Studiolive 16-4-2 Outputs

Ok! I have a comment and a questions that I hope someone might have an answer to.
I have been doing audio in one form or another for around 39 years. I want to start off saying I am still learning. Now over those years I have collected a lot of cool stuff, and more then my share of junk. In the collection of stuff I have some older amps. Crown , QSC and Peavey. All these order amps need 24dbv to push the amps to full power. That’s comes out to 15.85 volts RMS, the Presonus is rated at 24dbu which comes out to 12.28 volts RMS. To me this means that the board itself can never drive a older amp to full power. In the past I used an outboard compressor or the crossover to make up for this difference. I also noticed that the Aux Sends are rated at 18dbu which is going to limit the power as well. I used the mixer outside in a tri-amp setup a few weeks ago and the board did great, but I would prefer to have more head room.
My typical signal path is mixer, compressor and crossover. I do not run EQ on front of house at all if I am outside and only in extreme conditions inside. My crossover is 3way with sub or 4way with sub and I run stereo.
So with all my above ramblings I am going to have to make up the difference in either the Crossover or with a Line driver before the crossover. I was thinking I might want to try a good tube line driver. So can anyone put me to a good tube preamp/Line driver but not the behringer HA!!
The below site is where I did my conversions on the dbv and dbu measurements.
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-db-volt.htm
Thanks

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 02/08/2012 05:59:36

Ummm... I think maybe you have something mixed up here. Typical amp sensitivity is and has been in the 1.4V- 2.73v area... Even the old Crown DC300 had a 1.75v input sensitivity... the input sensitivity rating means that it takes (1.44-2.73volts) to drive the amp to full power, no where near the 15+ volts you specify...and well within the capability of the SL series to drive the amps to full potential.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 03/08/2012 02:08:45

The older Crown amps I have and the QST amps I have require 2 volts for full power. Also most broadcast TV equipment is rate for 24dbv or 2volts as well. I just remember that a couple of years ago there was a line driver that would do 26dbv that we used when we were running long snake lines. I have some audio DA's and Video DA's that I wanted to use and they are 24dbv.
It's not abig deal the board does such a great job. If my old amps become an issue I will sale them and get some new cool TOYS!!!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 04/08/2012 17:35:12

jpadgett wrote:The older Crown amps I have and the QST amps I have require 2 volts for full power. Also most broadcast TV equipment is rate for 24dbv or 2volts as well. I just remember that a couple of years ago there was a line driver that would do 26dbv that we used when we were running long snake lines. I have some audio DA's and Video DA's that I wanted to use and they are 24dbv.
It's not abig deal the board does such a great job. If my old amps become an issue I will sale them and get some new cool TOYS!!!

With all due respect TV, video and audio are all three completely different monsters, and having been on that side of the world myself, I know that audio quality in broadcasting has always taken a back seat to video quality. So, take those requirements with a grain of salt and remain in context here.

You are mixing up two different things. You are confusing max headroom with amplifier input sensitivity. These are two different things.
The Peavey amps are fixed gain, very different from QSCs. They will provide 30x or 40x. For instance, on CS800s, Input sensitivity was +3dBV (1.4V RMS) into 20K ohms for full power. If you wanted to get tweaky and measure the RMS of the StudioLive, use a Multi-meter with True RMS function and go for it. RMS measurements will be the only true way to tell what you have.

The Studio Live delivers more V than you need with those old amps, which are still very good designs, and probably sound better than most of the cheap Class D crap that is out there, that was never meant to reproduce audio when invented.

As a system integrator, salesman and user myself, I see more people not getting all that they can out of the SL (and other digital consoles) because they do not understand digital, do not understand gain staging, speaker sensitivity, and are using sub par amplifiers (or active speakers with false published specs...cough....uhmmm....QSC). They think, 1k W should sound louder than that. This mixer has no output! I have heard that many times.

BTW, last night, I was mixing at a club with two QSC KW153s and four KW181s, and at the mix, about 40' back, I was averaging about 108 dB SPL-C all night. It is entirely possible to get all you can have out of those cheap active boxes. In fact. I was pushing them to the point that I could hear the high-freq amps going into protect mode, and I still had a little juice to give.

Not to toot my horn, but the StudioLive's, all of the bands walking out of there said it was the best sound they had ever had, anywhere. It ain't what you got sometimes, it is what you do with it.

Yea you are most likely right. I have been using the Presonus live in my church and this was the first time I have ever used it live, plus I was running sound for a heavy metal band. I blamed the issue on the headroom on the board when the whole problem most likely was I did not setup the trim on the channels for 0db and that's why I had headroom issues. When I am running sound in my church I am in a enclosed space and headroom is not as much of an Issue. Oh and when I say church we have a full band that take's up all 24 channels and at about 65 ft from the stage the SP is about 80db on peaks which is loud for a church. HA!! Thanks for the chat. I still am going to try and find a tube preamp just because I like the warm sound I get out of the PA with one.

Remember, you also have gain controls on the back of the back of the mixer. We have also discovered that if you set up the individual channel gains to peak no more than 1/2 scale the sound is warmer and more natural, perhaps better said "less digital and harsh sounding". The summing amps are the key here as they can become overloaded with too much signal.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 07/08/2012 23:42:51

You know some time's when you have just been a plan idiot you should just admit it. For some reason I thought that the Studiolive had Stereo XLR outs and also a sum Mono XLR out with the little gain knob right there beside it.
Would you believe that when I was setting up I did not really pay much attention to anything because I was thinking about the old Mackie that I replaced with the Studiolive. Since I run Stereo FOH, and since I thought in my head that the gain was on the mono feed I never even looked. HA!!!
I had just gotten the mixer shipped to me two days before. I order the PC boards I wanted to use for my recording computer and spent the day before building up that computer. I was just so fired up to do my first outside gig with my friends that I did not spend any of the time like I should have planning the setup. Well you live and learn.

We've all done the face palm from time to time. Welcome to the family!!!