This mixer is really quite excellent, I’ve been using it for well over a year now. At first I didn’t really feel like it was a worthy successor to my previous live sound and Dj audio mixer from Alesis. The reason why this happened has a lot to do with proper gain staging which has to be done with every new piece of audio equipment you introduce into your sound chain. Once I set up the sound from every stage in the right order, and reduced the audio gain on the first two sound channels that have auto tune, which are the two outputs that have my wireless microphones, it shined beautifully.
The thing is, the microphone outputs on the Peavey have more natural audio gain than my previous Alesia USB Multi-Mix Mixer, which had beautifully warm sound. With the microphone gain set lower on the Peavey, the main channel output volume can be raised instead of the gain. This is very benificial because when combined with my DBX Go Rack feedback protection, feedback is easier to avoid when less gain is in the sound chain. There’s something else a lot of people don’t understand, XLR cables shield audio because one of the 3 prints on the cable is a grounding pin. Because of this, when using XLR cables, your sound output will be 10-15% louder and cleaner than regular analog cables because the mixer can safely send a louder distortion free signal through if everything is setup properly in the gain staging phase. My dual wireless microphone bases have a 1/4th phono in. They also came with a 1/4th male to 1/4th male audio cable. Using this cable provided poor quality audio that required more gain on the Peavey Mixer. The first thing I did to correct this is was buying a 1.5 ft XLR male to 1/4th male audio cable. This allowed my Peavey 10 Auto-Tune mixer to send a louder signal to my wireless microphone base, despite the other end of the cable being a 1/4 phono plug.
The only complaint I have is that the effects, outside of the excellent and fully featured chromatic scale Auto-Tune, which I don’t use frequently, aren’t all that great. The channelstrips have an effects and equalizer bypass on them, which is good because adjusting the highs, miss and lows on here introduces a few little issues that don’t sound great. I leave them at default, and then go to the final output strip, and adjust them there. My DBX GoRack is then used for final sound staging and processing. This combination puts out loud, full and powerful sound for me that my singers on DJ and karaoke nights love. My GoRack has an acoustic audio equalizer preset which sends out excellent microphone levels when my mix is properly set up on the Peavey 10 AT. Then I use the club mode on my EV ZLX speakers in sub mode with the crossover set to ELX 118p, combined with my ELX 200 18 inch subwoofer. The bass is further lowered on my ZLX 12ps or 15ps with the treble set to -1 one and the final output set to -1. With my subwoofer handling the bass, my speakers output louder, cleaner highs and Mids. My sub is placed on a slight raised wooden platform in certain venues and completely hidden by a Dj facade. The raised platform is only used in venues where the floor can lead to swallowing up the low end. There’s a venue I dj at which had this issue. My sub was clipping early and didn’t sound prominent at all until I raised it slightly off of the ground.
The important thing to understand about any sound setup is, there is actually a correct way to stage the sound in order, which can alleviate issues. The more effects you introduce into your chain, the more likely you’ll have minor sound issues because each effect has the ability to boost or lower other sound frequencies. Too much sound compression for instance can result in feebavk loops. I use feedback suppression on my DBX GoRack, but even that can be instantly defeated by adding too much gain on the Peavey Mixer’s microphone output channels. The microphones wireless base sound has to be balanced first, which thankfully has a reverb setting on it, then the line it goes into on the Peavey mixer has to be adjusted next, then the Peavey effects channel, which in this case is usually very very light additional reverb, or rare auto-tune if a singer asks for it. Lastly the final sound output line, which feeds my DBX GoRack. The GoRack is set to output in Balanced XLR stereo. Each of these cable runs are about 1.5 feet since I’ve wired this setup inside of a flight case to avoid unplugging anything. My Peavey Mixer is connected to a Numark DJ Deck, that’s connected to my Windows PC or MacBook Pro laptop. My final cables are roughly 4 feet to my subwoofer, which then sends the last set of XLR cables to my speakers.
This sound chain, since it’s properly staged with correct gain structure, sounds excellent and clean and allows for my EV ZLX and ELX 200 18 subwoofer to have equal to, or in some cases better than my previous setup which included 2 QSC K12s and the QSC KW 18 subwoofer. Granted that setup, even before proper gain structure, naturally took less sound knowledge to get more headroom out of, but people compliment my sound a great deal in both regards, and are hard pressed to tell the difference, though I notice the final output on my current setup is slightly lower. With the proper gain structure, it sounds fantastic and still provides punchy bass. Every once in awhile, if I want to push my Bass output further, I use the sub harmonic synthesizer on my GoRack sparingly to send bass a few octaves lower than the current signal has, and then I can raise it on my subwoofer slightly more to get more fully distortion free Bass volume without harming my sub. Too much can potentially damage it, it goes up to 99 on the GoRack, but I never usually set it to more than 15 or 20. The same thing with compression, which can keep my singers in the pocket, in terms of final sound mix. I never have that set up higher than 25 if I do use it. With my Peavey Mixer, since my music levels are first set on my Numark Mixtrack Platinum, then my final output channel strip on on the Peavey 10 AT, it usually sounds full and clean. My singers are adjusted accordingly with the gain always set relatively low, and the final microphone levels set to the 12 o clock position, or slightly above that.
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