know how to gain stage your output signal appropriately.

 

This could be a great alternative for you to get high quality at a reasonable price since the CP8 is priced at $399.  Just a thought.