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Topic:
Real-world 70v tap setting question
This thread has 7 replies. Displaying all posts.
Post 1 made on Thursday October 23, 2014 at 18:58
jimstolz76
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I'm sitting here in a ballroom we did all the AV in (as well as the rest of the building). This room has 15+ foot ceilings and we have eight Klipsch IC-650-T 70v in-ceiling speakers throughout the room. They are fed off of a single channel on a Crown CDi1000. I am pretty sure the speakers are all tapped at 30W.

99% of the time the speakers only get used for a couple wireless mics, sometimes audio from a laptop, or audio from DirecTV, a Blu-ray player, or an iPod/phone.

It works fine, but my issue is we've got everything cranked way up to get a decent volume level. For example, right now the amp is turned practically all the way up on the front panel, I've got a wireless mic going with the mixer channel at +2dB, and the overall mixer output is set at +2.5dB. The output level is "fine" for how they use it, but I really do not like running this close to "maxed out." For all practical purposes we are right now at the "this is how loud the room can go, that's it, but you'll never blow anything up" setting.

This being the real world, and not a hypothetical equation on a piece of paper.... Would there be any detriment to bumping these speakers up to the 60W tap setting? That would be 60W * 8 = 480W, plus <200' of 16/2 speaker wire back to the amp in the basement. Being that they NEVER crank this room (and I have limiters in the BSS anyway), would there be any detriment to upping the wattage just in case they need some more volume in here one day?

I know I told the guys to set the taps to 30W so I could safely stay at under 80% of the amplifier's 500W output, but I can't say that I've actually seen the tap settings for myself.
Post 2 made on Thursday October 23, 2014 at 19:03
3PedalMINI
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For something that high I probably would have set to 60w.

As far as the CDi goes, go in and check the gain levels on the input side. I got screwed one time by accidentally putting the gain all the way down on Ch1 but had it right for ch2. Drove me absolutely batty and about called for an RMA until i was just dicking around on ch2 settings and it hit me like a ton of bricks to check the gain.
The Bitterness of Poor Quality is Remembered Long after the Sweetness of Price is Forgotten! - Benjamin Franklin
OP | Post 3 made on Thursday October 23, 2014 at 19:09
jimstolz76
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Are you talking about the internal gain settings - set through the software? I actually totally forgot about that. This was installed over a year ago (maybe more) so I can't remember if I dug around in those settings or if I did it all on the front panel. I'll check that out, thx.
Post 4 made on Thursday October 23, 2014 at 19:49
3PedalMINI
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On October 23, 2014 at 19:09, jimstolz76 said...
Are you talking about the internal gain settings - set through the software? I actually totally forgot about that. This was installed over a year ago (maybe more) so I can't remember if I dug around in those settings or if I did it all on the front panel. I'll check that out, thx.

yup within the CDi software!
The Bitterness of Poor Quality is Remembered Long after the Sweetness of Price is Forgotten! - Benjamin Franklin
Post 5 made on Friday October 24, 2014 at 12:43
Ernie Gilman
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Divide the Universe.

It sounds to me, as you guys have said, that it's probably a gain issue somewhere, particularly somewhere not obvious, so... the software makes sense.

But before you get to that point you should have realized something seemed WAY wrong, then decided you'd take the signal path apart and inject a signal you know about. An iPod or iPad is most often that source these days: the headphone output is a bit lower than consumer line level, but it's in the ballpark. And volume level is likely to vary from song to song.

That's Dividing the Universe: if you pull apart the signal stream and plug a known line level into the power amp and it's totally quiet, the problem is downstream from there. If it plays like gangbusters, which it probably will, you know a)the amp and speakers can do it, and b)there IS a problem upstream. I've done this so often that when a problem crops up, I immediately envision the signal stream as left to right and I look for a place to verify performance. That's a strong tool that's very simple!

I'd leave the taps at 30W until I've seen proof that the amp is outputting anything near its max power level and the sound is not loud enough. You'll only get another 3 dB from switching to 60W, which itself says there's a problem somewhere else.
A good answer is easier with a clear question giving the make and model of everything.
"The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- G. “Bernie” Shaw
Post 6 made on Friday October 24, 2014 at 20:26
ShaferCustoms
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How are the "audio from DirecTV, a Blu-ray player, or an iPod/phone." fed into the mixer?

Add an RDL TX-LC2 or ART CleanBox Pro to the input from the AV devices.

It will make a difference.

Last edited by ShaferCustoms on October 24, 2014 21:13.
Post 7 made on Friday October 24, 2014 at 23:38
schlepp571
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I would consider checking the polarity at each speaker. If the amp is set correctly, I would check it next. One of my installers decided green was positive and white was negative on his own without following instructions. Spent a couple hours chasing the cancellation effect.
No, it doesn't come preprogrammed.
Post 8 made on Saturday October 25, 2014 at 02:05
Ernie Gilman
Yes, That Ernie!
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Schlepp, the cancellation effect, in my experience, is WAY more subtle than "do I have to double the power to my speakers?"

Shafer, I think he has to investigate the software's volume settings before adding a single other thing to his system.

It's about gain structure. (That is a term that, taken literally, is incorrect, but it means what it means.) What that means is that all of the signal levels need to be hot enough to transfer the least amount of noise from stage to stage, with all of them being low enough not to cause any distortion anywhere.

Imagine you've got a unit with noise in the output at -60dB. Not great. If you set the audio output of that device so it peaks at -5dB, you've got a little bit of headroom and a noise floor 55 dB down. But if you lower its output to -20dB, you then have LOTS of headroom but you have to turn up some later stage by 15 dB to compensate...and that noise floor will then be 15 dB higher. That's just one step.

I don't think Jim has that problem. I think that somewhere he's got a level that's much lower than it ought to be.
A good answer is easier with a clear question giving the make and model of everything.
"The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -- G. “Bernie” Shaw


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