Mixer to Mic a Drum Kit?

What Mackie? They are Soundcraft and Behringer, the ones I'm looking at. Or is Mackie and Soundcraft the same brand? Anyway, another factor is size and weight. I have to carry this about! I don't think either give you their dimensions or weight in the spec. :-(

Ooops! Another thread (old y'know and medd'ed up) Attached are the dims for the Soundcrafts. the matching Behringers will be lighter, not so well built.

Dave.
 

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Try not to overthink it. You're micing a drum kit to go through a PA, get a mixer with enough mic inputs and go for it. Curious if you'll be running other stuff through the PA. Maybe the mixer you are looking to get is a sub-mixer. Just curious.

Gareth said:
… is there a significant difference in quality if you run a mic into one of the jack inputs with an XLR to jack lead?

Reminds me of a guy in our band. He bought a Fishman Aura (wonderful tool for an acoustic guitar). It is basically a modeler, but acts like a DI box. Plugs his guitar into it, then uses an XLR to 1/4" to go to the mixer. :facepalm: defeats the purpose of using an XLR plus it reduces the strength of the signal.

Anyway, like others have said, use XLR connections for your mic. You do have the option of getting mic pre-amps to go into additional channels that do not have XLR connectors. But that is more money spent and is probably cheaper to just get the right size mixer.

Good luck and have fun!!! :)
 
Thanks Dave, actually I found the mixer dimensions and weight specs. Like you said, the Behringer is lighter but the Soundcraft is smaller so it's swings and roundabouts really. The Soundcraft seems like better quality to me too, but the Behringer would still do the job at the end of the day.

Behringer = Weight 5.09 kg, Width 430mm, Length 355mm, Height 90mm
Soundcraft = Weight 5.66 kg, Width 380mm, Length 388mm, Height 113mm

Like Chili says, I should just pick one and get on with it. I won't need it until our March practice as this month we're just going to practice without the mics. Either of them will do the job so that's all good. There is however one final piece of the puzzle to get once I've got the mixer. I need some sort of bag or case for it, to carry it, its power supply, the 7 drum mic XLR leads, and the two 20ft Mixer-PA XLR leads. Obviously I need to get the mixer first to get a case the right size! Hopefully such a thing exists! I could just chuck it all in a shopping bag or random hold all but I prefer to have things a bit protected in transport when I've spent loads of money on it.

The mics (Shure drum mic set) come in a convenient carry case which keeps them all safe and together. Having the rest of it just chucked in a random bag seems like a bad move!
 
You can get an AWFUL lot in a good laptop bag and I get really good ones cheap at our town market.

Dave.
 
Sounds like a good move. Actually I bought a laptop bag, (from Curry's/PC World) to carry and transport my four-track and some related other bits. However, it wasn't cheap! It was £56 which was more than the four-track which I got second hand on e-bay! It seems a bit illogical to have a bag that's worth more than what's in it but it's a bloody nice bag (Wenger, a swiss brand), the other cheaper bags were rubbish and everything didn't fit in it, power pack and input jack leads etc. A laptop bag would have to be quite big to fit either of those mixers and all the cables but I'll keep my eyes open for sure.
 
Try not to overthink it. You're micing a drum kit to go through a PA, get a mixer with enough mic inputs and go for it. Curious if you'll be running other stuff through the PA. Maybe the mixer you are looking to get is a sub-mixer. Just curious.

Actually no. The drums mixer will go straight to the PA, the guitar, vocals and bass goes straight to the PA also. So this is the only mixer in our set up.
 
It looks like I’ve been talking non-stop rubbish on this thread! :-( We did our first practice last Wednesday and realised we will need to send the drums mixer output straight to the recoding device (actually a little mixer that mixes the PA output with it anyway) because …

to play the guitar and vocals loud enough to play with a drum kit they have to be much loader than I was playing before, and the drums (when miked) out of the PA will have to be very quiet in the PA mix as the kit makes so much noise in the room already. Therefor, if we just record the PA output the drums will be really really quiet compared to guitar and vocals, making the whole exercise pretty pointless.

So we will have to send the drums straight to the recording device (pre-device mixer), either instead of putting it through the PA at all or as well as having it very quiet in the PA. Therefor, it would be preferable to be able to send the mix twice from the drums mics mixer, once to the PA and once to the pre-device mixer.

Actually, I think we might be better off to use the send to the PA just to monitor the EQ, compression and whatever effects and then turn it off at the PA and just send it to the pre-device mixer, when we’re playing. Oh my life! Nothing is ever simple in music!
 
I think what you're experiencing is what I call "board-itis." Making live recordings directly off the board in small spaces means drums and amps are way down in the mix while vocals and any instruments that don't have amps are blasting. One way to combat that is to have a separate mix for the recording. Another way to do it is to record the PA mix and the room sound to separate tracks and balance them after the fact. That's what I do with my Zoom H5, use the mics to record the stage noise and use the line inputs to record the board feed.
 
Actually, we first tried recording the room and mixing it with the PA output (which is what I did when playing without the drums) but the room mic we were using couldn't handle the volume of the drums. (Aston Spirit condenser mic), it was absolute carnage! To be fair there is a -20db setting on the mic that we haven't tried but it was so bad on the standard setting, we thought, lets just mic the drum kit and get it that way. We could feed the PA output into the drum mixer but there are a few complications, A) the phono-jack leads are nowhere near long enough (we'd have to get much longer ones), B) when we send the drums to the PA to monitor we'd have to turn the PA output off, otherwise it would include any noise I made from my guitar or vocal mic, so we'd have to keep turning it (PA out channel) on and off all the time. I think we might as well do it the other way round and send the drum mixer output and the PA output to the pre-recording device mixer (Behringer Xenex 802). This is what the room mic was going into. This method should work. Hopefully!
 
I managed to get a laptop bag but there weren’t many that would fit this mixer! I got the KROSER 18.5" Laptop Briefcase Bag for £33.99 from Amazon. The only actual proper mixer bag I could find was the Gator 18x15” but that only has one compartment so any cables or other accessories you want to transport with the mixer would have to go in with it and be cluncking around on top of the mixing desk and there is nothing to strap the mixer in place either.

The Kroser at dimensions 18.5"x13.5 is actually half an inch smaller than the mixer in depth, which is 14” (17x14”). You can just about squeeze it in, but only if you put it in a certain way. You have to put the front in first under the zip and then slide the back in. It’s a bit fiddly to get in and out but when it’s in it’s a snug fit with lots of nice pockets and compartments for the accessories. I have packed with it a pair of 20ft XLR leads for the main output, a pair of 15ft jack leads also for the main output, all 7 of the Shure XLRs mic cables, the power plug and I’ve slid the instruction booklet into one of the inside pockets too. Ready to rock and roll!

DSC00611.JPG DSC00612.JPG

However, I do have another question. If we send the output with the XLR leads (from the XLR main out) into the PA XLR inputs won’t the PA be expecting a mic signal? Aren’t the PA XLR inputs for microphones, for vocals etc.? But it will be getting a line level signal? Would we be better sending the output to the PA into the PA jack inputs?
 
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