[alanross]

In general, when you think of feedback, think of holding a mirror up to another mirror so that you can see yourself holding a mirror in a mirror of you holding a mirror, in a mirror of you holding a mirror, etc. If you hold the mirrors at just the right angle to each other, you can see your image repeated into infinity.

The same happens with a mic and speaker. The mic is taking in sound and the sound is coming out of the speaker. The more you increase the volume, the more sound is coming out of the speaker and then more sound can be picked up by the mic. If the mic is too close to the speaker, then the mic begins picking up the sound from the speaker and the speaker is then reproducing that extra sound from the mic and it creates a loop that feeds on itself into infinity.

Omnidirectional mics which pick up sound from many directions are particularly prone to this. Unidirectional mics are definitely a plus, but intelligent speaker placement may solve your problem. In a tight space, you may not have room to keep your speakers a safe distance from your mics, but you can still try to turn them away. Sometimes, if you have a long narrow room with solid walls, you can point the speakers at a 45degree angle to the walls and bounce the sound into the audience. This diffuses the sound, while still distributing it throughout the room.

You may also want to consider getting monitor speakers. This allows you to turn your main speakers out to the audience while having the monitors pointed to the volacists and adjusting your monitor volumes to accomodate.

Also, properly setting your system volumes and equalizing for the room is critical. For best results, use a separate power amp and mixing board. I have never been a fan of mixing amplifiers. I am partial to the QSC PXL series power amps. They are plenty powerful, have built in limiters and for the road systems, they are only 21 lbs. Any good mixing board will do so long as you have separate controls for each mic and music input.

For best quality sound, set your mixing board's Main volume to the halfway or 12:00 position, bring down all channel slides to zero and turn all gain levels down to the 9:00 position. Turn on your amp and set the amp volumes to FULL. Now start with one channel at a time on your mixing board and bring the volume slide slowly up until you reach the halfway point on the slide. If you find the volume doesn't fill the empty room, begin increasing the gain on that channel. Try not to exceed the 12:00 position on the gain unless you are still really weak in the room. If you cannot fill an empty room with sound, with your amp at full and your mixing board settings all at half full, then you need a more powerful amp and speakers. Once the room fills up with people, you can adjust the mixer's Master volume, gain and slide volumes to accommodate.

Avoid cranking everything to full. You will get distortion in your sound and you run the risk of overloading what your speakers can handle.

Remember to understand the difference between gain and volume - most people don't. Here's a nutshell version: Gain is how much signal you are allowing into a channel and volume is how much you're sending out. If you allow too much signal into a channel it can create distortion that gets sent out to the speakers as you increase the volume. Someone who cups their hands around a mic is forcing more sound into that mic and therefore more sound into that channel on the mixing board. Reducing the gain and increasing the volume will reduce the distortion from the mic while maintaining the volume of the output. You see?

Now, about the amp settings. Many people seem surprised when I tell them to set the amp to full volume, but I tell them to stop and think of the logic behind it. Your mixing board is your master control through which all your devices flow. Every mixing board can produce a degree of hiss and background noise. If there is going to be distortion in the sound, it's going to come from here. If your amp volumes are at full, then your mixing board volumes shouldn't ever have to be set at more than 3/4. The less signal you have to send out of the mixing board, the less distortion, hiss and background noise will be sent as well. Let your amp do the work. It wants to power your system, so let it. Your mixing board wants to coordinate your system, not power it, so let each component do what it's intended to do.

- Alan Ross

PS - bryant just posted the question, what is "too hot"? Too Hot means that either the volume or gain on the mic is too high. When you have to hold the mic a foot away from your face, it's because it's too loud. Bringing down the volume slide on mixing board is usually the solution, but you could have your gain set way too high as well. Properly adjusting your mic channel will cure this problem. A singer should be able to hold the mic two to four inches from their mouth. With a unidirectional mic, the singer should hold the mic in such a way as to be singing into the top of the mic, not the side.